Progress is coming closer to a written or unwritten goal. It is only defined by perspectives.
In the stand point of a Jewish girl about to be shot in a holocaust death camp, Hitler was making progress in annihilating her religion; But if that Jewish girl was being shot because the Nazis wanted to hide the evidence of the holocaust, being that the Allis were at their door, those Nazis knew Hitler was about to fail.
Progress is based on the information of the beholder. Say Jim was painting a picture of a bowl, and he usually paints extremely realistically in cool tones; but on this particular piece he wants to experiment with abstraction and warm colors. If Jim creates his piece realistic and cool, and Sarah, not knowing that Jim wants to make a warm abstract piece, sees his painting and tells him he is making progress, then in her opinion he is. But because Jim knows what his goal is (while Sarah doesn't), he is looking at the piece in a different way and can say that he is not making progress. Until Sarah sees the situation in the light that Jim does, Sarah will have a different idea of progress then Jim.
With 12 billions different eyes looking and not looking at the world with all their information and history, progress is indefinable.
