The Paradox of Progress: Lessons from the Red Queen

Gaining the perspective that moving back from Brazil is a reposition, not a checkmate.

It took me a long time to truly understand, not just theoretically but holistically, a phrase I’ve repeated many times in my life: “sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards.” This phrase, taken from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, originates from the Red Queen’s paradoxical wisdom about “going backwards to go forwards.” When I first read the book (yes, I did, and I clearly want YOU to know that), the phrase resonated with me — more the imagery than the meaning. It wasn’t until I got older that I fully grasped its paradoxical nature.

For context, “going backwards to go forwards” refers to a curious situation Alice encounters in the chessboard like world she enters. When Alice first meets the Red Queen, they run together at great speed, yet Alice notices that despite all the running, they remain in the same place. The Red Queen explains that in this world, “it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

This idea plays with the concept of progress being relative to the environment. In order to make actual progress or move forward in that world, you sometimes…