Historians often sweep this embarassment under a carpet by defining human nature as Promethian, as essentially creative, as if that did not beg the question. In fact, human creativity is simply the constraint of our intentions upon the exercise of our natural powers. And, as is the case of the myriad of other natural emergent processes about us, our creative capacities depend ultimately upon the dissipation of our environment. To achieve improbable outcomes requires not just a dream of what might be, but a real struggle to bring that improbable outcome to pass. The movement of history toward ever less probable outcomes implies social progress at least in the sense that our future lies increasingly in our own hands.
History is indeed the story of human liberation.
There is progress, perhaps not in terms of moral improvement or the wellbeing of the majority, but certainly in the sense that we have ever greater power over circumstances for better or for ill. In this sense there is moral progress in that our increase in social power makes us ever more responsible for the future. To turn Malthus on his head, we are better, not absolutely, but because our growing power to do ill has not led us to be worse. Under modern conditions, the continued movement toward improbable outcomes is possible only through a concerted effort in a present. Our capacity to build the future cannot be understood as an inheritance from the past, but as constructed in the present, for if we inherited our capacities for change, then history would necessarily wind down, not up.