A couple days ago, Aretae put up a post reviewing The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. It inspired some final thoughts on pessimism and the definition of progressivism. Here is Aretae quoting Ridley:
This should not need saying, but it does. There are people today who think life was better in the past. They argue that there was not only a simplicity, tranquillity [sic], sociability and spirituality about life in the distant past that has been lost, but a virtue too. This rose-tinted nostalgia, please note, is generally confined to the wealthy. It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet. Imagine that it is 1800, somewhere in Western Europe or eastern North America. The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are no drug dealers and neither dioxins nor radioactive fall-out ahve been found in the cow’s milk. All is tranquil; a bird sings outside the window.
Oh please! Though this is one of the better-off families in the village, father’s Scripture reading is interrupted by a bronchitic cough that presages the pneumonia that will kill him at 53 — not helped by the wood smoke of the fire. (He is lucky: life expectancy even in England was less than 40 in 1800.) The baby will die of the smallpox that is now causing him to cry; his sister will soon be the chattel of a drunken husband. The water the son is pouring tastes of the cows that drink from the brook. Toothache tortures the mother. The neighbor’s lodger is getting the other girl pregnant in the hayshed even now and her child will be sent to an orphanage. The stew is grey and gristly yet meat is a rare change from gruel; there is no fruit or salad at this season. It is eaten with a wooden spoon from a wooden bowl. Candles cost too much, so firelight is all there is to see by. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano. School is a few years of dull Latin taught by a bigoted martinet at the vicarage. Father visited the city once, but the travel cost him a week’s wages and the others have never travelled [sic] more than fifteen miles from home. Each daughter owns two wool dresses, two linen shirts and one pair of shoes. Father’s jacket cost him a month’s wages but is now infested with lice. The children sleep two to a bed on straw mattresses on the floor. As for the bird outside the window, tomorrow it will be trapped and eaten by the boy. This is the progress over time…and we have (almost) no reason to believe that 200 years more will not be as much more improved as now to then…even though it boggles the mind that such a thing would be possible. Then Mr. Ridley brings the data, and lays a beatdown on most of the doubters.
This is actually a surprisingly bad defense of optimism. It’s a parody. To wit, here is my version of the second paragraph that describes the "reality" of modern (as opposed to 1800) life:
Oh please! Father’s Scripture reading doesn’t exist because the children have no legitimate father – they all have different ones who have long since moved on. The baby will live free of smallpox to father additional uneducated children who will be able to do the same! His half-sister will soon be a used-up incubator for a series of drunken baby-daddies. The sugary drink the son is pouring makes him obese. Obesity related "illnesses" and welfare keep the mother permanently glued to the couch like some sick "modern" sculpture. The neighbor can’t have a lodger because doing so would run afoul of civil right laws. The other girl is getting pregnant upstairs even now and her child will become a ticket to welfare and a life of not working. The food is pre-packed and designed for no apparent purposes beyond convenience and making the eater fat. There is no fruit or salad – why eat fruit or salad when candy bars are so cheap? Electricity flows abundantly and no one in this home actually works for living so they see no reason to ever turn off the TV. Nobody in the family has ever seen a play, painted a picture or heard a piano (this sentence need not change at all). School is a few years of learning to act like an asshole. Father visited the city once, but no one is really sure which man actually fathered the children, so the fact that some possible father visited the city once isn’t really a big deal. But, the fact that the "father" can travel freely means he can have more illegitimate kids in more cities! Progress! Each daughter owns an enormous wardrobe full of clothes that show virtually every part of their fat bodies covered in tasteless tattoos. The various fathers have a combined total of 400 ugly pleather jackets. The children sleep where ever they happen to be when they’re tired – regardless of whether they are home. The bird outside the window will not be trapped and eaten by the boy, because he has no idea how to actually perform such a useful task. This is the progress over time…and we have (almost) no reason to believe that 200 years more will not be as much more improved as now to then…even though it boggles the mind that such a thing would be possible.
The mind truly boggles. Is it possible that we will all live to be 120 years old, in permanent states of orgy that would have made Caligula blush? We can only hope. Progress!
Of course, my version of the paragraph is ridiculous, but it’s no more ridiculous than Ridley’s. As I’ve said before the reality is that economic growth has been impressive. "Growth" in other areas has been shitty.
The easy test to use to determine whether or not today is unambiguously better than 1800 is to try to think like someone alive in the 1800s and try to see whether said someone would prefer modernity. Again, I think the answer would be mixed. Wealth is up, health is up, morality (by 1800 standards) has gone to shit.
Of course, a good progressive will object that 1800s-morality was immoral. Therefore progress is unambiguous. QED.
That, as best I can tell, is progressivism in a nutshell.
What Ridley was describing for 1800 was the miserable existence suffered by the VAST MAJORITY of people, with no choice or hope of bettering their situation. What you describe in your parody is largely a matter of choice; modernity gives us the freedom to make those bad choices that 1800ers didn’t have. As for morality, every generation of people, at least since the ancient Egyptians, has decried morality “gone to shit.” But to say this today — forgive me — exhibits a profound ignorance of the moral standards of earlier times, when, just to mention a few points, slavery was accepted, murder and other sorts of crime were at least ten times more common, the death penalty was widely applied for minor offenses, with great cruelty, and people enjoyed the spectacle of torture and suffering. To say we have not made tremendous moral progress is absurd.
Those interested in Ridley’s very good book might also wish to know about another one, THE CASE FOR RATIONAL OPTIMISM (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, 2009), which makes quite similar points and arguments, but develops the case for optimism over a rather broader range of subject areas. See http://www.fsrcoin.com/k.htm
My parody is a “misunderstanding” only in that Ridley was careful to limit his observations to North America and Western Europe from 1800s to now. This period is arguably the only period in the history of world of uninterrupted progress (where progress is equal to GDP per capita).
Understood in this light, it’s still a case for pessimism. Zero growth is the default state of human history.
Perhaps every generation has believed that morality is going to shit, but sometimes morality does – in fact – go to shit. I find the idea that things are going to shit to be much less preposterous than the idea that they are on an unalterable course of improvement (but then I’m not religious).
Ridley’s point is that *if current growth trends continue* (trends which are an historical aberration) we have a lot to look forward to. I don’t see why I can’t make the claim that *if current trends in the morality continue*then you better start stockpiling canned goods and ammunition.
I’d be curious to hear your case that our moral progress is clear. My guess is that it depends a lot on a few events (e.g. abolition of slavery) and that you’ll basically ignore everything else. Since I’m not a progressive, that argument isn’t enough to shut down discussion with me.
Finally, as for “progress” being obvious, I find it instructive to look at literature and music (since I know them better than other areas of art). Reading Ridley’s story makes it unclear how the 1800s could have possibly produce any music and literature, let alone better musicand literature than our times. And yet . . .
Foseti,
Now you’re singing my song.
The economic progress of the past 200 years is the most impressive, most distinctive thing ever witnessed on God’s green earth. Any system of thought that does not take that as THE primary thing to be explained by history is just wrong.
Ridley’s point is that we don’t see any reason for current trends not to continue. Indeed, we’ve got some work by Hanson and some other futurists that suggest that we have a 15 Billion year trendline with a monotonically positive 2nd derivative.
You can’t make the claim on morality because it is a heavily biased account. Could you get a line on the morality from the bottom 10% in 1800(the equivalent of your example)? I’d go to Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens to pick up an image of the bottom 10% back then…and it seems worse than today. More violent, more dangerous, more cruel, less sympathetic to the poor, more class-conflict…what do you want? How would you propose testing the proposition that ethics have decayed? Or is it untestable?
Art…chez moi
If the claim on the other side is that “we have a 15 Billion year trendline with a monotonically positive 2nd derivative,” the I think it’s safe to say that I am not on the side that is walking out on the limb. People may have been predicting moral disasters for a long time, but I’m not the one making a 15 billion year claim.
If you honestly compare Dickens to *The Wire*, for example, is it really true that it’s clearly worse today? I, for one, would unhesitatingly choose David Copperfield’s position over the position of a kid in an inner city Baltimore school.
You may choose otherwise, but if that’s progress, it’s pretty infinitesimal progress.
Infinitessimal my bahokus, and pardon my french. The equivalent of a Baltimore inner city kid today was an orphanage or a workhouse.
Quoting this (first thing I found):
During the 1720s and 30s poor children were dying at an alarming rate – medicine was not winning the battle against disease and death after decades of severe epidemics (typhus, dysentery, measles, influenza) and the Gin Craze (11.2 million gallons of spirits consumed in a year in London – roughly seven gallons per adult) was sweeping the nation with disastrous consequences. And in general, the only provision for illegitimate babies was the parish poorhouses or, from 1722, the workhouses where they frequently died of neglect. Mortality rates were extremely high: over 74% of children born in London died before they were five. In workhouses the death rate increased to over 90%.
Baltimore kid might grow up not knowing how to read MUCH…which is still better than the workhouse kids in general…but his survival rate is about 99%, while the workhouse/orphanage kid was under 25%.
Your position is truly untenable. You have a bad image of Baltimore now…and it’s beyond your apparent comprehension how much worse it was 200 years ago.
FWIW, post on evolution of morality coming.
I’m simply comparing Dickens to *The Wire*. In short: both suck. Let’s not pat ourselves on the back too hard.
I look forward to your post on evolution and morality.
Do you define disease as “immoral?” If so, I’d be curious to hear your reasoning. The connection is not obvious to me.
Everything I’ve read on evolution and morality takes modern morality as the apex of morality and then concludes that we’ve gotten much more moral over time (the progressive view). I find that line of reasoning to be incredibly bad.
Frank, your book is on my amazon list…and you’re understating the case. Ridley was describing folks in the top 10%, but not the top 1%.
Your chance of violent death as an average person in an average location was comparable to downtown Detroit now.
And I’ve cited complaints from 2700 years ago on the morality issue.
Fabulous point on the moral standards of earlier times.
So…how about…I agree with Frank. Your parody shows a substantial misunderstanding of life earlier.
Re: morality in 1800. Not sure that I’d agree that someone from then would think that today is much worse. It wasn’t victorian then, it was regency, and the state of morals led to a victorian reaction 50 years later.
Don’t compare middle class (then) morality to lower class (today) morality. It was squalid then, too.
My quick take:
Lower Classes – squalid then, squalid now.
Middle Classes – aspirational then, aspirational now. Much larger as a % of society now.
Upper Classes – sordid then, sordid now.
My $0.02 worth.
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