Today’s Post 

Last week we took a summary look at the statistical data on human progress as a measure of human evolution from Johan Norberg’s book, ‘Progress’, in which we outlined the ways in which evolution can be seen to continue its fourteen billion rise in the evolution of the human species.

In doing so, we also saw how such a worldview resonates with Teilhard’s insight that humans can be seen to continue to evolve along the same ‘tree of evolution’ that has been universally followed so far: that of increasing consciousness via increasing complexity.

We also noted that in spite of the sheer volume of data that Norberg provides, and Teilhard’s insight into the energy of evolution that rises within us, ‘conventional wisdom’, as catalogued by many contemporary polls, shows that nearly all those responding to polls are either unaware of this data or disagree with it. Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”, noting this rising sap of pessimism, sees in it a sort of ‘progressophobia’, particularly strong in the West, that either ignores data such as that provided by Norberg, or rejects it outright.

This week we will take a closer look at this phenomenon.

A Quick Look At The History of Pessimism

Such ‘progressophobia’ isn’t a recent phenomenon. For example, pessimists have always been able to find a basis for their negativity in their sacred books.

Based on such readings, it’s not surprising that the founders of the great Sixteenth century Protestant Reformation had a very negative opinion of human nature. Martin Luther, whose Protestant worldview took root in Europe following the Reformation, saw humans as “piles of manure, covered over by Christ”. Calvin went him one better, seeing them as “total depravity”. Freud piled on with his warnings against the core of the human person: the “dangerous Id”. Even today, authors such as Yuval Harari, “Sapiens”, can see consciousness, as found in the human person, as ‘an evolutionary mistake’.

The thinkers of the Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and early18th centuries, on the other hand, emphasized the two major fruits of human evolution, reason and individualism, over tradition. Such beliefs were in distinct contrast to those of the Reformation, as can be seen in the writings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Jung, Heidegger and Sartre.

With the Reformation, the basic positive message of Jesus became secondary to the need to understand the human race as ‘broken’, ‘fallen’ from some previous pristine state, and in need of a future divine intervention (the ‘second coming’) in which humans would be rescued from their ‘fallen’ nature directly by God.

Such recoil against the Enlightenment’s positive perception of human nature was only reinforced as Science began to see the human as an evolutionary phenomenon, progressing into the future without the need for divine intervention.

There seems to have been much profit in such dystopian predictions.   For example, with the death of the popular American evangelist, Billy Graham, his children have continued to benefit financially from prophesies of ever-increasing doom, showing clearly that ‘pessimism sells’ even to this day.

Such pessimism can also be seen today in results of polls such as those cited in the last two posts. Even actual, tangible and supportable statistics, such as those showing a considerable plummet in the rate of violent crime and poverty, still leaves the majority of Americans seeing their country “heading in the wrong direction”. Canny populist politicians are quick to capitalize on such pessimism, and are very successful at getting elected on platforms in which such an obviously depraved human condition must be closely controlled by strong men (and it’s always a man) such as themselves.

Further, as David Sanger notes in a recent New York Times article, political supporters, known more for their passion than their policy rigor, are ripe for exploitation  “Make them pessimistic enough”, he is suggesting, “and you’ve got control”.

Progressophobia In Western Society

Pinker notes that when Westerners are polled about their opinion of progress in society, a twofold perspective can be seen. On an individual basis, individuals seem optimistic about their personal situation, and that of their immediate relationships (family, neighbors, friends), but pessimistic about society at large. Pinker refers to this as the “Optimism Gap”:

“For two decades…when Europeans were asked by pollsters whether their own economic situation would get better or worse in the coming year, more of them said it would get better, but when they were asked about their country’s economic situation, more of them said it would get worse.”

This is a puzzling phenomenon: comfortable, secure, educated individuals are unable to project their personal optimism onto their society.   Why should this be so? Pinker offers a few suggestions.

   Ubiquity of News – We are immersed in news in a way which is truly unprecedented. Thanks to technology, we receive it not only in ‘real time’ but in unprecedented volume.   As Pinker observes:

“Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.”

And not only does immediate news sell, negative news sells better than positive news, resulting in negative slant. Pinker cites a survey showing a ‘negative count’ in the New York Times from 1945 to 2015, in which the use of negative terms in news articles shows a distinctive increase.

Mscalibration – Further, while the result of such a plethora of information might be seen as simply leaving us ‘better informed’, it can also be seen as leaving us ‘miscalibrated’. For example, we worry more about crime even as crime rates are falling. As Pinker points out, such information can “part company with reality altogether”.   He cites a 2016 American poll in which

“77% agreed that “Islamic militants operating in Syria …pose a serious threat to the existence and survival of the United States.””

Pinker notes that such an opinion is not only an example of ‘miscalibration’, it is “nothing short of delusional”.

The Negativity Bias– – As in the above examples, such pessimism isn’t just due to skepticism about the data, but suggests an ‘unpreparedness’ for the possibility that the human condition is improving. This is sort of a ‘human original sin’, in which it is easier for humans to imagine a future in which life is degraded by violence, illness, poverty, loss of loved ones or a nearly endless list of woes than it is to imagine it as uplifted, their lot improved, their relationships deepened, or their future brighter than their past. Effectively, lack of clarity about the past leads to an unpreparedness for the future.

But there’s also a biological factor at work. One reason for such bias is the simple fact that our lower brains continue to stimulate us with the basic urges common to our ancestors, such as fight or flight, hunger, anger or other ‘base instincts’ so necessary for their survival. Just because evolution has endowed us with a neocortex brain capable of rationally dealing with such instincts (“am I really threatened?”) doesn’t mean that the limbic and reptilian brains cease to function.

It also doesn’t mean that our 200,000 old skill of using the neocortex has reached maturity. Teilhard notes that humanity is still in the early stages of its evolution. To put it into perspective, if universal evolution was captured in a thousand pages, the appearance of the human would not occur until the bottom three words of the last page. Hence Teilhard sees humanity still in an evolutionary state very much influenced by the instinctual stimuli which served our ancestors so well.

The ‘Wisdom of Pessimism’ – Pinker notes that throughout history, “pessimism has been equated with moral seriousness”. This can be seen, for example in the Hebrew prophets who “blended their social criticism with warnings of disaster”. The best way to be perceived as a prophet, it seems, is to predict the worse, because there’s always something happening to confirm the prediction, somewhere.

Pinker also notes that “Intellectuals know they can attain instant gravitas by pointing to an unsolved problem and theorizing that it is a symptom of a sick society.” As we saw last week, the affluence of the Graham family (and many Evangelicals like them) is testimony to how financially successful this strategy can be.

Not that pessimism is all bad.   The fact that there are more of us concerned about harms that would have been overlooked in more callous times, itself contributes to the increase in human welfare which Norberg documents in such detail. The danger that Pinker sees is tbat

“…as we care more about humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen”.

   The ‘high’ of Indignation – This last example comes not from Pinker but from recent studies in which brain activity was recorded under different stimuli. In these studies, the researchers were able to identify which part of the brain ‘lit up’ with different activities. They noted that when a person was shown information that made them indignant, the same part of the brain responded as when they ate chocolate. It turns out that being indignant releases the same kind of endorphins, a substance which increases pleasure, as eating chocolate. In a nutshell, indignation feels good. As my old supervisor at the ‘Bomber Plant’ used to say, “Indignation is the balm that soothes the pain of inadequacy.”

These examples show the difficulty of developing the skill of using the neocortex brain as a mediator to the instinctual fears that we have inherited from our evolutional ancestors. It’s not that the fears are necessarily inappropriate, but that an intellectual context, a ‘hermeneutic’ is needed to provide a compass for navigating them. Failing to successfully navigate them will eventually constitute a failure to continue human evolution on its path of ‘rising complexity’ which leads to ‘greater consciousness’ and hence leads to ‘more completeness.”

 

The Next Post

 

This week we completed a brief summary of Steven Pinker’s insights, following Norberg and Teilhard, which address our seeming reluctance to acknowledge the fruits of human evolution. In Pinker’s words (summarizing Norberg)

“The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being”

   But, he goes on

“Almost no one knows about it.”

   The fact that there clearly exists such a plethora of ‘fruits’ (as well documented by Norberg), at the same time that acknowledgement of them seems so scarce presents us with yet another ‘duality’. When Teilhard addresses what he considers to be the risks to the continuation of evolution in the human, he rates such duality high on the list.

Next week we will address risks to this continuation, and take another look at Teilhard’s concerns.