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“Nothing is more responsible for the ‘good old days’ than a bad memory.” Our frame of reference profoundly shapes our perception of reality. Whether you’re a pessimist or optimist, radical or centrist, this talk is worth your time:
TL:DW? The world has been improving, whether your timescale is decades or centuries, by almost every measure: violence, poverty, war, lifespan. This is a similar message to the Hans Rosling talk I shared yesterday.
Pinker mentions several cognitive biases that help explain why progress has made us *more pessimistic.* He also highlights the role of media. Even as the world has gotten better since WWII, the tone of our media has become more and more negative: https://www.youtube.com/embed/yCm9Ng0bbEQ
Again, frames of reference are powerful. Our understanding of abstract concepts depend on them. But so, too, does something as basic as our perception of color: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/06/sexism-racism-never-diminishes-even-everyone-becomes-less-sexist-racist.html
My frame of reference is humanity’s deep history: evolutionary biology, ancient history, modern history, across many times and places. I’ve read a lot of history!
My understanding of progress was profoundly shaped by hearing @sapinker present his work on violence, an early version of what later became The Better Angels of Our Nature, when I was a PhD student in political economy at Harvard. https://stevenpinker.com/publications/better-angels-our-nature
Before I got sick, became disabled, and dropped out, the animating questions of my academic study were essentially: “Why are some people poor, while others are rich? Why are some countries poor, while others are rich? How did rich countries become rich?”
People see “Harvard” and they make some strong assumptions about me, so it’s worth explaining for a second *why* I became interested in those questions.
I spent a lot of time in my youth living in poverty. I didn’t have health insurance until I went to college. (I had bouts of bacterial bronchitis and never took antibiotics.) I missed probably half my days of school.
By the time I was in high school, I was often eating one meal a day, sometimes nothing. Our electricity and water were frequently shut off. I moved around a lot because we were constantly getting evicted.
In spite of all those challenges, I had a lot of *advantages* that helped me get to Princeton and later, Harvard. The emphasis on reading and unwavering parental support for my education played a big role.
I was good at school but I also worked *incredibly hard.* I lived in safe neighborhoods. I had teachers who believed in me. I saw school as my one shot to live a very different life.
But bank shots are no way to create a fair and just society. My story’s not a model that scales. So, I wanted to understand, “What does scale?” Not just for Americans, but for...everyone.
I lived in Sierra Leone for a few months after the end of the civil war. I lived in China for a few years during its heady embrace of capitalism. (A decent part of Twitter thinks China is still a communist country. Muahaha, is all I have to say about that).
I spent cumulatively eight months in East Africa doing research, living with people, and learning a lot about the histories of these vastly different countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda. I took a bus to Goma, which was, in retrospect, a dumb thing to do.
And what I learned from all this reading, travel, and training is that the question of violence and the question of poverty & prosperity are almost impossible to separate. My advisor even wrote a book called, “Prosperity and Violence.” https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-393-05038-7
I have been living in a cocoon of severe illness for 8 yrs. Coming out of that, it’s surprised me how pessimistic people are about our system, when *not that much has changed* and *things are pretty good.*
Equally good for everyone, everywhere? No. But certainly improving, for a long time, for most people. Improving in a way that implies the need for *once in a century reforms* to reduce inequality, not revolution.
What systems, institutions, politics keep people safe, reduce poverty, and support human creativity and innovation? There’s an entire academic field that, drawing on examples from all societies, across all of time, has been asking these questions for decades.
And one of my biggest problems with grad school, which might have driven me out of the academy, anyway, had I not gotten sick, was how little engagement there is by most of these academics with the public.
If you’re curious, these two syllabi represent, broadly speaking, the scope of the two fields I was most interested in while in graduate school. These folks *rarely* publish in the popular press or go on TV.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dziblatt/files/gov_2105-fieldseminar-syllabus-2010.pdf
http://web.econ.ku.dk/bentzen/Syllabus2325_Fall_2012.pdf
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dziblatt/files/gov_2105-fieldseminar-syllabus-2010.pdf http://web.econ.ku.dk/bentzen/Syllabus2325_Fall_2012.pdf
In sum, I agree with almost EVERY radical critique. However, my training and experiences make me skeptical of many radical solutions and slogans. I want all that anger, pain and sacrifice to translate into durable, meaningful change. I have so many questions no one can answer.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached a moment where 1) the critique and 2) the solution and 3) the means to arrive at that solution have collapsed into a single concept such that if you disagree with the solution or the means, it is ASSUMED you disagree with the critique.
Or we just Rorschach the sh** out of the slogans until everyone is happy to believe that their interpretation of amorphous concepts are the same as everyone else’s understanding. (But maybe that’s OK? Maybe that’s part of how you build a coalition?)
I worry about whatever magic echo-chamber, bot sauce makes tweets like this go viral: https://twitter.com/lexi4prez/status/1273434852134707200?s=21
It’s hard to realize that you might not be as radical as a lot of the people around you. Or that someone you thought was a part of your crew might not be as radical as you thought. https://twitter.com/itsknivesonly/status/1273771382954881025?s=21
This thread is a loooooong way of saying that I don’t arrive at my “beliefs” lightly. Also seriously, I’m like, two inches away. I think:
1) The critiques are correct
2) The solutions are worth scrutiny
3) We already have the means—our democracy
1) The critiques are correct
2) The solutions are worth scrutiny
3) We already have the means—our democracy
4) The streets are a part of that democracy and our right to assemble is enshrined in the Constitution, but it and many of our other rights are under threat everyday.
5) But I am basically optimistic that our crises will result, as they have every other time in the past, in much-needed change.
6) We need to pay attention to the way our youth are being radicalized, on both the left and the right. It may mean nothing (we have been here before) but I never want to assume that our system is infinitely resilient just because it’s survived so many tests before.
When authoritarian radicals win, we end up with a lot of people dead and a government no one wants. People who say “we are already there” disrespect all the blood spilled in the 20th century in honest to God totalitarian regimes.
And yes, as someone with a whole lot of family that fled certain death, married to someone with family who had to do the same, I don’t even want to begin to flirt with that.
