39 Comments
Jan 18Liked by Michael Magoon

I think that you need to pay more attention to status competition in happiness. Status is a zero sum game and progress inherently changes some of the status factors to begin with.

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Jan 18·edited Jan 18Author

Yes, I plan to write a future post on the topic.

I do not think, however, that status competition has fundamentally changed since 2010, except for the indirect effects of social media use (which I mention in the article).

I do not see an overall trend in status-seeking behavior in nations that experience progress. If anything, it has declined. And self-reported happiness has clearly gone up.

For example, Agrarian societies had relentless status-seeking behavior:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-agrarian-societies-stifled-innovation

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Jan 19Liked by Michael Magoon

Great article Michael. I would note that Maslow wrote about Post-Gratification Forgetting and Devaluation in Motivation and Personality. Here is a link to a draft article I'm working on: https://galepooley.substack.com/p/891fbd12-bfb2-495f-b69b-da7433747ddb

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Thanks for the link. I will comment when it is officially published.

Quick question: How do you link to a draft article in Substack?

I constantly run into this problem when I am writing articles, I cannot link to an article until it has been published.

Any tips?

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In your draft, you can click on the settings icon (I think it’s a gear on the bottom-right on desktop) and then you can scroll to find a draft secret link.

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I agree with most of your diagnosis. Where I part ways is with your suggestion that increasing prosperity and decreasing subjective well-being amounts to clear progress. I think progress is about human flourishing, and we aren’t flourishing enough if we are seeing increases in dissatisfaction, drug abuse, media doom scrolling, deaths of despair, mental health challenges, and so on. Real progress requires that we… make progress … on these critical dimensions of our lives.

If we get $10k per year richer and less happy and more disturbed, then I would argue that we have not made appreciable progress at all, and we may have regressed.

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If this were the year 1900, we could go through a long list of problems that people were concerned about and were getting worse. That does not mean that there was no material progress.

You could do the same as 1950 or 2000.

Progress is not an absence of problems. Progress usually involves trading off bigger and more numerous problems for lesser and less numerous problems.

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We are in complete agreement that there has been material progress. I also agree that PROGRESS is not the absence of problems, and that it usually involves fewer and lesser problems. The question then is IF quality of life in many/most ways deteriorates while material prosperity goes up, is it PROGRESS?

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I do not believe that your question can be answered.

The entire point of my fictitious barroom debate is that people will judge their quality of life in very different ways. That is exactly why concepts like "human flourishing" and "quality of life" should not be considered part of progress. It makes progress impossible to investigate. And therefore Progress Studies cannot exist.

Yes, some people can consider their quality of life to go down while living in a society that is experiencing material progress. But other people can consider their quality of life to go up while living in a society that is experiencing material progress.

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That summarizes it well. Your definition gains clarity at the expense of breadth. Mine errs the other way.

For an extreme counter example, consider the movie Wallie from a while back. In it, humanity lives in total material bliss, lounging in comfort 24 hours a day, with unlimited food, drink, health care and entertainment. I would label this unlimited material living standards, but not Progress.

I would suggest that the best solution to the definition is to expand it to include broadly agreed measures such as happiness, SWB, relationship quality?, freedom, violence, environmental quality, lifespan, freedom from unhealthy addiction (drugs, booze, gambling, social media, food), mental health, and so on.

In developed countries, these more subjective issues are probably becoming just as, or more, important than material standards.

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19Author

I would argue that material progress gives us the resources to devote to solving those other problems. Whether we succeed or not is another question.

I think an absence of material progress will make it far more difficult, if not impossible, to solve those other problems.

Therefore, we should focus on the material progress first.

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Jan 19Liked by Michael Magoon

Strongly agree

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19Author

You are neglecting the possibility that some people cannot be happy regardless of the material circumstances. The problems are inside their brain.

Many problems are not solvable. That does not mean that material progress does not exist.

I don’t think that we should give up on promoting material progress because we do not have a treatment for personality disorders. That treatment may never come.

And the evidence is clear that 10k per year does make people happier.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/does-material-progress-lead-to-happiness

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I agree that some problems are not solvable, that some people will never be happy, and that all else equal, more money is a good thing and does make people happier.

I am not suggesting MATERIAL progress doesn’t or didn’t exist. Nor do I in any way suggest we should give up on promoting material progress.

I am suggesting that, in my definition, progress is wider and bigger than just material living standards, and includes mental health, subjective satisfaction, relationships, physical health and fitness, self determination, freedom from addictive substances, and other non material qualitative categories. I am also not suggesting that material progress necessarily causes problems in these other areas, though as you state above, it could contribute in some ways.

Progress is wider than material progress, even though expanding it makes it less easy to measure.

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Fine, then go ahead and investigate the origins and causes of all those things and how we develop policies and practices to improve them.

But if you have built into that a definition that we must make progress on all or most of them to have progress, then I believe that you will fail. You will simply abolish the concept of progress. So we are back to square one.

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Perhaps this line will lead to failure. But it is worth the try, right? It is possible to explore broader P while maintaining smaller, narrower definitions of P which can include Material P.

In studying the history of the belief in progress, I see we have adopted many types of definitions over time. Early on, was a religious providential version of the term. Then came a rationalistic, we can solve everything with rational thought version. Then a Darwinian version where it was built into the fabric of the universe. Then a technological version, where tech and science were the path.

I see your emphasis on material well being as another partial and incomplete measure.

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I have no problem with you or anyone trying, but I do not want Progress Studies to become that (at least not for the first decade).

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On a related note, I just read a great substack article by music writer Ted Gioia. In it he offers some very different takes on progress. Perhaps he could debate you?

https://substack.com/redirect/defe259c-919a-409b-a0d5-b319b43f4c81?j=eyJ1IjoiOHRwbjgifQ.i9eeo2fvZPGB3kuynDib1sMpJDoBCFi1GejHBf_xWpA

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I don’t understand what you mean by:

“Where I part ways is with your suggestion that increasing prosperity and decreasing subjective well-being amounts to clear progress.”

I certainly do not believe that decreasing subjective wellbeing amounts to progress.

My article is about why some people still are not happy despite clear material progress, and that happiness may be plateauing in wealthy Western nations.

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Hopefully the above comments addressed my perspective, which in the end comes down to how best to define the big P. If SWB and Material P both broadly improve for humanity, then I would argue for clear P. If one goes up and the other down, it becomes muddier.

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19

Yes. Quality of Life- also sometimes known as "What the.. are we doing here?!" Many societies were interested in wrestling with this question.

America seems to have landed on - Work, Consume, Display.

Progress is not GDP and certainly not extravagant wealth hoarding when it destabilizes 80% of society. Look at the most prosperous cities in the world and find a population that doesn't even want to reproduce outside the very elite.

Aren't Human needs.. the Good.. actually pretty basic? Security. Love. Belonging. Creative Expression. Order. We all share these. It may be hard to define Good, but we know it when we experience it. Go into a beautiful park on a sunny Spring afternoon, then sit in a 4 hour work commute. These Values are very pursuable.

Thanks for the enjoyable discussion Swami and Michael.

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19Author

Thanks for the comment. Obviously, these issues are very complex, so there is plenty of opportunity for reasonable differences of opinion. I am not sure whether you read it, but I have another post that more directly focuses on your point:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-progress-is-not-human-flourishing

As to your points:

I do not argue that Progress is GDP. I argue that it can best be measured by Per Capita GDP and a host of secondary metrics that I list in this article. All those are very important and are closely correlated with Per capita GDP.

Happiness is actually closely correlated with Per Capita GDP:

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/does-material-progress-lead-to-happiness

I also do not think that inequality undermines those metrics.

Yes, fertility rates are lower in large cities, but I think that you exaggerate when you say that no one is reproducing other than elites.

Human needs may be pretty basic, but they are not simple to increase across society. Many of the points that you make were identified by ancient religions and philosophies in Ancient Greece. It is not at all clear that our understanding of them or our knowledge in how to promote them has increased much in the last 2000 years.

But yet we have had great material progress, which I believe is worth investigating far more than we have done up until now.

The topics that you raise are all very relevant to Religion and Philosophy, but I am not sure that they add much to the social science of studying human material progress.

I think that it would be a mistake if Progress Studies just becomes yet another religion or philosophy.

Any way, thanks for your comment.

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19Liked by Michael Magoon

Thanks Michael, just read through your series and see it's well thought and agree.

With a caveat... to extend your analogy.. kind of like having a beer in the 1st Floor of Maslow's Bar with the missing Agnostic who doesn't believe in the higher floors of Human Flourishing.

We've spent the last 2,000 years developing that first floor of basic needs by constructing complex, technologically enabled societies (mostly as a by product of trying kill each other). And to this discussion.. we discovered that is Necessary, but not Sufficient for Human Flourishing.

Is it necessary to assume the higher floors are inherently unknowable, because we've only gained mastery in level 1? We don't actually understand Economics, Sociology, the Mind.. much less can we capably operate them or complex systems in general.. doesn't mean these are Religion.

Personally, I believe these areas are exactly the goal we should be focusing on.. rather than believing greater incremental material prosperity is the destination.. at least in the developed world. I subscribed to your substack Michael and looking forward to more in the series, cheers Byron

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Jan 19Liked by Michael Magoon

Why is procrastinating on a Friday so much fun? Thanks for the conversation

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Jan 19·edited Jan 19Author

Thanks for the reply.

To be clear, I do not claim that the higher floors of Human Flourishing do not exist. I am stating that I am not studying it (at least as much).

And, yes, I agree that material progress is Necessary, but not Sufficient for Human Flourishing (as I mentioned in the article).

I do believe that as our standard of living improves and our technology gives us greater power to manipulate the natural and social environment, then it becomes increasingly important that we make wise choices that come from an enduring set of values. Those values typically come from Religion or Philosophy, but also from our biological instincts. Unfortunately, some people with mental disorders lack that and perhaps can never get it.

The Founding Fathers believed that freedom requires individuals to have the ability to voluntarily restrain themselves as well as have the wisdom to know what they should restrain themselves from doing.

All of the above is important, but I think that it is outside the domain of Progress Studies.

You are free to disagree.

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This is my perspective as well!

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Pull up your draft then click on the Settings button on the bottom right. Then scroll down to Secret link. Copy this address and then send your draft.

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Oh, cool. I do not remember seeing this feature.

Unfortunately, it does not really solve my problem, but it is good to know it exists.

I would like a link that points to a "this post has not yet been published yet' until I actually publish. That way, I can make the link when I write instead of having to remember to add links just before publishing (which I often forget to do).

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I think people are happy when thier expectations are being fulfilled.

Virginia Postrel has a good short article about that: https://www.vpostrel.com/articles/its-a-healthy-sign-when-americans-fail-the-happiness-test

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Thanks for the comment.

I think there is something to that, but the USA still ranks quite highly on happiness compared to most nations. I think many Americans are surprised when we are not #1 in something and think there is something wrong, when we could be happy that we are far above the other 200+ nations.

It is clearly hard to create just the right balance between:

1) Wanting to constantly strive to get better, and

2) Being content and happy with what you have.

I personally think that it is best to think of it as balancing out over the life cycle. When you are young, you strive but are less happy because of it. But then when you are older, if you strove to get better in your younger years, then you can be content with your accomplishments. Both phases of life are important.

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I respectfully offer an alternative viewpoint that is similar to the author’s premise, but with a critical distinction. There are three components of happiness: material wealth, culture, and mental fitness.

People are often unhappy even in the midst of affluence because our material status is overshadowed by our cultural environment. Frequently you encounter quite unhappy affluent people while nearby there are blue collar workers who are enjoying life. If you have the opportunity to attend a cocktail party full of upper middle class people and then attend a quinceañera of working class Latinos you will likely find the former group full of dissatisfaction and complaints, but the latter group full of joy and happiness.

Culture consists of a material state (for example reflected in architecture; and if the environment beautiful or ugly) and an internal state that reflects experiences and ideologies. Both strongly impact happiness. And those ideologies in turn determine much about our environment. For example the San Francisco Bay Area is very affluent, and yet the inhabitants have to walk through piles of excrement and are plagued by property and violent crime. The problem in the Bay Area is cultural and not material.

So I’m not sure the negative internal state of individuals is always about a mental illness so much as a reasonable response to cultural impacts, partly as influenced by ideologies. That said, bad ideologies will also impact material wealth and progress, as we see in our current situation.

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Jan 18·edited Jan 18Author

Thanks for the comment. These are very complex phenomena with interacting causes, so there is obviously room for differing interpretations.

I don't disagree with most of your points, except for the following:

1) I tend not to use the word "culture" as it has many definitions and leads to vague explanations.

Usually when someone uses a cultural explanation, there are only a few parts of the culture that are actually causal, so I think we should focus on the specific over the general. For example, you mention architecture, but I seriously doubt that is a cause. So we need to be far more specific than using a word like "culture."

I believe that your definition of culture is too broad to be useful. I am most interested in the material state (technologies, skills, organizations, etc), which often span differing cultures, like USA, Greece, Russia, Japan, and China. All cultures have gone through vast material changes and still preserve their underlying culture.

2) Material standard-of-living overwhelms culture when defining the overall levels of happiness. Yes, Latin American cultures seem to have higher levels of happiness compared to their material standard-of-living, so that may account for the quinceañera effect that you mention.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/does-material-progress-lead-to-happiness

3) Despite the recent negative trend, overall happiness in the USA and Western nations is very high compared to other nations.

4) I do not think a cultural explanation can explain changes in the USA since 2010. American culture is still American culture. I don't think the culture of our cities is fundamentally different than other areas. The difference is ideology and public policy, not culture.

And I would not consider social media to be a part of culture (unless you are using a definition of culture that is so broad as to be useless).

5) I never said "the negative internal state of individuals is always about a mental illness" See the list at the beginning of the article.

Anyway, thanks for the comment. I am always open to discuss differing interpretations.

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