Are We Making Progress?
Most Americans, in our arrogance, like to think that we are standing at the end point of thousands of years of human progress.
We generally believe that — over the long term, at least — life is getting materially better, people are becoming more ethical, and our society is improving. We exult in the fact that our technology is superior to what was available in the past. We favor sentiments like Martin Luther King’s — that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” We look back just a few decades and decide that our views on a number of issues — race, class, religion, sexuality — are far more evolved than those of previous generations. In short, we believe in the idea of progress.
In recent years, however, it hasn’t necessarily felt as though America — or the world — is moving in the right direction. Though popular authors like Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling have made the case in recent years that life is better than it’s ever been — citing everything from shrinking poverty rates to increased airline safety to fewer wars — many of us are having a hard time seeing what’s happening right now as progress.
Authoritarianism is on the increase around the world; freedom is declining in many countries; corruption is rising. In the United States, our gains on a number of fronts — from racial equality to economic prosperity to…
