Why should those who benefit the most from increasing global welfare be most suspicious of it?
Today’s Post
Last week we took a summary look at the statistical data on human progress as a measure of human evolution from Johan Norberg’s book, ‘Progress’, in which we outlined the ways in which evolution can be seen to continue its fourteen billion yea rise in the evolution of the human species.
In doing so, we also saw how such a worldview substantiates Teilhard’s insight that humans can be seen to continue to evolve along the same ‘axis of evolution’ that has been universally followed so far: that of increasing consciousness by way of increasing complexity.
We also noted that despite the sheer volume of data that Norberg provides, and Teilhard’s insight into the energy of evolution that rises within us, ‘conventional wisdom’, as catalogued by many contemporary polls, shows that nearly all those responding to polls are either unaware of this data or disagree with it. Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, noting this rising sap of pessimism, sees in it a sort of ‘progressophobia’, particularly strong in the West, that either ignores data such as that provided by Norberg, or rejects it outright.
This week we will take a closer look at this phenomenon.
A Quick Look At The History of Pessimism
Such ‘progressophobia’ isn’t a recent phenomenon. For example, pessimists have always been able to find a basis for their negativity in their sacred books.
Based on such readings, it’s not surprising that the founders of the great Sixteenth century Protestant Reformation had a very negative opinion of human nature. Martin Luther, whose Protestant worldview took root in Europe following the Reformation, saw humans as “piles of manure, covered over by Christ”. Calvin went him one better, seeing them as “total depravity”. Freud piled on with his warnings against the core of the human person: the “dangerous Id”. Even today, authors such as Yuval Harari, “Sapiens”, can see consciousness, as found in the human person, as ‘an evolutionary mistake’.
The thinkers of the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and early18th centuries, on the other hand, emphasized the two major fruits of human evolution, reason and individualism, over tradition. Such beliefs were in distinct contrast to those of the Reformation, as can be seen in the writings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Jung, Heidegger, and Sartre.
With the Reformation, the basic positive message of Jesus became secondary to the need to understand humanity as ‘broken’, ‘fallen’ from some previous pristine state, and in need of a future divine intervention (the ‘second coming’) in which humans would be rescued from their ‘fallen’ nature directly by God.
Such recoil against the Enlightenment’s positive perception of human nature was only reinforced as Science began to see the human as an evolutionary phenomenon, progressing into the future without the need for divine intervention.
There seems to have been much profit in such dystopian predictions. For example, with the death of the popular American evangelist, Billy Graham, his children have continued to benefit financially from prophesies of ever-increasing doom, clearly showing that ‘pessimism sells’ even to this day.
Such pessimism can also be seen today in results of polls. Even actual, tangible, and supportable statistics, such as those showing a considerable plummet in the rate of violent crime and poverty, still leaves most Americans seeing their country “heading in the wrong direction”. Canny populist politicians are quick to capitalize on such pessimism and are very successful at getting elected on platforms in which such an obviously depraved human condition must be closely controlled by strong men (and it’s always a man) such as themselves.
Further, as David Sanger notes in a recent New York Times article, political supporters, known more for their passion than their policy rigor, are ripe for exploitation. “Make them pessimistic enough”, he is suggesting, “and you’ve got control”.
Progressophobia In Western Society
Steven Pinker (“Enlightenment Now”) notes that when Westerners are polled about their opinion of progress in society, a twofold perspective can be seen. On an individual basis, individuals seem optimistic about their personal situation, and that of their immediate relationships (family, neighbors, friends), but pessimistic about society at large. Pinker refers to this as the “Optimism Gap”:
“For two decades…when Europeans were asked by pollsters whether their own economic situation would get better or worse in the coming year, more of them said it would get better, but when they were asked about their country’s economic situation, more of them said it would get worse.”
This is a puzzling phenomenon: comfortable, secure, educated individuals are unable to project their personal optimism onto their society. Why should this be so?
The Next Post
This week we began to look at why, with all the data bubbling up in our ‘data-ocracy’ which shows the unprecedented improvement in global human welfare, so many of us fail to factor this information into their view of the world.
Next week we will look into several causes suggested by Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”