Is progress a pipe dream? I debated this question recently with my Stevens colleague Garry Dobbins, a philosopher. Below are pro-progress points I made during the debate.–John Horgan
Ours is a glum age. Pessimism is rampant not only among oldsters like Prof. Dobbins but also among young people, like students here at Stevens. When I ask if they think things are getting better, my students usually shake their heads. They think progress is a pipe dream.
I understand why many people think things are bad and getting worse. We face serious problems: war, terrorism, nuclear weapons, racism, religious extremism, inequality, climate change, AIDS, the Zika virus, political corruption, Trump.
But progress-pessimism is wrong-headed, for two reasons. First of all, it can be self-fulfilling if it foments apathy or despair, which undercut efforts to solve problems. Progress-denial also flies in the face of the enormous progress we’ve achieved over the past couple of centuries. Here are statistics on progress, many of which come from “Our World in Data,” a terrific website created by Oxford economist Max Roser.
WE ARE HEALTHIER THAN EVER. Average life expectancy for almost all of human history and pre-history was about 30 years, in part because maternal and child mortality were so high. Since 1900 global life expectancy has more than doubled–from just over 30 to almost 70. In the U.S., life expectancy is almost 80 years.
WE ARE WEALTHIER THAN EVER. For most of human history, the vast majority of humans were extremely poor, living a hand to mouth existence. But since the late 18th century, average global income has surged by a factor of more than 10. The percentage of people who live in extreme poverty, defined as $1.25 a day or less, dropped in the last few decades from over 50 percent to less than 20 percent.
WE ARE MORE PEACEFUL. Many of you students were toddlers on September 11, 2001, so you cannot remember a time when your country was not at war. Nevertheless, we are living in a relatively peaceful era, especially compared to the previous century, which was a period of massive war and genocide.
Even including casualties of the horrific civil war in Syria, global war-related deaths have averaged about 200,000 people a year since 2000. As a percentage of population, this figure is roughly one order of magnitude less than annual averages from 1950 to 2000 and two orders of magnitude below averages in the bloody first half of the 20th century.
Other good news: There are about 15,000 nuclear warheads in the world, down from a high of almost 70,000 in the 1980s. Terror attacks, like the recent bombing in New York City, have us all spooked. But your annual risk of being killed by in a terror attack in the United States since 2000 is less than your risk of drowning in a bathtub.
WE ARE MORE FREE THAN EVER. 100 years ago a tiny minority of nations were democracies. If you define a democracy as a society in which women can vote, not a single nation was democratic. Today, a majority of nations are democratic. About two thirds of the global population lives under a democratic or partly democratic regime, according to the non-profit Freedom House.
In the U.S., there have been tremendous advances in civil rights. When I was a kid, the south was still segregated. Some states still banned marriage between blacks and whites. Homosexuality was a crime, and so was abortion.
THE TRUMP PROBLEM. So we shouldn’t despair, but we shouldn’t be complacent, either. We’ve come far, but we still have much further to go to solve problems like environmental despoliation, poverty and war. We also have to make sure we don’t lose what we’ve gained.
And that brings me to Donald Trump, an anti-progressive if ever there was one. His popularity reveals that many Americans feel threatened by progress, especially rights for women and minorities.
Trump embodies a paradox of democracy. We are free to elect someone who can do us great harm. But American democracy has proved resilient. We have survived terrible Presidents, like Richard Nixon, and George Bush.
Trump will not be elected. But if he is, we will survive him, as long as we don’t succumb to irrational fear, anger and despair, the very emotions that have fueled his rise. Then we will continue our long, perilous trek toward paradise.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one originally published on his ScientificAmerican.com blog, “Cross-check.”
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