Why studying Progress may be an antidote to your troubles

And it is a hell of a lot cheaper than therapy!

Jan 30, 2024

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.

And, yes, it has been read and recommended by Stephen Pinker, a world-renowned psychologist. See the bottom for details…

For more on psychology and how it relates to progress, happiness, and ideologies:

Which pill do you choose? Progress or Denial of Progress?

Progress is humanity’s greatest achievement. It has transformed our lives in so many positive ways, but we take it for granted, refuse to admit its existence, or even claim that it is bad. Far too many of us have become “progress deniers.”

Progress is real, and it matters to you.

The evidence is clear. We do not see all the progress that is around us, not because it is not there, but because we choose not to see it.

Progress Cynics are wrong

Progress cynics joyfully point out the exceptions to progress, while ignoring the overall trend. I have no problem pointing out the exceptions to the rule. These are problems that we need to solve.

But relentlessly focusing on the exceptions, while deliberately obfuscating on the overall trends is dishonest and socially destructive. Progress cynics want to establish an anti-progress narrative that is not disrupted by reality. That is unacceptable.

Sometimes progress cynics lower their guard and admit that they do not disagree with the facts, but claim that they are only concerned about how those facts will be used by their political enemies. Statements like this, which I have frequently heard, show that they know that the facts cannot sustain their political narrative.

Progress cynics claim that they are worried about the concept causing complacency about current problems. They conveniently ignore the fact that their cynical message is causing fear, despair, and pessimism.

I understand that most people do not care much about progress or politics. Most people simply repeat what they hear other people who they trust say. Most people who are skeptical of progress are simply misinformed, and they can potentially change their minds.

My problem is with the public intellectuals and institutions who actively promote progress cynicism. They do not care about the facts and are actively trying to disrupt the communication of those facts because it conflicts with their personal, institutional, or ideological self-interest.

Cynicism in progress has effectively become an identity badge with the:

Left becoming increasingly hostile to progress and the
Right becoming increasingly skeptical of progress.

To simplify somewhat, the Left sees the concept of progress as a threat to their narratives, which are designed to use the power of government to transform societies. The Right sees the concept of progress as eating away at the foundations of everything that they hold dear.

Both sides made up their minds before looking at the facts, refuse to update their beliefs, and argue against facts because they see belief in progress as undermining their ideological agendas. Unfortunately, there is no pro-progress Center with a counter-narrative based upon reality and facts.

I hope my Substack series and book series play some role in changing that.

Why can we not see progress?

Part of the reason we cannot see the existence of progress is because we compare the problems of today to either an idea in our head about how life should be, or to nostalgic memories of how we think life used to be. But reality can never match the beautiful thoughts that the human brain can imagine. Nor can reality match the rosy nostalgia for how life supposedly used to be.

In general, among people who are skeptical of or hostile to progress, those on the Left and young people compare the problems of today with an idea in their heads about how life should be, while those on the Right and older people compare the problems of today to nostalgic but distorted memories of how they think life used to be.

Neither side can see the existence of progress because they are constantly bombarded with a distorted view of reality that reinforces their prior assumptions. The media, social media, political activists, interest groups, and political candidates all have a strong self-interest in dwelling on the negative and sensational. An understanding of and appreciation for progress gets in the way of their message and their self-interest. They are much better served by reinforcing their viewer’s distorted view of reality for their own gain.

These institutions have learned that the best way to get attention is to magnify a problem until it appears to be an existential threat to us all. Then they follow up with a relentless drumbeat “proving” that the threat is becoming more common and more dangerous. They know that fear, anger, resentment, and hate generate viewers, votes, and money.

Many people, perhaps a majority, understand that progress exists. They know that their material lives are much better than in previous decades or generations, but they do not often think about it. They do not see the concept of progress as relevant to themselves. They take progress for granted and go on with their daily lives. They do not see that progress is under threat from the beliefs that I described above.

Worse, some believe that progress does exist, but that it is bad for society and threatens our future survival. Because of these views, they implement policies that try to protect us from progress. While they no doubt have good intentions, the policies these people implement do great harm by undermining the very foundations that help people to live better lives.

These views being broadcast to us are untrue, unhealthy, and socially destructive, but they continue because they serve the self-interest of many individuals and institutions. For many of them, the concept of progress is an existential threat to their livelihood, so they fight any hint of it as strongly as possible.

Cognitive Biases

Many people confuse this deliberately distorted view with an objective view of reality. All of these views are based upon what psychologists call “cognitive biases” towards pessimism and threat. People do not realize the enormous self-interest that many institutions in our society have in reinforcing these cognitive biases. So we react to what we perceive as reality, not to what reality actually is.

People with cognitive biases often avoid interaction with others who do not share their views. Rather than confronting these cognitive biases, many people segregate from others with healthier viewpoints both in the real world and in social media. Others spend endless hours alone watching television news or ideological rants. They often attack those who try to help them see a better world, calling them stupid, naïve, uncaring, or even immoral.

Rather than confronting the bias, they think that reality is the problem. The very things that they think make them feel better, actually make them feel worse. This causes far too many people to go into a downward spiral of unhappiness, hopelessness, and disconnection from the real world.

The feedback loop caused by cognitive biases towards pessimism and threat, unrealistic views of what is possible, inaccurate memories of what life used to be like, isolation from alternative viewpoints, and institutional self-interest create a powerful psychological feedback loop. This feedback loop creates what can only be described as an alternative reality that seems very real but does not exist.

It bears a spooky resemblance to the film The Matrix. But whereas the Matrix in the movie created a wonderful life for people who were actually living in terrible circumstances, our real Matrix does the opposite. It takes people living in the best circumstances that humanity has ever lived in and creates the impression that “everything is going to hell.” So, of course, they do not believe in progress.

In the movie, the Matrix was a computer-generated dream world built by AI machines so they could keep people compliant while machines harvested our bio-energy. The real Matrix, however, has been created by millions of years of evolution that wired our brains to think in a certain way.

Our brain evolved to survive, not to be happy

The fundamental problem is that the human brain did not evolve for happiness and appreciation for living in a world of abundance and progress. Nor did it evolve to solve problems in complex modern societies.

The human brain evolved to enable our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors to survive and reproduce on the African Savannah. This world was full of daily threats to survival.

Anyone who focused on appreciating their lives would soon get eaten by a predator, attacked by a stranger, or starve. Anyone who was relentlessly focused on threats to their survival was more likely to survive long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation. This way of thinking was very useful for our distant ancestors, but it causes serious cognitive biases in the modern world.

Humans have evolved with a brain that responds well to threats, and the media, social media, political activists, interest groups, and political candidates have gotten really good at manipulating us with exaggerated threats. In fact, this has become their business model.

They keep doing it because it works. This business model generates viewers, votes, and money: critical resources that these individuals and institutions need to maintain their success.

So what is the solution?

Getting past these cognitive biases is not easy. An entire new sub-discipline of psychology called “Positive Psychology” has emerged to understand and treat similar conditions.

Many positive psychologists recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or CBT) as a way to overcome these cognitive biases. According to the official American Psychological Association (APA) website, there is strong evidence that CBT leads to “significant improvement in functioning and quality of life.”

According to the APA, CBT consists of the patient:

Learning to recognize one’s distortions that are creating problems, and then to reevaluate them in the light of reality.
Gaining a better understanding of the behavior and motivation of others
Using problem-solving skills to cope with difficult situations
Learning to develop a greater sense of confidence in one’s own abilities.

CBT also has the benefit of treating a wide range of problems, not just one. It is useful for treating serious mental illness as well as the far more common “worried well.” I would argue that those who are skeptical and opposed to progress are a substantial portion of the “worried well.”

Unfortunately, implementing CBT on a mass scale is not practical. We need a better, more scalable option than CBT.

Progress Studies = CBT at scale

I believe that option can be found in the concept of progress and the “therapy” is the objective study of history so we can learn what caused that progress. We need to use a little bit of data plus a change of perspective to clear out the cognitive biases that make us unhappy, angry, and resentful in a world full of abundance and progress.

Of course, I am not claiming that the study of progress actually is a therapy. The study of progress will obviously not cure anyone with a serious mental illness. Nor should the study of progress be seen as a replacement for face-to-face therapy by a trained professional. Nor am I claiming that anyone who is at all ambivalent about progress suffers from a mental illness. And nor has the APA endorsed it.

However, I am claiming that the skeptics and opponents of progress are suffering from many of the cognitive biases that can be compared to the mindset of people who benefit from CBT. I am claiming that the fundamental principles of CBT can be applied to more intellectual endeavors like the study of progress. Learning to “recognize one’s distortions that are creating problems”, “learn problem-solving skills” and “learn to develop a greater sense of confidence” are exactly what the Western world needs right now in abundance.

The study of progress is a functional equivalent of self-guided CBT. The study of progress is akin to self-therapy at scale for the “worried well.”

To see the progress that surrounds us, we need to shift focus to study how our ancestors actually lived. Only by comparing today’s life to the actual lives of previous generations can we fully appreciate the progress that we live in today.

Once we look at actual metrics comparing today’s material circumstances to our ancestors’, we can see that we live in a world of progress.

Coming to a deeper understanding of how our ancestors created progress and kept it going can also give us a sense of gratitude. Our ancestors worked really hard, and we are all beneficiaries of their efforts.

Positive psychologists, philosophers, and religious thinkers have repeatedly stressed the importance of gratitude. Gratitude is a powerful emotion because it shifts our thoughts away from our own problems to something more important and more constructive. Ironically, the more one focuses on one’s own problems, the more debilitating those problems seem. By shifting to something much bigger than oneself, one realizes that one’s own problems are nowhere near as bad as they seem.

Even better, learning how our ancestors built progress gives us a toolkit for solving most of today’s problems. We can see that in situations far worse than our own, our ancestors learned practical strategies for making their world a better place. Most of these strategies were very focused on solving short-term local problems, but as word got around, they had positive effects on the entire society.

When we clear out our cognitive biases, we can see that life in the past was actually pretty terrible. It was full of people with the same dread and worry that we have today. It was full of problems that were daily threats to survival that we do not have to deal with as much today.

When we clear out our cognitive biases, we learn that many people in the past who were animated by a strong desire to make the world a better place actually made the world worse. And far more of them failed to have any real impact at all.

They failed because they were so focused on how the world should be, that they did not seek to understand the world as it is. Instead, they tried to transform the world to match the beautiful idea that only existed between their ears. Utopian ideas do not make the world a better place; they almost always fail and many times they actually make the world much worse.

This does not mean that we should give up on our desire to make the world a better place. Far from it; we desperately need the passion of ideals to drive us forward. Only that passion can give us the energy to keep trying to solve big problems despite our repeated failure to do so.

It does mean, however, that we need to focus more on what has worked in the past, and then do more of it in the present and the future. It is only when we understand how much better things are now that we are open to a rational exploration of what worked in the past.

We need to combine the passion to make the world a better place with results-based experimentation at scale using methods that worked well in the past. This is neither optimism nor pessimism. It is merely focusing on what works.

When we clear out our cognitive biases, we can learn that, though very real problems still exist, those problems are actually fewer in number and milder in severity than the ones previous generations had to deal with. And previous generations did not have all the technologies, skills, organizations, and scientific knowledge that we have today.

If we have an awareness of the progress that previous generations have passed down to us,

a feeling of gratitude for benefitting from their efforts and
a willingness to learn how they achieved that progress
confidence to believe that our problems are not insurmountable, then

we are in a much better position to solve the problems of today.

While today’s problems seem insurmountable, we must never forget that previous generations solved far bigger problems with far fewer resources. Knowing this, we can look forward to the future with both hope and the necessary problem-solving attitude.

Looking to the past enables us to overcome our cognitive biases towards the present. The good old days were never really that good. Utopias cannot exist in the real world. The world as portrayed by the media and politics is highly distorted and dangerously so.

My Substack column and book series are not about psychology, the media, social media, or politics (although I do delve into those topics on occassion). But in order to make my case, I knew that I first needed to clear away some of the false beliefs that you probably had before you started reading this book.

My Substack column and book series explain how humans invented progress, and how we can keep it going. It claims that, by understanding the past, we can copy what works to make the future better. By understanding the past, we can also clear out all the biases that undermine our self-confidence, and shift to solving problems rather than worrying about crises.

So Subscribe to my Substack and it will cure all your problems!

(just kidding, but it might help a little)

Do I have the “credentials” to talk about psychology?

No, I do not, but the above text has been fully endorsed by Stephen Pinker, one of the most famous psychologists in the world. More specifically, he wrote the following about my book “From Poverty to Progress”:

“Progress is not a matter of optimism; it’s an empirical fact of history, obscured by seeing the world through headlines rather than data. And it is not a natural process but the effect of distinctive technological and political circumstances. Magoon has made a valuable contribution in adding to our understanding of the facts and causes of the most important development in human history.”

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and “Enlightenment Now.

If Steven Pinker’s credentials are not good enough for you, then you will just have to take it up with him!

The above was 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.