The State of “Progress” in 2024
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
— Winston Churchill
A few months ago, I listened to a “Munk debate” on the subject of progress. The resolution, “The world is getting better,” was supported by Stephen Pinker and Mat Ridley, and opposed by Malcolm Gladwell and Alain de Botton.
Although it came out a few years ago, I was excited by the debate, because I was familiar with all four speakers. Yet what I liked about the debate was not the ideas or facts presented, but the topic itself. While I was once an optimist for the future, I’m not so sure now.
Years ago, Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, confirmed my own optimism. Over hundreds of pages of argument, he confirmed my hunch that humans are becoming less destructive and more civilized. For the same reason, I read Ray Kurzweil’s, The Singularity is Near, because it boldly claims the future will be wonderful, that technology will likely give us a “post scarcity” world.
All the reasons they mention for their optimism resonate with me: more money, longer life, less war, less violence, fewer extinctions, all seem plausible for our future. Growing wealth, health, peace, and a cleaner earth seem inevitable. The richer and more advanced we get, the cleaner, fairer and more peaceful we seem to be.
When you think of this, even global warming is more of a solvable problem than a catastrophe. And although I admire Gladwell and de Botton’s arguments — mainly that things will get worse because 1. Inequality is everywhere and 2. society ignores the problems it could solve — their complaint is that “the world is bad because people are bad.”
But this seems wrong. The world really is getting better, not worse. And, if Matt Ridley is even half right, this will be because and not in spite of, the free market. Companies do what customers want, and customers really want health, equality and sustainability.
No, our progress is not hurting us.
No one refuses the modern world. The cost of progress isn’t pollution, poverty, unemployment, disease or war, as the optimists will point out. The data shows that in the past, we have reduced these problems and suggests that, in the future, we will have even less of them.
We may even get our “post scarcity” world after all.
We might live forever.
But there is another problem. The world will probably get worse because it is getting better. With each new step of progress, there are new challenges which have to be overcome. And because we always have to struggle, our progress is not really progress.
The Curse of Knowledge — Dissatisfaction
During the debate, de Botton says that stories warn us about the curse of being dissatisfied. Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden, neither reaping nor sowing, knowing each other fully, wise in spite of their nakedness. Then they ate the fruit of knowledge. Their punishment for this was that they no longer lived forever and they had to work. Similarly, Prometheus gives fire to his creatures, who must use it to fight the monsters from Pandora’s jar.
A more recent story, the Monkey’s Paw, by W.W. Jacobs, warns of the danger of being dissatisfied. The problem is, this is part of being human. There may be old stories that offer us an alternate view of humans’ place in creation, where all beings can coexist peacefully in a world that cares for them. Perhaps the Iroquoian legend of the sky woman, who is saved and cared for by the animals on the earth. Or the future vision of Isaiah, of a paradise in which “the lamb lies with the lion.” But stories of this world? Ceaseless struggle. We think we are promoting ourselves but it’s not a real promotion.
If you get a promotion at work, it comes with extra perks (like money, time off, and status) but also more responsibility (more work to do and more risk). If the perks are (or seem, which is key) greater than responsibility, it’s a promotion. If the responsibilities exceed the perks, it’s not a promotion.
From what I can tell, in humanity’s job of being on earth, the perks are always improving, but the responsibilities are improving faster. We are getting more wealth and power, but aren’t getting a promotion. Even worse, we can’t refuse our promotion. Because on earth, we can’t stop improving.
We have to accept the fact that new solutions bring new challenges, which require new solutions. Humanity is always on the hook to solve the problems which its earlier solutions create. In this job, we can never quit or retire. We are always working. So things will not be better.
Progress has a cost. It must continue, in as straight a line as possible. If you think this is a small thing, I’d like to hear from you, because it seems like a lot of work. I’ll provide some examples, each disturbing and in no particular order.
Shaping “Progress”
I am a teacher and a parent. I want young people to love the world they live in, to enjoy all the wonders and beauties of the universe, have life-long friends and romances, and enjoy being alive. Yet I spend my life “shaping” young minds for the world, while wondering why they needed to be shaped in the first place. After how many centuries of civilization should the world, which humans dominate, finally be prepared to receive new generations without us having to “shape” them? Will it ever be possible to just “leave them kids alone”?
We are always, and I mean always, intentionally teaching children to “manage their expectations” although they come to our world trusting things to be wonderful. Schools are in theory the institutions designed to care most for kids. And what is the outlook that schools have about the future for these kids? At staff and department meetings, we don’t use words like “fun,” “happiness,” “wonder,” “spectacular,” “fascinating,” “brilliant,” “amazing,” or “hilarious.” We use words like, “student success,” “student workload,” “assignments,” “projects,” “problem solving,” “resiliency,” “focus,” “attendance,” “credit rescue,” “credit recovery,” and, of course, “work.”
Because we care about kids, we want to prepare them for a world where they will have to fend for themselves, make wise decisions, fix problems (usually caused by older generations), and make as much money as possible. Schools have been around for thousands of years. Governments spend over $4 trillion dollars on them every year (5% of the world economy). You’d think we could make school more fun, interesting and less like work. Yet school is still about shaping children for the world they are entering, where productivity and self-preservation matter most. So, although we aren’t making school more fun or interesting, we are shaping children for the world of work.
Meanwhile in the adult world, labor itself could and should become more and more like play. But it remains stubbornly like work. Far into the future, things will be very different. But we will still probably have to shape children to manage their expectations and be ready for an increasingly volatile and unpredictable marketplace of labor they will have to navigate in order to support themselves.
But people don’t make wise decisions with their added power and wealth. Instead of taking time off, we always prefer to work harder for more money, either because we like it or we have to. We have enough money today that each laborer really only needs to be on the job for half days and can spend the rest of their time relaxing. In the future, we will have even more money, but not more free time. I think people will actually be busier, working harder to make and spend more and more money. Why? I don’t know.
Who to Blame
We could blame it on technology. Studies have shown that since the introduction of more efficient forms of lighting, people spend more time working. With the internet and cell phones, people spend even more time focussed on their jobs, getting ahead. Automation, in which robots do the actual work, leading to unimaginable wealth, and giving us much more free time, actually creates greater labor demands. “These robots could take our jobs away,” they shriek. But I think automation, like every other new technology, will just lead to people working even harder, because we will always work harder, although I don’t know why.
Or maybe, it’s because of capitalism. You know, companies competing with each other, forcing their workers into longer hours so they don’t lose their jobs? There is a lot of power pushing us to work harder.
Or, it could be our consumer society, which drives so much progress today. More and more things are cheaper, so naturally, we spend more and more time and money chasing more cheaper things.
Or, work might have become addictive, like a game in a way (so I guess I have to take back what I said earlier that work is no fun). Because it has become a bit like gambling. Addiction specialist Dr. Anna Lembke explains that much white collar work in the western world has become “gamified.”
“When earning money is separated from the meaning of the work itself, it can become addictive…Working is vulnerable to any of the same problems of addiction…access: we now have a 24/7 workweek. It never ends. So we’re constantly engaging in work and we’re potentially turning it into an addictive behavior. You’ve got…quantity: the work is endless, we’re never done. .Then you’ve got “potency” and “novelty” in the way I just described: work has become divorced from the meaning of itself. It has become gamified and monetized in a way that can become highly reinforcing.” (note: we have to accept that the monetization of work occurred thousands of years ago). “One of the interesting statistics is that … white collar workers (highly educated workers in professions) are working more now than ever before, and have less leisure time than ever before, and that’s probably because their work has become gamified, full of bonuses and incentives that keep them in it, whereas if you look at blue collar work or people who have access to lower wage jobs that people with less education can get, those people are working less than ever because that work is inherently often not re-warding, it’s also separated from the meaning of the work itself, but not because it’s been gamified through bonuses, but it’s assembly line work, piecemeal work, people don’t get to see the results of the end product. But whereas in the 1950s, it’s especially true for men, people working in low wages jobs worked about the same amount and had about the same amount of leisure as people in high wage jobs. That’s not true today. People in low wage jobs work less and have more leisure time and people in high wage jobs are working more than ever before.” (The Rational Reminder Podcast, Nov. 2020)
Whatever the cause, “work” will always be seen as one of the greatest things, and free time will always be seen as something you have to earn through your work, and only near the end of life, or perhaps never for some people. There are people in the world today who don’t work. They are either called the unemployed, whom we despise and pity, or billionaires, whom we worship but don’t think we could ever be like. Both have one thing in common: they can’t or won’t do a job.
For most of humanity, unemployment makes us shudder and we prefer the consumer cycle. This starts younger and younger, so that children learn to love money early on, and then begin to worry they won’t have enough of it. Every aspect of life is shaped by this. Who they marry, what they will learn about, what career they will pursue, where they will live, how many children they will have, how often they will be able to visit friends and family. I’m not talking about people living in poor or war torn countries. I’m describing middle class life in modern, rich countries, the sort of life that our ancestors fought and died for, that millions of people around the world will leave their homeland for. Anyone who opts out of these goals will be thought of as insane.
Better Distractions
Entertainment is also getting worse as it improves. It’s obviously getting cheaper, easier to access and much more sensational in every respect. But it follows the same cycle as work: the more we pursue pleasure, the faster it recedes from us. The only real achievement in the ever-growing field of entertainment is not satisfaction but hunger. And how often have we been reminded that our threshold for joy remains far below our imagined scope for it. Crave all we might for every imaginable drink, all we really want is water. It’s no wonder that the wealthiest people on the planet seek pleasure in charity work, open natural spaces, solitude, the company of close friends and family, and free time. These are the things everyone wants. They are also expensively beyond the reach of most people. Google a list of things dying people always wished they had pursued: it likely includes some of those.
Every year, I ask my teen-aged students to write a poem about their “sacred” space. They never write about spaces created by our consumer products (movie theatres, social media platforms, computer games, pop songs, music videos, clothing, fast food restaurants and cafes). The two things they always write about are: nature and family, preferably combined together in ritualized, peaceful, reliable repetition (like summers at camp or weekend retreats at the cottage). These are middle class students, with disposable income, able to buy clothing, cell phones and meals out with friends, who take regular trips to exotic locations. They do not love consumer society, although they participate in it actively. Our entertainment, as the peak of our wealth and technology, can only briefly distract us from our lives. It’s not for lack of trying on the part of the entertainment industry. It’s the best they can do, as a sort of compensation for the work we must do to keep the whole thing going.
Our technologies bring new challenges.
Cheap light gives us more freedom but has turned us all into workaholics, since our working day has lengthened in step with the falling price of light. Gasoline fuels our vehicles. But as fuel efficiency rises, we increase our consumption instead of saving money. Carbon emissions disrupt climate, and unleaded gas has filled our breathable atmosphere as well as the bodies of all breathing animals, with lead forever. Ditto with plastic. It’s useful, and everywhere, and now all life is filled forever with plastic microbeads. We can never know the impact of lead or plastic on living things because there can be no control group. The internet has solved the old problems of communication forever: people all over the world can speak and exchange wealth and ideas for free. But it also creates new political and social disruptions which we are now barely coming to grips with, and which would be unimaginable to our grandparents. What to do? New solutions to old problems bring unimaginable problems which future humans will have to deal with. It’s progress but it’s not a promotion.
Trying to be an optimist.
Our techno-economy will fix the world’s current problems. We will solve climate change. These improvements will outstrip population growth as nations get wealthier, and people find it’s more convenient to have fewer kids. We will probably take our energy generation and manufacturing into space to reduce the mess even further, and continue to achieve various forms of “exit” velocity, in which our abilities increasingly outstrip our challenges. There will be glitches along the way (the odd war, flooded city, migration flow, pandemic). But a quick glance at history suggests these problems have always existed (it’s the Taiping rebellion of the mid-19th Century, and not World War II, that was the most destructive war in history) and that we will solve them. So we must be realistic when we sketch our gloom and doom portraits. There is no question that our future will be increasingly powerful and impressive. But it will also be stressful for billions of yet unborn children, who will enjoy wonders and pleasures we can’t even imagine and yet envy the tranquility of our current lives. Reality is promoting us constantly and we can’t refuse.
We can never get off this “Faustian” ride.
We must always improve and keep solving the problems we keep creating. So no, the world is not getting better for us.
But it is getting much more exciting.
What a time to be alive.