Despite being fed a string of doom and gloom in life, there are good reasons to be more hopeful than most.
Think about 200 years ago, about 90% of the world's people lived in extreme poverty. Now, less than 9 percent do.
In times of complexity, the skillful use of reason and flexibility is key to the pursuit of a better life.
The world is not as bad as we think.
Sometimes it feels like we're living in a very, very crazy world. We've been grappling with global pandemics, climate change, intense political sectarianism, escalating racial tensions, fires, floods, mass shootings, electronic surveillance, and loss of privacy, and the list is on and on. Despite the constant streams of doom and gloom, there are good reasons to be more promising than most of us.
By every measure, the world has gotten better, not worse, over the past few hundred years. For example, about 200 years ago, about 90 per cent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. Now, less than 9 percent do. Covid-19 has killed more than 4 million people worldwide in the past 18 months, which is truly a tragedy. However, about a century ago, the 1918 pandemic virus killed about 50 million people worldwide, and now we have a quarter of the population. So that's the equivalent of about 200 million people today.
Let's avoid dualism about human progress, either by debate. We can agree that humanity has made tremendous progress and that there is still much room for improvement. As Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker argues in The Enlightenment Now, what we call progress (e.g., humans live longer, happier, healthier) is largely due to enlightened rationality, science, and humanism. Evolution has given us big brains, and when we make good use of them and work together, we can accomplish amazing things.
While we have made progress, the reality is that we have not achieved as much as we can or should have done. Political polarization and cognitive bias often hinder our progress on complex issues such as climate change, vaccination, privacy, individual freedom, health care, homelessness, and more. It's not a matter of left and right. Rather, it is a common problem left and right. The prejudices of many people who distort our ideas, judgments, and behavior affect liberals and conservatives alike. There is no need to point fingers to determine who is more to blame. In fact, when we do, that's part of the problem.
Our world is changing at an alarming rate. There are nearly 8 billion people on our planet. We have some extremely complex social problems to solve. These aren't going away in order to improve on a societal level, and perhaps it's helpful to step back a bit (or a lot) to get a more basic perspective. One of the ultimate questions we should be asking ourselves is: Why are we here in the first place?
I don't know what the purpose of life is. But let's simplify the question a bit, rather than asking what is the purpose of life. I'm not going to give one, but two defensible answers: One of the purposes of life is to be happy. By happiness I mean life satisfaction, not more of a fleeting pleasure like sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. While this happiness certainly has a place in life, focusing solely on short-lived happiness can lead to a lot of unhappiness.
We can see that most of our lives are devoted to pursuing happiness in one way or another. At the same time, most of us would rather avoid suffering as much as possible unless, in the long run, it leads to greater happiness (e.g., studying hard in school, training marathons). From an evolutionary perspective, happiness is the reward for meeting our survival needs. Thus, the "good life" can be thought of as a happiness full of deep roots.
The second purpose of life is to change, to learn, to grow and to improve. Our evolution is based on adaptation. We adapt to environmental conditions in order to survive, mate and raise offspring. Adaptation first helps us survive and thrive. Adaptation itself requires change, and change is inherent in the universe.
"The world is sustained by change." "Change is not permanent, but change is permanent. Rush "Tom Sawyer"
Personally, our survival depends on our change, learning, and growth. The better we learn and develop, the more likely we are to survive. Again, happiness is often a reward for us to learn, adapt, survive, and thrive. When we learn, we often experience joy because the dopamine reward system is involved in the learning process. When we learn to encourage and reinforce the learning process, good feelings arise. It can be proved that we exist because we learn and grow, but for learning and growth.
Unless we are flexible, we cannot learn and grow. When we become rigid, we cannot grow, learn, adapt, improve, thrive and be happy. This occurs at the social level of political polarization and various forms of extremism, but rigidity or "intransigence" also occurs individually. Various mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, occur when a person sees themselves, the world, the future, or the past in an overly negative way. Flexibility is the key to getting us out of our rigid prison.
"No one has ever walked in the same river twice, because it's not the same river, and he's not the same person."
One of the great challenges of our time is that our world is changing much faster than organisms are evolving, especially in terms of the rate at which technology is evolving. Take, for example, the proliferation of fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Again, this is a problem for both the left and the right. This is a human problem because we simply didn't evolve to receive and collate the vast amounts of information that are now drowning us. As our world changes faster than ever, we need to increase our flexibility in the game to meet the many challenges we face.
Therefore, those who are stiff and inflexible are disciples of death. Whoever is soft and yields is a disciple of life. ” "Keep it loose. But don't let go. If you cling to it, you lose control. ”
Some of life's challenges are really quite daunting. While we have made progress in many areas, we often move forward in our own way. Sometimes the challenge of finding ways to collaborate is greater than the problem we're trying to solve! If you're tired of anger, hatred, and extremist, unhelpful rhetoric from both sides, you might think to yourself that there must be a better way.
We need to subtly pursue change and growth through reason and calm. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. That's why I advocate for what I call a "reasonable good life." We use our reasons to pursue a good life in this complex world, and we also use this reason to accept Voltaire's wisdom, "Perfection is the enemy of goodness." A reasonable good life is a good enough life.