Author: Camille Miner, a student at UC Berkeley studying Philosophy and Social Welfare and a former Research Intern at Human Progress.......Congratulations ! You TRAINED HER WELL !!
I particularly liked her concluding paragraph or summation which encapsulated many ideas on this subject......but....it's amazing how HARD and ADVERSELY JUDGEMENTAL we are on ourselves ...and yet how "lenient and understanding" we are of our transgressors....especially in "our" law courts !....This 'FAILURE to address REALITY' is a growing concern ! Murderers routinely receive "the benefit of the doubt despite the evidence" and walk free while someone else is imprisoned for uttering , allegedly , "hate speech" or some-such "racist" infringement which would not even raise a reaction in another era ! .....So....I think our "sense of proportion" has become warped and distorted in a most destructive way......a case where "good intentions" have gone badly astray ! Have "we" become "over-sensitive" and "irrational" ....AND....is this a manifestation of "our" eternal striving to assuage "our" perceived guilt BECAUSE "we" have it so good !!? Well...."we" do don't "we"!!! Never before in human existence has "the world" been so safe , so 'live-able' and people
so wealthy! THAT alone accounts for the FALL in crimes and increasing life-spans !
So good , that MOST PEOPLE ARE SO MATERIALLY WEALTHY [ even those who covet their neighbours !!] that they feel guilt just looking at the "ever-diminishing-portion-of-poor-people"
on the planet and "wishing they could help them" in some meaningful way.....apart from 'throwing money at them' .....in the time honoured POLITICIANS WAY ! [ So much of which is siphoned-off into an untouchable PRIVATE bank account somewhere by a grateful , beaming , embezzeler !! ].
Don't get me wrong ! There are MANY ORGANISATIONS willing and able to accept your money , usually on the flimsy basis that "in 10 years time , something unbelievably good will be produced" but , in the meantime , it's wall-to-wall "research-costs"....and my bete noire....ADMINISTRATION !
"We" are now basically good people and getting better all the time [ in my experience] but "we" are mostly open-minded and open to exploitation to the same degree.
The extent to which people are able to elevate pets and animals and anthropomorphise them into sentient beings of 'equal status to themselves' is somewhat alarming......but it does illustrate that they are absolutely overflowing with an abundance of unrequited love and affection and eternal optimism that it isn't unrequited !!! If only human children could receive so much of it !
That query about conscientiousness had me thinking ! Why don't parents WANT to do PARENTING these days ? As soon as the kid can "feed from a bottle" it's off to CHILD-CARE !
Oh ! BUT ONLY so the PARENT can work at something they allegedly hate , work , and add more money to that that the "other spouse" earns , so that "they can ALL be better off in the future"
and yet......There they are........"screwing up the present".......the ONLY REALITY "WE" HAVE !!
Sorry , that is the one area I believe "we" have got totally wrong ! Kids NEED a childhood !
They aren't getting one ! They are becoming SOCIALISED at an ever-earlier age BUT for what?
The suicide rate in Australia doesn't reflect any improvement since 2002 ! Something is awry !
Never-the-less , almost every other facet of human life is GETTING SO MUCH BETTER !
This is a lovely article Camille, it succinctly explains many of our biases towards negativity. I do find this is a particularly tough time to talk about the grand arc of progress as we’re seeing a (hopefully) temporary reversal of moral progress at the national level - USAID alone is a difficult datapoint to argue against.
How do you address understandable disagreement from those you speak to that aren’t already familiar with the progress community?
Author: Camille Miner, a student at UC Berkeley studying Philosophy and Social Welfare and a former Research Intern at Human Progress.......Congratulations ! You TRAINED HER WELL !!
I particularly liked her concluding paragraph or summation which encapsulated many ideas on this subject......but....it's amazing how HARD and ADVERSELY JUDGEMENTAL we are on ourselves ...and yet how "lenient and understanding" we are of our transgressors....especially in "our" law courts !....This 'FAILURE to address REALITY' is a growing concern ! Murderers routinely receive "the benefit of the doubt despite the evidence" and walk free while someone else is imprisoned for uttering , allegedly , "hate speech" or some-such "racist" infringement which would not even raise a reaction in another era ! .....So....I think our "sense of proportion" has become warped and distorted in a most destructive way......a case where "good intentions" have gone badly astray ! Have "we" become "over-sensitive" and "irrational" ....AND....is this a manifestation of "our" eternal striving to assuage "our" perceived guilt BECAUSE "we" have it so good !!? Well...."we" do don't "we"!!! Never before in human existence has "the world" been so safe , so 'live-able' and people
so wealthy! THAT alone accounts for the FALL in crimes and increasing life-spans !
So good , that MOST PEOPLE ARE SO MATERIALLY WEALTHY [ even those who covet their neighbours !!] that they feel guilt just looking at the "ever-diminishing-portion-of-poor-people"
on the planet and "wishing they could help them" in some meaningful way.....apart from 'throwing money at them' .....in the time honoured POLITICIANS WAY ! [ So much of which is siphoned-off into an untouchable PRIVATE bank account somewhere by a grateful , beaming , embezzeler !! ].
Don't get me wrong ! There are MANY ORGANISATIONS willing and able to accept your money , usually on the flimsy basis that "in 10 years time , something unbelievably good will be produced" but , in the meantime , it's wall-to-wall "research-costs"....and my bete noire....ADMINISTRATION !
"We" are now basically good people and getting better all the time [ in my experience] but "we" are mostly open-minded and open to exploitation to the same degree.
The extent to which people are able to elevate pets and animals and anthropomorphise them into sentient beings of 'equal status to themselves' is somewhat alarming......but it does illustrate that they are absolutely overflowing with an abundance of unrequited love and affection and eternal optimism that it isn't unrequited !!! If only human children could receive so much of it !
That query about conscientiousness had me thinking ! Why don't parents WANT to do PARENTING these days ? As soon as the kid can "feed from a bottle" it's off to CHILD-CARE !
Oh ! BUT ONLY so the PARENT can work at something they allegedly hate , work , and add more money to that that the "other spouse" earns , so that "they can ALL be better off in the future"
and yet......There they are........"screwing up the present".......the ONLY REALITY "WE" HAVE !!
Sorry , that is the one area I believe "we" have got totally wrong ! Kids NEED a childhood !
They aren't getting one ! They are becoming SOCIALISED at an ever-earlier age BUT for what?
The suicide rate in Australia doesn't reflect any improvement since 2002 ! Something is awry !
Never-the-less , almost every other facet of human life is GETTING SO MUCH BETTER !
This is a lovely article Camille, it succinctly explains many of our biases towards negativity. I do find this is a particularly tough time to talk about the grand arc of progress as we’re seeing a (hopefully) temporary reversal of moral progress at the national level - USAID alone is a difficult datapoint to argue against.
How do you address understandable disagreement from those you speak to that aren’t already familiar with the progress community?
A better metric might be film and tv. Way more morality-based storytelling before the mid-80s - now almost-none.