Myths of Progress

Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been wrong.  -- F. A. Hayek

It's common among some of my intellectual peers to speak of the "myth of progress," a term used disparagingly of the idea of progress made popular in Western consciousness ever since the Enlightenment era. The idea that "civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction" is a very easy target for intellectual criticism, because it both impacts our everyday thought and speech and is obviously false. Yet I find myself a little dissatisfied by the apparent alternatives. Indeed, in my experience there seem to be three different myths of progress, all working together, often paradoxically. Here they are:

1. The myth of inevitable progress: the idea that whatever is newer is better. You see this a lot when it comes to technology, of course (it's actually a little sad to know how many people are willing to line up for the latest toy being released by Apple or Microsoft). But you also see it all the time when it comes to morality. On multiple occasions, for instance, I have pointed out to a friend that the 19th century feminists were pro-life. Typical response: "They lived a long time ago."
2. The myth of progress on demand: the idea that if we want more progress, we just have to fight for it. Think of Occupy Wall Street on the left, or the "cultural warriors" on the right. Intentionally militant language is used to signify that progress is both necessary and achievable through unrelenting determination.
3. The myth of nihilism: there is no such thing as progress, and nothing we do really changes anything in the long run. We're no better nor worse than our ancestors, we can judge no one and no one can judge us. This is, in some ways, an immature reaction to the first two, but it is also deeper than that. Reflecting on our astonishing lack of knowledge can easily lead an intellectual down the pass to despair. Perhaps we really know nothing, after all, and everything we think we know is just a narrative we tell ourselves to keep going. But this is itself a narrative we tell ourselves, and I suspect it is because we have grown weary of traveling down the arduous path of discovery.

All of these are myths, stories we tell ourselves to simplify the world. Or, perhaps, they are stories which really do capture a genuine truth about ourselves. Myths cannot be so easily dismissed as falsehoods. For a myth to become so deeply rooted in society, it must have some ring of truth to it, after all.

Nevertheless, all of these claims are demonstrably false once they are stated clearly. The myth of inevitable progress cannot stand up to the fact of two world wars, in addition to many other credible examples of moral decline. The myth of progress on demand cannot stand up to the fact that, for example, communist revolutions have largely resulted in far worse totalitarianism than anything devised by the reigning aristocracy. The myth of nihilism is equally flawed: the world really has, in a way which is simply unprecedented in history, repudiated institutions such as slavery which were finally seen for the evils that they are. And technological progress, for all of the difficulties it brings with it, really has made people healthier and more productive than ever before.

The reason all of this is important is that we as modern people thrive on the idea of progress. We place our hopes in it; we demand it; and, precisely because we love it so much, we sometimes despair of ever attaining it. It is important that intellectuals lay a proper foundation for thinking rightly about progress, a foundation that accords with both high ideals and common sense.

I began with a quote from a chapter of The Constitution of Liberty entitled, "The Common Sense of Progress." I think this essay is a fantastic read, and it's worth reading all the way through, but I think one can also distill from it a few basic principles that are worth repeating. Here they are:

1. Progress is necessary. No, it isn't inevitable, and no, it doesn't come by simply demanding more of it, but it is what we want, and that's both natural and healthy. As Adam Smith pointed out years ago, a static society is awful for those who are least fortunate, and a regressive society even worse. The only way we can meet the needs of the many is to continue to make progress.
2. Progress is unpredictable. Just because I think I know how to solve a problem doesn't mean I will. A much bigger point is that many problems cannot even be named, much less solved, until I solve other ones. I won't even know what further progress means until I overcome today's problems.
3. Progress does not always satisfy. Sometimes, in solving the problems of the day, I may just wind up wishing I hadn't. But if we always knew this ahead of time, there wouldn't be any need for progress in the first place; we'd already know everything we need to.
4. Progress is nonlinear. Just because we improve in one way doesn't mean we improve in every way. Sometimes in order to make progress in one area, we end up stagnating or even regressing in another. It is impossible to know ahead of time how this balance will play out in the long run.
5. Progress begins locally. No innovation can immediately affect everyone, but it must undergo a refinement process which always starts with the people with enough expertise to understand the innovation. I think this even applies to moral progress: it is only through determined visionaries, who see the problems of society in a specialized way, that movements can arise to reform society.
6. Progress is good. Even though we can't say this without qualification, it is nevertheless true that progress is good. If for no other reason than the mere satisfaction of learning something new, progress is a good thing that will always continue to attract the imagination of human beings.

Hopefully these principles are a reasonable enough baseline for thinking about progress in the modern world, so that we as intellectuals can actually say things with both confidence and realistic expectations. Nothing we do will ever result in quite the thing we wanted or expected, but that is no reason not to do it. Nothing we believe is ever invulnerable to criticism or change, but that is no reason to believe nothing. The more realistic we are in our desire for change, the more hopeful we can be that change is possible. We will never know in our lifetimes whether it was all worth it, but we can be sure that such was true also of our heroes of the past.

As for me, I would like to believe that there really is some meaning behind all of our history, civilization, and progress. If we in the modern world have trouble believing in God, then I would rather that we at least believe in something that extends beyond ourselves. And since we are so prone to believe in progress, it would help if we at least believed something true about it.

A less violent society?

Steven Pinker has written a book entitled, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, in which he argues that human civilization has been evolving into a more peaceful one. I heard an interview with Pinker on NPR the other day. I found some of his statistics encouraging, and some of his arguments persuasive, but I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that human nature has actually improved.

Keep in mind that there are two very different questions one could ask. We could ask, on the one hand, whether "human nature" has improved, meaning that humans have become fundamentally more moral and genuinely more interested in the good of other human beings. We could also ask, on the other hand, whether institutions have evolved to constrain certain evil tendencies, thus producing a more benevolent societies. I suspect a positive answer to the latter question is far more likely than for the former.

Even so, even if private violence has decreased over time, this does not mean that violence in general has. I appreciated this review by Tyler Cowen, in which he makes this exact point:

Another hypothesis is to see modern violence as lower, especially in the private sphere, because the state is much more powerful. Could this book have been titled The Nationalization of Violence? But nationalization does not mean that violence goes away, especially at the most macro levels. In a variant on my point above, one way of describing the observed trend is “less frequent violent outbursts, but more deadlier outbursts when they come.” Both greater wealth (weapons are more destructive, and thus used less often, and there is a desire to preserve wealth) and the nationalization of violence point toward that pattern. That would help explain why the two World Wars, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and the Holocaust, all came not so long ago, despite a (supposed) trend toward greater peacefulness. Those are hard data points for Pinker to get around, no matter how he tries.

And here is another very good point:

When doing the statistics, one key issue is how to measure violence. Pinker often favors “per capita” measures, but I am not so sure. I might prefer a weighted average of per capita and “absolute quantity of violence” measures. Killing six million Jews in the Holocaust is not, in my view, “half as violent” if global population is twice as high. Once you toss in the absolute measures with the per capita measures, the long-term trends are not nearly as favorable as Pinker suggests.

To put it cynically, if I kill someone so that I can feed my children, it's murder; if America carpet bombs innocent civilians, it's national defense.

One more thought, which is sadly all too easy to dismiss by a great majority of the mainstream media: If not for the ideological claim advanced in the latter part of the 20th century that unborn children are not human, it would be very easy to demonstrate that violence has greatly increased in our generation. In our country alone, there have been 53,000,000 abortions since 1973. This cannot be counted as part of Pinker's data, because he cannot accept it as violence. But it's hard for me to accept that 53,000,000 bloody corpses are a sign of a more peaceful society.

Still, I think we do a disservice to society by always speaking in dreary terms, as if civilization never makes any moral progress. Slavery was once commonly accepted as a legitimate practice virtually everywhere around the world. Now it is accepted almost nowhere. That's progress.

The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. Moral progress is far from inevitable, but neither is it futile. It's good to be reminded of both sides; I think Pinker probably dwells on one more than the other. Still, it's probably a good read. Maybe I'll pick it up one of these days.