Progress is possible and hope sheds light

Fresno Bee, July 19, 2020

This may seem an odd time to accentuate the positive. The nation is struggling with a pandemic, protests against racism, political dysfunction, and economic woes. Things could get worse. But when things look dark, it is important to take stock of progress that has occurred.

Science, economics, and the law have created improvements. There are many reasons to believe that things are better today — not perfect, but better.

Our lives are easier today thanks to technologies such as the internal combustion engine, refrigeration, telecommunication, personal computers, and the internet. There are downsides. Fossil fuel use causes climate change. And the Internet is awash in porn and fake news. But life is easier, healthier, and smarter thanks to applied science.

The coronavirus is scary. But experts are learning how to prevent and treat this disease. We’ve already eliminated smallpox, polio, cholera, and other devastating diseases. Many countries have made progress controlling COVID-19. The U.S. needs to get things under control. But medical science is better now than it was 100 years ago when the Spanish flu killed millions.

Protests against police brutality and racism indicate there is more work to be done. Terrorism and mass shootings cause anxiety. The U.S. exceeds other countries in gun violence. The U.S. imprisons more people than other countries. But crime is down from a high point in the 1990s and Americans are safer today than we were just a few decades ago.

The pandemic has exposed a digital divide in virtual learning. But a hundred years ago, girls and nonwhite people were woefully undereducated. Today we understand the ethical demand to provide quality education for all children. We teach science, math, and history to more kids in more sophisticated ways than in the one-room schoolhouses of yesteryear.

Wage gaps and wealth gaps remain. Rich people live longer and have more political power. But progress has been made for racial minorities, disabled people, homosexuals, women, and religious minorities since the 1950s when the Supreme Court abolished the farce of “separate but equal.” Things are not perfect. But discrimination is illegal and voting rights have been secured for members of previously excluded groups.

Threats to the American constitutional system exist, along with corruption in the halls of power. The free press has been attacked. Unjustified force has been employed against peaceful protesters. But the five freedoms of the First Amendment remain as beacons. The courts continue to defend our rights. And there is more vigorous political debate today than in previous decades.

Much of this debate overlooks the good news. The loudest voices on both sides of the political spectrum dwell on a sense of crisis. The conservative motto “Make America great again” begins with the premise that things have gotten worse. In response, progressives focus on remaining racism, sexism, and homophobia as well as Trumpian malfunction.

I’m not saying things are perfect today. There is substantial room for improvement. But hope for improvement depends upon the sense that progress has been made and can be made.

It is easy to lose sight of this. The news focuses on crime, disease, and corruption. Movies feature murder, malice, and mayhem. We like stories about bad guys and action heroes. A story about decent people who love their families and go to work every day would be boring.

Good news is also a political dud. Political energy grows from the sense of crisis that rallies the base. Change-makers are elected to shake things up. A campaign focused on moderate and incremental improvement would be uninspiring.

Incremental change is tedious. It takes persistent effort. The good it produces is slow in arriving and unexciting once it gets here. But lasting improvement occurs through painstaking effort.

In a crisis, despair can set in quickly. When things appear to be falling apart, it is easy to throw in the towel. That’s why it is important to recall the progress we have made. When we understand that smart, creative effort improves the world, it is easier to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The world will never be perfect. But it won’t get better unless we believe that through our efforts it can be improved.

May 26, 2017November 18, 2017

Morality: worse or better?

Americans see nation’s morality as worse, but history shows otherwise

Fresno Bee, May 26, 2017

Americans believe that we are getting worse as a country. According to the Gallup Poll 81 percent of Americans rate our country’s values as “only fair” or “poor,” while 77 percent say morality is getting worse. Our view of ourselves has been “consistently negative” since Gallup started polling about this in 2002.

Gallup attributes this to ongoing culture wars. Conservatives don’t like gay marriage, abortion, and so on. Liberals don’t like Trump-era threats to abortion rights, transgender equality and other policies. Each side views the other as a sign of moral decline.

This negativity undermines norms of civility. In the middle of a moral disaster, extremism and incivility become normal. A Republican congressional candidate in Montana allegedly assaulted a reporter this week. And the California Democratic Party chanted “F— Donald Trump” with extended middle fingers.We seem to be in the middle of a rude race to the bottom.

THERE IS MUCH TO CELEBRATE IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA:
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS.

But are things really worse today? For millennia, prophets and philosophers have condemned their contemporaries. It seems that we have always been going to hell in a hand basket. And yet, we have also made progress.

There is much to celebrate in 21st century America: science, technology and human rights, to name a few. Consider this: despite the problem of fake news, the average citizen has more access to information now than Thomas Jefferson ever had. Would anyone really want to change places with someone from the 19th or 20th centuries?

On May 22, 1856, Preston Brooks, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina, nearly beat Sen. Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, to death with a cane in the Senate chamber. The cause of the dispute was slavery. Soon enough the Civil War killed over 600,000 Americans.

Would you trade now for then? Would you want to go back even a generation or two, to a world of unapologetic racism and sexism?

The long view of history does not support the claim that we are getting worse. But we modern people are never satisfied. We always want things to be better. We are thoughtful and self-critical. But this makes us feel inadequate and dissatisfied.

Discontent drives us forward. This is a world of upgrades and enhancements. We are never good enough. And we fear that things are getting worse.

Our low estimation of ourselves may offer a glimmer of hope, however. We might even claim that self-criticism is a sign of moral enlightenment.

Progress depends on moral critique. Modern people don’t rest on our laurels. We engage in constant self-criticism and we aspire to make continual progress. It would be odd for a modern civilization to say of itself: “Hey, we’ve made it to the promised land—it’s all good.”

THE CRITICAL SPIRIT IS A SOURCE OF SELF-IMPROVEMENT.
THE DOWNSIDE IS THAT THIS CAN MAKE US CENSORIOUS AND GRUMPY.

The critical spirit is a source of self-improvement. The downside is that this can make us censorious and grumpy. We are quick to judge others. Self-criticism is difficult. It is easier to see your neighbor’s faults than your own. But moral maturity demands that we scrutinize ourselves more than we do others.

The critical spirit can also leave us indifferent to our own successes. Complacency is viewed as a vice in the modern world. Complacent people think they have all of the answers. They believe that there is nothing left to learn and no need for improvement. They are comfortable and content.

Complacency is related to self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. Smug moralizers think they have all the answers. They quickly condemn others. But sanctimonious prigs often fail to look in the mirror or question their own values.

At issue here is a question of having the right amount of pride and humility. We ought to be proud of our accomplishments. But we should remain humble and admit that there is work to be done.

An old motto suggests that we ought to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” This is a strenuous call to action, which should cause us to strive for improvement. Unfortunately it can also leave us feeling dissatisfied and guilty. We could always be better at doing better.

So once you are through rolling your eyes at the decline of civility and our moral failings, roll up your sleeves and get to work. This world is only as good as we make it.

http://www.fresnobee.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/andrew-fiala/article152751389.html

January 28, 2012September 18, 2014

Democracy, education diminish our cruelty

Fresno Bee, January 28, 2012

People are becoming less cruel and more humane. This is the thesis of Steven Pinker’s optimistic new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. Pinker, a Harvard Psychologist, provides extensive data to support his conclusion, citing a variety of developments from low homicide rates to the demise of dueling and the abolition of slavery and torture.

He attributes some of our improvement to the fact that people are getting smarter. He notes that rising IQ scores during the past century bode well for a more peaceful world, since smarter people are less violent. He notes, for example, that smarter people tend to commit fewer violent crimes. He concludes, “people with more sophisticated reasoning abilities are more cooperative, have larger moral circles, and are less sympathetic to violence.”

There are reasons to be skeptical of any straightforward attempt to link intelligence with virtue. Individuals with low IQ’s can be compassionate and kind; and some psychopaths are exceedingly clever. But Pinker does provide some reasons to think that better education produces gentler people.

One causal mechanism for this sort of progress is literature. Pinker thinks that representations of cruelty can change our attitudes toward violence. And he argues that reading is a useful tool for developing empathy. Reading demands that we imagine our way into another person’s point of view. Widespread literacy—made possible by printing technologies and mandatory schooling—may well be a major cause of moral progress.

One sign of this progress is that fact that warfare has become less cruel. Pinker thinks it is significant that despite the horrors that are still occasionally unleashed in war, we have self-consciously refrained from using our worst and most deadly weapons. He suggests that nuclear warfare has become “too dangerous to contemplate, and leaders are scared straight.”

This conclusion hinges on the intelligence of our leaders. Indeed, Pinker claims that there is a correlation between Presidential IQ and deaths in war. According to Pinker, smarter presidents wage fewer wars and produce fewer wartime casualties.

Such a blithe conclusion should be taken with a grain of salt, since it assumes that presidents wage war in a vacuum without the input of the military or the cooperation of foreign allies. And such a conclusion ignores the fact that our representatives in the Congress have some control over how wars are fought.

This points toward a central question: do wise and virtuous leaders cause moral improvement? The Greek philosopher Plato thought so. Plato rejected democracy as rule of the uneducated and unvirtuous masses. He thought we would do better under the watchful eye of a wise and benevolent ruler who would protect us from our own vicious and ignorant ways.

We are no longer sympathetic to this idea. Instead, we tend to believe that we are smart enough and good enough to govern ourselves. Pinker’s analysis gives us reason to trust this democratic impulse. It is our modern democratic state and its educational system that has made us smarter and better. Most of the moral progress that we’ve made during the past millennia has occurred under democratic government and has been facilitated by the expansion of literacy and education.

People are not born smart or good. We are born with the capacity to learn and with a basic capacity for empathy. But we must learn all of the specifics, including how to control our own violent impulses. Education is essential for understanding the complex moral and political problems that confront us in our globalized world. Intelligence and virtue develop as a result of the sustained effort of parents, teachers, and a supporting social environment. And our moral and intellectual skills develop further, as we exercise our own capacities for self-government.

It is amazing how much moral progress we have made. We no longer allow slavery or torturous punishments. Women have been liberated. And we recognize that our most destructive weapons are immoral. Good for us for figuring this out!

These moral developments were not imposed upon us by philosopher-kings. Rather, they resulted from democratic procedures and were produced by our system of education. The key to future progress is to trust ourselves and to continue to believe that democracy and education can make us both smarter and better.