Have you ever fired a weapon or tried to hit something with a rock? How do you measure how accurate you are? You measure it by how close you come to hitting your target. But what if you do not pick a target? How do you measure how effective you are at shooting or throwing without a target? The answer is: you can’t. It is impossible to measure how effective you are at shooting or throwing if you do not designate a target first. Well, society is no different. If a society has any hope of measuring ‘progress,’ it has to have a target. But how can a society pick a target when so many of its citizens think that you can’t judge others? Or the leaders of that society have different sets of rules depending on what group a citizen happens to belong? Once again, it is impossible to judge ‘progress’ in such a society because there is no clear, set target. This is why it is so important to understand the relationship between principles and ideals, not to mention what the words actually mean.