I love your optimism, which is shared by Steven Pinker. However, while science and technology have undoubtedly progressed and made lives longer and better in many ways since the Scientific Revolution in the 16th Century, I don't see that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. When I look at anthropogenic deaths. they increased steadily and peaked in the 20th Century: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kznk5
It is also hard to see Fukuyama's "End of History," which he predicted due to the victory of liberal democracies. There are over a million Uyghurs in Xi's concentration camps. In addition to China, authoritarian regimes are flourishing in Russia, Turkey, Syria, Burma, N.Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Liberal democracy is also threatened in the West: notably, Brazil and Hungary, and let us not forget January 6.
Moral improvement has come from secular sources? Both Parker and King were Christian preachers. I just quoted King today on another comments board: “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.”
Religious institutions in the past several centuries, particularly the Spanish missionaries in North America, were brutal oppressors. But it was Christian individuals, in the case of the abolitionists and SCLC, who moved the moral development of the US forward.
With the 20 th century being the bloodiest in history, I am hard pressed to agree that The Enlightenment changed the arc toward justice. Communism, nazism, and now cynics with power, none of whom are religious, wreak havoc on innocent people with their desire to control. Good religion serves a good purpose
But like everything else, needs oversite to prevent fanaticism
Well done, AGAIN. I see much in your view that is congruent to a logical analysis of human cultural history. I have read all your books and the three I have found most influential on and supportive to my thinking are, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc and Why People Believe Weird Things. I think that this essay and the three books are important in describing and understanding the progress made by humans in the development of moral constructs. I also think that a more prescriptive view and understanding , like Dan Dennett’s (Breaking The Spell) and Sam Harris’ (The End of Faith) is necessary to a way forward for human moral progress. It could be said that one of the most distinctive elements of human adaptive behavior, over the course of evolution, is the making and use of tools. From this perspective moral constructs would be considered a developed tool(s) rather than, as is most commonly argued, being based on or developed as “beliefs.” Like Sam Harris, I favor a Scientific Methodology for determining the best understandings of how different moral principals could be formed free from reliance on beliefs or suppositions not falsifiable by accessible and verifiable evidence in sharable data and experiences. This, I think, would be a more realistic way forward for successful human social progress.
Beautiful essay, Michael. Thank you for lending your voice to honor the legacy of Dr. King and to highlight his tremendous contributions to our society. I do believe that our ethical progress must continue if we are to survive as a species. The plateaus that we've reached are backsliding.
My reflection is that there are big distinctions that have been watered down in our collective discourse to practical imperception, for example, 1) the difference between virtue-signaling and moral courage, 2) the difference between promoting ideas we've been told without question and actual problem-solving which necessitates free inquiry and rigorous questioning, and 3) the difference between saying the "right thing" to fit in to a socially or politically-acceptable moral matrix and the difficult work of developing character by building a relationship with one's own conscience.
Seeing them lined up, these distinctions are unified by a single modern ideal: individualism.
On the one hand, there's a value for the individual, their autonomy, their personal conscience, what it means for them personally to demonstrate moral courage, and the freedom to ask questions and seek understanding.
On the other hand, the individual is subordinate to the group, "right and wrong" are dictated by the prevailing group orthodoxy, dissent is silenced, and questions are not only discouraged, but often met with punitive consequence.
Individualism is the cornerstone of all the freedoms we cherish.
Holy cow. I love that someone feels this way and wish I could share your optimism. This morning when reflecting on MLK, my honest thought was “If he were alive today, he’d be horrified and depressed.”
In the big picture yes, the world has become a better place to live in the last couple thousand years. That’s good. And in particular, mid-century America was a prosperous, hopeful, advancing place.
But in my short (post-MLK) lifetime, America has been falling apart. It’s been progressively harder for people to get the basics we were raised to expect were within the reach of anyone who tried hard: decent wages, decent education, a home, a secure retirement. Globally a few billionaires control most of the world’s resources and it’s unlikely anything will reverse that trend toward greater inequality.
Instead of greater harmony (racial, political, or otherwise), we have greater division than I’ve ever seen, with people increasingly getting their information from niche “news” sources that agree with what they want to hear. Formerly sensible people believe people who disagree with them are monsters, demons, evildoers.
American “democracy” has fallen so low that the famous Princeton study (Gilens and Page, 2014) concluded we were no longer a democracy but an oligarchy and in fact that the wishes of the people are not taken into consideration, at all, by our elected officials. Zero effect.
Exhibit A might be that during a pandemic, and despite about 70% of Americans in favor of it, we still can’t get health care for all, which most of the rest of the world has enjoyed for decades. As a result we’ve had more death per capita than most other places. But the billionaires have done quite well.
But it’s not just the pandemic. We spent 20 years after 9/11 pissing away our nation’s resources and destroying what remained of our international reputation to pursue wars for profit.
Now during the current global disaster, instead of being honest about the most likely source of the virus (ie, a lab leak of a modified virus) our leaders have actively participated in covering this up, and therefore no one is engaged in serious conversations that need to be had about ending the type of gain-of-function research that has killed about 5.5 million people in the last couple years and which, if a worse virus gets out next time (and lab accidents are quite common) could easily end human life on the planet.
These are dark times for humanity. I doubt we have much time left. I hope the octopuses do a much better job than we did.
I love your optimism, which is shared by Steven Pinker. However, while science and technology have undoubtedly progressed and made lives longer and better in many ways since the Scientific Revolution in the 16th Century, I don't see that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. When I look at anthropogenic deaths. they increased steadily and peaked in the 20th Century: https://tinyurl.com/2p8kznk5
It is also hard to see Fukuyama's "End of History," which he predicted due to the victory of liberal democracies. There are over a million Uyghurs in Xi's concentration camps. In addition to China, authoritarian regimes are flourishing in Russia, Turkey, Syria, Burma, N.Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan. Liberal democracy is also threatened in the West: notably, Brazil and Hungary, and let us not forget January 6.
Moral improvement has come from secular sources? Both Parker and King were Christian preachers. I just quoted King today on another comments board: “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.”
Religious institutions in the past several centuries, particularly the Spanish missionaries in North America, were brutal oppressors. But it was Christian individuals, in the case of the abolitionists and SCLC, who moved the moral development of the US forward.
With the 20 th century being the bloodiest in history, I am hard pressed to agree that The Enlightenment changed the arc toward justice. Communism, nazism, and now cynics with power, none of whom are religious, wreak havoc on innocent people with their desire to control. Good religion serves a good purpose
But like everything else, needs oversite to prevent fanaticism
Mr. Shermer,
Well done, AGAIN. I see much in your view that is congruent to a logical analysis of human cultural history. I have read all your books and the three I have found most influential on and supportive to my thinking are, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc and Why People Believe Weird Things. I think that this essay and the three books are important in describing and understanding the progress made by humans in the development of moral constructs. I also think that a more prescriptive view and understanding , like Dan Dennett’s (Breaking The Spell) and Sam Harris’ (The End of Faith) is necessary to a way forward for human moral progress. It could be said that one of the most distinctive elements of human adaptive behavior, over the course of evolution, is the making and use of tools. From this perspective moral constructs would be considered a developed tool(s) rather than, as is most commonly argued, being based on or developed as “beliefs.” Like Sam Harris, I favor a Scientific Methodology for determining the best understandings of how different moral principals could be formed free from reliance on beliefs or suppositions not falsifiable by accessible and verifiable evidence in sharable data and experiences. This, I think, would be a more realistic way forward for successful human social progress.
I like people who think and write well. Excellent.
Beautiful essay, Michael. Thank you for lending your voice to honor the legacy of Dr. King and to highlight his tremendous contributions to our society. I do believe that our ethical progress must continue if we are to survive as a species. The plateaus that we've reached are backsliding.
My reflection is that there are big distinctions that have been watered down in our collective discourse to practical imperception, for example, 1) the difference between virtue-signaling and moral courage, 2) the difference between promoting ideas we've been told without question and actual problem-solving which necessitates free inquiry and rigorous questioning, and 3) the difference between saying the "right thing" to fit in to a socially or politically-acceptable moral matrix and the difficult work of developing character by building a relationship with one's own conscience.
Seeing them lined up, these distinctions are unified by a single modern ideal: individualism.
On the one hand, there's a value for the individual, their autonomy, their personal conscience, what it means for them personally to demonstrate moral courage, and the freedom to ask questions and seek understanding.
On the other hand, the individual is subordinate to the group, "right and wrong" are dictated by the prevailing group orthodoxy, dissent is silenced, and questions are not only discouraged, but often met with punitive consequence.
Individualism is the cornerstone of all the freedoms we cherish.
Holy cow. I love that someone feels this way and wish I could share your optimism. This morning when reflecting on MLK, my honest thought was “If he were alive today, he’d be horrified and depressed.”
In the big picture yes, the world has become a better place to live in the last couple thousand years. That’s good. And in particular, mid-century America was a prosperous, hopeful, advancing place.
But in my short (post-MLK) lifetime, America has been falling apart. It’s been progressively harder for people to get the basics we were raised to expect were within the reach of anyone who tried hard: decent wages, decent education, a home, a secure retirement. Globally a few billionaires control most of the world’s resources and it’s unlikely anything will reverse that trend toward greater inequality.
Instead of greater harmony (racial, political, or otherwise), we have greater division than I’ve ever seen, with people increasingly getting their information from niche “news” sources that agree with what they want to hear. Formerly sensible people believe people who disagree with them are monsters, demons, evildoers.
American “democracy” has fallen so low that the famous Princeton study (Gilens and Page, 2014) concluded we were no longer a democracy but an oligarchy and in fact that the wishes of the people are not taken into consideration, at all, by our elected officials. Zero effect.
Exhibit A might be that during a pandemic, and despite about 70% of Americans in favor of it, we still can’t get health care for all, which most of the rest of the world has enjoyed for decades. As a result we’ve had more death per capita than most other places. But the billionaires have done quite well.
But it’s not just the pandemic. We spent 20 years after 9/11 pissing away our nation’s resources and destroying what remained of our international reputation to pursue wars for profit.
Now during the current global disaster, instead of being honest about the most likely source of the virus (ie, a lab leak of a modified virus) our leaders have actively participated in covering this up, and therefore no one is engaged in serious conversations that need to be had about ending the type of gain-of-function research that has killed about 5.5 million people in the last couple years and which, if a worse virus gets out next time (and lab accidents are quite common) could easily end human life on the planet.
These are dark times for humanity. I doubt we have much time left. I hope the octopuses do a much better job than we did.
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.” – Aristotle
Bravo!
Michael, that is an excellent tribute to MLK and also a good description of your book The Moral Arc. Thanks for this essay.