It may feel like the world is slowly devolving into one big dumpster fire. But that’s hardly the case. “For all the problems we have today, the problems of yesterday usually were worse,” said Steven Pinker, Ph.D. ’79, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology. “Things really have gotten better [and] not by themselves; it’s taken human effort and human ingenuity and human commitment.” In many measurable ways, global progress has far exceeded failure. Jane Nelson, the founding director of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, points out that of the United Nation’s 24 indicators of their Sustainable Development Goals, 18 have improved since 2015. During her career she’s seen enormous changes for the better, and that gives her hope when she looks to the future. “We know what is needed to move forward and make progress. What are the policies that need to be changed? What are the new business models and market incentives?” she said. “It’s a question then of building the political will and public narrative to get there.” Brookings Study finds progress 2015-2024: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-is-the-world-doing-on-the-sdgs-four-tests-and-eight-findings/
What would progress entail? Solving major problems like income inequality, affordable housing, governmental dysfunction, governmental waste, loneliness, alienation, social isolation, environmental pollution, and global warming. The solutions to all of these problems are conceptually clear but aren’t implemented because of dysfunctional government. Governmental reform is key to progress and should be the focus of progressive efforts. Societal metamorphosis, as a conceptual framing of progress as a maturing process, gives a way to imagine progress is possible if not naturally occurring, given healthy, supportive, accommodating circumstances.
We may have to work on those circumstances, e.g. getting the money out of politics, before progress and maturation appear realistic and evident.
To build up an image of holistic development and apply it to society’s information age adolescence, I proceed from a series of assumptions. The first assumption is that of societal maturation and constructive progress. There is extensive debate as to whether or not the history of human society has been progressive, and indeed whether or not biological evolution leading to modern man has been progressive, but as societal progress is not provable, I assume it. In some ways life has progressed — extended life span, raised living standard, etc., but in other ways we’ve lost intuitive touch with nature as life becomes more insulated from the natural world with artificial realities, starting with the harnessing of fire and continuing through today’s virtual reality technologies and escapist entertainments.
I believe human society has progressed and continues to progress, with occasional backsliding, but it is not something I can prove, and so I assume it. If the reader agrees, then my following argument becomes plausible, while if not accepted then the thesis will not be accepted either. I assume that human society matures, evolves and strives in the direction of improvement and betterment, admittedly haltingly and with set-backs, but with a relentless eventuality that I see to be as powerful as the force of life itself. Operationally, it certainly makes sense to assume progress if one believes in trying to make improvements in life around one. Without assuming progress it is hard to maintain hope and hope inspires that progress, or at least efforts in that direction.
“Progress is the movement towards a refined improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization has resulted, and by extension will continue to result, in an improved human condition; the latter may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution. … The concept of progress was introduced in the early 19th-century social theories, especially social evolution as described by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It was present in the Enlightenment’s philosophies of history. As a goal, social progress has been advocated by varying realms of political ideologies with different theories on how it is to be achieved.” (Wikipedia, “Progress”)
I take one cue from biological evolution, for example in the evolutionary progression to internalize and thereby neutralize risk and threats coming from the external environment. I am thinking of how egg-laying reptiles evolved to warm blooded mammals, where, compared to reptiles, mammals have internalized the processes of gestation and body warmth, thereby reducing predator risk and dependency on direct sun for heat, making life more predictable and less vulnerable to nature’s vagaries.[1] Mammals eventually evolved to human beings, increasingly shielding themselves from weather and the natural environment with fire, clothing, farming, and now electricity and climate controlled indoor spaces equipped with virtual realities.
In recent years scientists have come to accept the idea of multilevel Darwinian selection, the idea that evolution proceeds by variation and selection not only at the level of individual organisms, but at the more micro level of genes and the more macro level of social groups, as exemplified in social insects and animal behaviors. Thus it can make sense to speak of human society as a unified and coherent system whose evolution and progress are organic and Darwinian[2]. Our economic and broader societal progress can thus be viewed as a direct continuation of biological evolution. As society evolves, it progresses in the accumulation and refinement of its knowledge, artifacts and institutions, mastering its external environment and developing internal controls. Eventually, I assume, societal evolution will bring about, or at least more closely approach, best structures for integrating and relating individuals together in society and best practices in governance. [3], [4], [5], 13, [6], [7],[8]
If better practices in governance can result in a less fractured and more harmonious society, then this will reduce social friction and free up time, energy and resources across the board. Will the external threat of climate change inspire and align humanity to common purpose? Will the general level of self-awareness simply mature, through the broadening of general knowledge, to where people become broadly better at resolving differences cooperatively instead of violently? Data does point to the world becoming less violent (source?). Game theorists show how cooperation and social norms can evolve and tend to evolve and stabilize through time. Such alignments in social actors smooths their interaction, and makes life more efficient, saving time, energy and resources. Is that progress? It certainly improves things materially, making resources available for other activities. While a more harmonious global society can be viewed as thus materially progressive, progress in a spiritual dimension is harder to conceptualize and identify. Perhaps if, in Marxist terms, life can be made less alienating and work structured to enable more people to achieve more of their full potential and self-actualize then individuals will experience a spiritual flowering and perhaps we can view this as societal progress in its spiritual dimension. This will be my position here, that one of the tasks of societal adolescence will be to find if there are ways to restructure work life in our capitalistic system in a manner that is less alienating, and if so, then to adopt whatever changes are needed to bring about that restructuring.
Progress would solve big problems like income inequality and unafordable housing. The solutions are clear, but goverment is too broken to fix things. A negative income tax would immediately address the income inequality. A Georgist land tax would address the housing shortage by taxing unimproved land on the same basis as improved land, i.e. not taxing the improvements. This would be an incentive to add improvements and a disincentive to keep land unimproved, in both cases encouraging housing. If the land tax is high enough, the cost of carrying unimproved land becomes a real burden, and the incentive to build lots of improvements becomes that much greater.
Nicholas Kristof, NYT 123023: Historically, almost half of children died before age 15 worldwide. That share declined steadily since the 19th century, and UNPopulation Division projects that in 2023 a record low was reached, w just 3.6% dying by age of 5. 4.9million died in 2023, but a million more died as recently as 2016.
8% of humans worldwide live in extreme poverty, but 100k are emerging from extreme poverty each day.
Polio and Guinea worm disease are close to eradication. CRISPR gene-editing will attach sickle cell disease, and hopefully cancers. New vaccines were developed for RSV and malaria. Blinding trachoma is on its way out.
Of course, climate change threatens gains in poor nations (e.g. Bangladesh and Madagascar).
Notes to self:
Nature strives for progress in the sense of reduced stress and increased well being, to the extent circumstances allow.
Progress in the sense of making life better and maximizing aggregate utility
[1]!!!!!!!!!!!Irreversibility of evolution, and now in no sphere… Complexification, entropy, irreversibility.
[2] David Sloan Wilson, Evolution for Everyone, (New York: Bantam Dell, 2007)
[3] Is biological life’s Darwinian evolution progressive? Steven Jay Gould argues to the contrary that viruses, bacteria and insects are the world’s most successful animal genus(es?), and that highly evolved animals like humans and dinosaurs, are mere temporary eruptions of evolutionary complexity that die off to leave viruses, bacteria and insects to soldier on. Be that as it may, the story of human society’s evolution is one of accumulating knowledge, complexification, and progress, and given favorable conditions (a key qualifier), continued progress can reasonably be expected. While I assume progress and foresee an eventual cultural flowering in society’s mature solar age, my hypothesis actually only requires continued progress through society’s developmental adolescence.
[4] Complexification might be another word for progress, as I am conceiving it, the intensive as opposed to extensive development of society. Complexification is the anti-entropic drive of life itself, and human society, including the human beings that comprise it, is life’s most complex manifestation, to date. Human population growth both enables and necessitates social specialization and societal complexification and progress. It is the story of human society from prehistory to the present.
[5] My hypothesis assumes societal progress from the beginning of the industrial age, and furthermore, that the general level individual consciousness matures in step with society’s development, allowing for growing cooperativeness and improved efficiency in society’s institutions.
[6] How would each theorist interpret our times? Xxxxxx To avoid this fate, I make no claim to determinism – on the contrary, I use my thesis to portray a societal potentiality which humanity may choose to realize, or not, but then I justify my belief that society is in fact doing so.
[7] Kenneth Boulding, in Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution, (New York: Sage, 1979), posits that the entire sphere of human artifacts, including institutions, evolves by natural selection and draws parentage from the entire pool of existing artifacts and institutions. Gregory Clark, in A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), argues that Darwinian selection can explain the emergence of capitalism through inherited cultural proclivities for rational thought, frugality and a capacity for hard work passed along by dominant members of society.
[8]The enlightenment scholars, beginning with, Auguste Compte, but then continued by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Emanuel Kant saw both societal progress and individual enlightenment as integral to the history of humanity. Teleogical theorists, e.g. Hegel, who believed that history was moving man toward civilization, and Francis Fukuyama who believe we have now achieved that civilization, are more in tune with my view, but I wish to go further. Tellard de Chardin goes further than I do.