Are Humans Progressing or Dying?
Last night I had a lengthy debate with my very intelligent friend Robert after a concert. Our debate swirled around whether humans are making progress or whether we are creating a greater probability that we will destroy ourselves and our planet. I am a naive, heedless optimist and he is a depressing, Gulliver pessimist. I find it interesting that two people can view the world with such different colors painted over their lenses.
I believe that humans are becoming more intelligent, more educated, more moral, less violent, and more human. By more human, I mean that we have more leisure time to consume and to create art, politics, music, literature, etc. We also have more and more leisure time to help other humans or to heal the environment, as evidenced by the enormous number of NGOs and donors who fund them. Free trade and technological development are two primary factors that have allowed humans to escape the cruelties and monotony of the non-industrialized life and to become “more human.”
My friend and others who think as him (a significant portion of Prof. Freyfogle’s Individualism & its Critics class), often romanticize the non-industrialized, agrarian, hunter-gatherer world. I always find it curious that when I hear that romanticization and the denunciation of the industrialized world that it always comes from someone who lives in the industrialized world, but who visits nature. They visit nature during their leisure time as a vacation, but I have not yet met one who has had the courage to abandon civilized society to live an entire life on an isolated farm or in a forest with hunter-gatherer opportunities. A quick Google search reveals many such opportunities.
Regardless, the answer to the question asked in the title of this post is not obvious, even to a naive, heedless optimist. The amount of evil in the world is decreasing as humans become more educated and more connected through technology and the radii of our circles of empathy expand. Our humanity might be increasing, but the technologies of destruction that we develop are also increasing.
The equation would look something like this: (Proportion of Evil in the World) x (Ability of Existing Technology to Destroy Humanity) = Probability that Humans will Commit Mass Suicide. The existing technology could be nuclear power plants, nuclear bombs, the factors that cause global warming, a killer virus, or anything else. Therefore, the probability of mass suicide might be increasing. This equation serves as a general comment and also as a slight critique of Pinker’s presentation below.
I have posted two TED videos below that support my argument and I invite him to share material that supports his views. I maintain my optimism in the face of the arguments presented by Robert and myself. My thoughts on this subject are not well organized or articulated, but I am mostly curious what y’all think.
Comment by C. Segota on 4 July 2009 at 10:44 pm:
I was in that class with you, and I know what you’re saying.
I think the more agrarian world works, in its way, but only on a very small scale. With the current human population and/or population density, I don’t think that’s achievable. Even the few societies that do manage to live off the land and be reasonably peaceful are being sucked into the greater society (e.g. the !Kung in Botswana). Once you get too many people together, the temptation to mass-produce becomes too great.
As for the results of our increasing intelligence – ability to self-destruct vs. impetus to do so – the two are not separate. As our ability to self-destruct grows, so does our recognition that that’s the direction we’re going in. I think this is the point at which our self-preservation instinct kicks in. The Green movement is expanding beyond Birkenstock-wearing fruitarian hippies, to society at large. People are recognizing that we have to clean up our act or screw things up irreparably.
The one thing you can count on is self-interest, and self-interest depends largely on the public interest. As we become more educated, humans are realizing that they’ll be better off NOT raping and looting others, because that way, THEY’LL be less likely to be raped and looted. We’ve also dressed that up with “right and wrong” rhetoric. Nowadays, we’ve realized that if the planet is screwed, we’re screwed right along with it. Corporations have picked up on that trend, and they’re making green sexy. Hopefully that logic will soon extend to nuclear disarmament and we’ll be a bit less doomed.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 5 July 2009 at 8:02 am:
Ms. Segota, Thanks for your thoughts. You made some great points. Hope you’re having a fun summer!
Comment by Robert on 5 July 2009 at 10:46 am:
Billy,
Whether arguing about the apocalypse or Bob Dylan, I only ask that these exchanges be based on what is actually said, not on presuppositions of what someone like me probably believes. I’m not in the business of romanticizing the agrarian OR hunter-gather worlds (two very different worlds, by the way, that didn’t get along so well according to my reading of events on the American continent and elsewhere). I have no real way of knowing if pre-industrial humans were any more moral, virtuous, or less violent on a per capita basis. I tend to doubt it. What is clear, however, is that limited capacity and population necessarily constrained our destructive reach, and that just might have been an overall good for the world at large.
Further, it’s not that I believe the past to be a mystical place of peace and community. Rather, that it is being devalued in order to justify and prop up the techno-commercial-futurism of the present. Given the violence done to ourselves and the rest of the natural world, which one *could* argue constitutes a headlong rush to mass-suicide, I have to question that system’s motives as well as the “truths” it tells and valuations it makes about this Other World, just as I questioned the motives and reliability of the Chinese press whose primary responsibility is the justification and maintenance of the current Chinese order.
Billy, did I not point the finger at myself? No, I’m not about to run away and live off the land. I don’t have anywhere near the knowledge base necessary to get along for a week, let alone the rest of my life. I’m simply lamenting that break in traditional knowledge that allows an individual or a small community to be self-sufficient. Such breaks have been allowed and fostered because that knowledge has been devalued. That knowledge has been devalued because our collective history as humans living close to the land (and with fewer physical comforts and playthings) has been devalued in an economic system based on the large-scale division of labor and expertise necessary for maximum growth. I’d only submit that it’s possible that we have diminished spiritually as we have grown physically. To me, that’s not romantic, just a question.
In defense of those with more courage than I, who might seek to live such a life of eternal agrarian bliss, the options are somewhat limited. I don’t believe a quick Google search eliminates centuries’ of alterations to the landscape or reveals primal and primally productive lands that haven’t been gobbled up by industrial civilization. But I suppose that’s your faith in technology and my cynicism. I’m sure there are some that could do it, but to compare the struggle to survive presently, where productive lands have been replaced by exurbs and inedible corn, to life as it might have existed in America 1000 years ago is intellectually lazy and unfair. Humans today, even assuming a comparable level of knowledge and skill, would have difficulty surviving outside the industrial world for the same reason large mammal populations are dwindling – habitat has been diminished through human action.
Finally, and for the record, this is not a screed against social organization. I think it is our best hope. I’m also very fond of many of our technological achievements, and recognize that they are only possible through organization.
In so far as I would like the world to be different, it is not because of some vague, romantic notion of the distant past, nor is it a call to make great and terrible sacrifices of individual happiness for the collective good. It is my personal experience of what is good in life. I *enjoy* riding my bike through the quiet streets of the Champaign night. I *enjoy* real food, locally grown and freshly picked and prepared with bright colors and flavors reflecting the warmth of the sun and the soil rather than the chemist’s test tube, the processing plant, and the 18-wheeler. I *enjoy* the music and words of New Ruins, World’s First Flying Machine, or any number of local and/or under the radar artists far more than the inane drivel cooked up in some sound factory by people who are primarily concerned with the bottom line. I enjoy these because I think they ARE good, not just morally necessary for our continued survival. You see, there’s one thing that I really need to know about the current state and direction of things – “Quality is subversive.”
Comment by Dave Taht on 5 July 2009 at 11:03 pm:
I have been blogging in favor of the idea of technological progress and against what I call futilitarianism for the past couple weeks.
Your article strikes a chord on that…
And at the same time, I am rather uncomfortably close, geographically, to the current Honduran crisis, which I’ve been blogging about extensively. Watching the inequity of forces involved in government (a recent video showed a crowd of over a 1000 people being disbursed by a tear gas volley from the military) – and at the same time bemused by watching people, such as Eric Raymond, acting independently of the state, to provide communications resources to citizens underneath Iran’s government.
I don’t know what lessons to draw from all this except that Orwell got it wrong.
We have met the enemy, and it is us. We have met our friends, and they are we.
Comment by Tim on 8 July 2009 at 7:43 pm:
Robert, you said in part:
In so far as I would like the world to be different, it is not because of some vague, romantic notion of the distant past, nor is it a call to make great and terrible sacrifices of individual happiness for the collective good. It is my personal experience of what is good in life. I *enjoy* riding my bike through the quiet streets of the Champaign night. I *enjoy* real food, locally grown and freshly picked and prepared with bright colors and flavors reflecting the warmth of the sun and the soil rather than the chemist’s test tube, the processing plant, and the 18-wheeler. I *enjoy* the music and words of New Ruins, World’s First Flying Machine, or any number of local and/or under the radar artists far more than the inane drivel cooked up in some sound factory by people who are primarily concerned with the bottom line. I enjoy these because I think they ARE good, not just morally necessary for our continued survival. You see, there’s one thing that I really need to know about the current state and direction of things – “Quality is subversive.”
And I suggest that you *enjoy* those things because a technologically advanced society is the reason why you have sufficient time to appreciate what you perceive as the “finer” things in life, delivered to you by the modern, technologically advanced society that you question.
I hope, as you do, that those who value those things will be able to continue to consume them, even if the rest of the world decides that their taste is different.
As always, good post, Billy.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 8 July 2009 at 8:19 pm:
I should modify what I said. I was not nuanced enough. I respect Robert’s views a lot. I had not seriously considered this weighty issue before Prof. Freyfogle’s class introduced me to it. However, I do believe I have a nuanced disagreement.
I do believe that technology has freed us from the slavery of dependence on the fields and on nature. Technology has allowed us to shift the time in our day away from fulfilling the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing, of which food is the most time consuming. This shift has allowed every person to explore the panoply of human arts. However, connection to nature is one of those arts. Most of us have lost that art and because we have lost that art, we ignore its destruction when the destruction fuels our consumerism and pursuit of arts. Robert and I might agree up to this point. We disagree about our future (if I properly understand Robert). I believe that the current system will correct itself. As Courtney and the Robert Wright video argue, humans, if for nothing else, can be relied on for the instincts of self-preservation and self-interest. The problem, as I discussed, is that the advancement of technology presents a dual track. On one track, we have more leisure time to create art and to become “more human.” On the other track, fewer and fewer people are required to overcome humanity’s instinct for survival with weapons of mass destruction.
Ultimately, I have some weird faith and optimism in us. We solve problems, perhaps not when we first notice them, but when their threat becomes imminent (i.e. as I think we will do with global warming).
The best world combines the romanticization of nature and days of old with the luxuries of technology. We should not allow those luxuries to make us lazy, rather they should allow us to devote our mental energies to callings higher than our daily subsistence. We can achieve sustainable growth. Green technologies will be paid a huge price in the marketplace when they become efficient enough to replace fossil technologies, and even before that because of the externality premium they deliver for the environment. It is the fusion of old humanity and new humanity that should guide our future development.
Comment by Rosie on 9 July 2009 at 10:05 am:
I would strongly agree with what you just said; I believe that the best world would be a blend of both old and new. If we lived in a world dominated by technology and the future, we would pay no attention to the past thus not having any emotion or memory for where we came from. We would also be prone to make the same mistakes over and over again. However, that being said, technology is important in some respects to improve our way of life. Technology has allowed the process of survival easier. The best world would blend both of these elements, having an affection for where and who we came from, but striving to improve our own efficiency.
However, in regards to the original post, I think I have to disagree with your idea that people are becoming less violent. I feel that violence in the media and entertainment has increased within the past couple decades, and although we hope that people are intelligent enough not to repeat the violence they see on TV elsewhere in society, obviously, this does not happen. Murders still happen. Now, whether or not the number of these homicides have actually increased in comparison to other years, I don’t have stats for that. But every night I watch the news, there always seems to be some new shooting or beating or something of the sort. Although we seem to be getting more intelligent, violence always seems to have somewhat of covert place in our society.
But great post, Billy ;)
Comment by Rosie on 9 July 2009 at 10:34 am:
Actually, we studied a case dealing with videogame violence in Helle’s 199 class. I can’t remember the name, but essentially the court found that the case centered around the concept of correlation vs. causation. Essentially, there existed proof that there was a correlation between video games and violent behavior, but video games themselves didn’t cause violent behavior. I’m not saying violence in media and entertainment necessarily causes violent behavior, but it’s not necessarily good for people who can’t rationally distinguish right from wrong.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 9 July 2009 at 6:55 pm:
Rosie,
Your rise in the perception of violence is biased by modern media’s proficient ability to report such violence. Historical human societies did not keep such accurate or daily records. For more information on the decline of human violence, please watch Pinker’s video above. Don’t forget to love his hair while you watch.
Comment by Tim on 10 July 2009 at 11:48 am:
I agree with you, Billy. Society is actually much less violent than it was in years past. The media has fed the idea that violence is getting worse/on the rise because it gets more people to watch the news. It’s amazing what actually analyzing the empirical evidence shows on this issue.
Comment by Brandon on 10 July 2009 at 1:03 pm:
Well put. We think the world is going to shit because we get it blared at us through the idiot box 24/7. If it bleeds it leads. Death sells. We are told the world is going to shit, we believe it. They’re trying to fill a 24 hour news cycle and honestly if things are all hunkey dorey no one’s going to watch because they’re content and if things aren’t going badly we smile and accept the world as it is. When things go wrong we get anxious and watch more news. We’re voyeurs.
Comment by Rosie on 10 July 2009 at 2:09 pm:
Billy,
You’re right about Pinker’s sweet hair :) I apologize for not watching both of these clips before, my computer at work is a bit old school but thankfully we just got new computers and I was actually able to watch them, unlike before.
You’ve got a point. Pinker brought up many things I had not thought of, such as the advancement of journalism in comparison to previous times. Today’s reporting is so advanced that we not only cover more things than were ever covered before, but we also have various ways (technologically) of telling a story. I also found Pinker’s description of people’s behavior in anarchy interesting; the concept that people do not innately want to hurt one another, but rather are worried about what the other person will do if they do not defend themselves (Pinker’s gun scenario). Very interesting.
After watching this, I understand that statistically, we are less violent. Especially in comparison to how crimes were punished in the Middle Ages. However, I guess my worry is that although numerically there may be less murderers or violent crimes, weapons are much more advanced than in the Middle Ages; so while there may only be one murderer, there is the potential that many lives could be taken at once because of the availability of better weaponry than what existed previously in history. I admit, my example is only hypothetical, it is true that the average person usually does not have access to the kind of weapon that could take away multiple lives in the matter of seconds or minutes. AND, the fact that the number of violent deaths has decreased despite the existence of more advanced weaponry does support your point. However, I guess I’m just hoping that this trend continues, because further technological advancement is inevitable. Wright mentioned technological advancement with regards to weaponry in his clip but I don’t think he addressed that issue enough.
Regardless, I have to admit that you do have me mostly convinced :)
Comment by Tim on 16 July 2009 at 12:17 pm:
Brandon,
I’m a fan of your way of saying it better than my own. I’m laughing over here.