Understanding progress

Before we can promote human material progress, we must first understand it.

The following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

Progress is Real

People living in Western nations today have a level of affluence far surpassing anything ever seen on planet Earth. Even the poor in Western nations have a level of affluence that is higher than that which all but the richest people had in 1970.

All across the world, nations are being transformed from oppressive poverty to a level of affluence that was once only possible in Western nations. Japan, South Korea, China, India, Singapore, Botswana, Chile and Puerto Rico all transformed themselves within one generation. Even in some of the poorest nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, levels of education, health, literacy, sanitation, longevity, transportation, communication, and housing are rapidly improving.

The Good Old Days Were Pretty Terrible

This progress is a startling transformation compared to how humans have lived over the past hundred thousand years. For most of human history, there was little if any progress.

Our ancestors were engaged in a constant struggle for survival. Most people lived on the edge of subsistence. The vast majority of our ancestors devoted the majority of their waking hours to acquiring enough food to eat. The quest for the next meal dominated their lives.

Most humans lived in societies that changed very little over the course of their lifetime. The vast majority of our ancestors were trapped in circumstances that were very similar to their parents’ and their grandparents’ lives. They knew that their children and grandchildren would live in very similar circumstances.

The only changes that people experienced were bad ones: wars, crop failures, droughts, epidemics and famines. Once the effects of these deadly events wore off, life returned pretty much to the way it had been before… at least for those who were lucky enough to survive.

Humanity lived in a stable state because technological innovation occurred very rarely, and any increased wealth went either to expanding the population or lining the pockets of entrenched elites. Individuals experienced progress, but societies did not.

Geography Constrained Progress In the Past

For most of history, societies were trapped by geographical constraints that made progress impossible. These geographical constraints limited how much food they could produce, the types of food they could produce, and how they could produce them.

Societies evolved technologies, skills and social organizations to acquire the maximum amount of food from their local environment with the minimum level of effort. This quest was so time-consuming that little time was left for innovation in other fields.

Variations in the natural environment led to societies specializing in different methods for acquiring and distributing food. These geographical variations created enormous differences between societies across the globe.

In particular, geographical variations caused variations in the rate at which societies could innovate new technologies, skills and social organizations, and copy the innovations of others. Most of these societies simply could not innovate fast enough or copy enough innovations to produce any real benefits in the people’s lives.

No matter what they tried, their efforts did not create progress.

But Then It All Changed

Then within a span of a few lifetimes, billions of people started to experience progress. An elderly European who died in 1920 saw more progress in their lifetime than all the other previous generations of Europeans combined. An elderly person today has seen more progress for the entire world than all of human history combined. It has been a stunning transformation.

Today we live in a period of great progress. This progress has led to a dramatic increase in the standard of living of societies throughout the world. This progress has broadened to such a degree that it is self-sustaining and unlikely to be destroyed by even the most powerful shocks. But progress has affected some people far more than others, leading to great inequalities.

This progress evolved from the bottom up; it was not the creation of any government, institution, leader or set of policies. It is the result of hundreds of generations of people innovating, learning, cooperating and copying to solve local problems. Technology, skills and social organizations all play important roles in this process.

If a person living in late 19^th Century Europe or United States had claimed that progress exists, it would hardly have attracted notice. Europeans and Americans at the time widely believed in progress and understood that it directly impacted their lives. Most educated people at the time treated progress as though it were a fact.

Now We Forget How It Used to Be

But then after the impacts of World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, economic recessions and our knowledge of climate change, many people lost faith. A relentless cynicism and pessimism about contemporary life and the future seems to have spread across the Western world. And, most bizarrely, these attitudes are most common among the wealthiest and most educated members of the richest societies that have ever existed.

So we live in a world of unprecedented abundance and progress, but the very people who have enjoyed the most benefits seem to be unaware of its existence. Some even attack the very idea of progress.

How did we get here?

But first, what is progress?

Progress is About the Material Standard of Living

I believe that the most useful definition of progress is “the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.” In particular, I focus on changes to the standard of living that are rapid enough and sustained enough that one person could notice positive changes within their lifetime.

Progress within one year that is immediately erased by a regression in the next few years does not qualify as progress. Since a generation is generally considered to be 20 years, I look for relatively uninterrupted progress for at least that length of time. One sharp downturn is not enough to invalidate a decade of progress, but a downturn that lasts for decades surely means that progress did not exist during that time.

Progress is not about enriching a small portion of society. While it is possible to apply the term to changes that exclusively benefit the rich and powerful, I am far more concerned about material progress for the vast majority of citizens.

The next excerpt is here.

The above is an excerpt from my book “From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement.” You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.