I like the idea of inward progress before tackling the outward, technological kind. A problem I foresee is that the wiser, more empathetic folks would be vulnerable to human predators and parasites, such as demagogues. Weimar Germany was briefly a bastion of liberalism and artistic greatness before the Nazi demagogue came along and preyed on their naivety and desperation. Trumpism shows that this can happen in the American land of the free, too. So the question is how inwardly progressive folks would deal with the inevitable rise of these deranged freeloaders.