Things Are Getting Better
In the podcast/Substack/Twitter (yes, Twitter) circles I follow, it’s common knowledge that things are getting worse. In these circles, it’s common to refer to a “meta-crisis” facing humanity, a swirling mix of environmental, economic, political, cultural, and spiritual crises that are self-reinforcing, pushing humanity to the brink.
Public intellectuals, like Steven Pinker, who cut the opposite way and argue that modernization (industrialization, science, capitalism, and democracy) has made things better, get crapped on pretty regularly in the meta-crisis circles. The idea that things have gotten better and continue to get better is seen as, at best, blinkered optimism available only to the privileged, or, at worst, intentional propaganda for oligarchical, neo-imperial forces.
But . . . and hear me out . . . what if things are actually getting better? This is an important question not just for public policy and intellectual debates, but for our own personal growth and emotional health. This is because there is a symmetry between how we view the structure of our social world (are things better?) and how we view the structure of our inner world (can things inside me get better?).
If things are indeed getting worse, and human progress is just an illusion, then it also makes perfect sense that we live in a cold, dead, random universe in which chaos, decay, and crises would always be at hand. But if things are getting better––if there is a long arc of progress in human history––then it also makes sense that the universe itself has some directional force to it. In other words, if things are getting better, it might be because the fabric of the universe is pulling in this direction. And if the universe is pulling in this direction, and I’m part of the universe, then my fundamental nature is to move in this direction.
Here are some recent pieces of evidence that things are getting better:
From NBC news on Dec. 23, “Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong.”
This morning, psychologist-researcher Jean Twenge tweeted out the results of a new study on American youth. Kids these days are supposed to be a mess but . . .
Here are 177 reasons to believe things are getting just a little bit better (from the artist David Byrne’s online magazine Reasons to be Cheerful.)
These could be seen as random, small anecdotes. But I’ve linked to datashowing many other ways that things have gotten better not just in the short term but over the past several hundred years. To go back further all one needs to do is read ancient history and religious texts. Gods and kings were brutal and inequality and suffering occurred in ways that shock us today.
I write this post not to pat ourselves on the back and relax into a job well done. Instead, I want to highlight this evidence to support a larger idea that things are getting better because there is some fundamental force in the universe that pulls in this direction. It’s not a straight line by any means (obviously!), but some brilliant if odd minds (like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Merlin Donald, Ken Wilber, Ervin Laszlo, David Deutsch, and Bernard Kastrup) have presented various lines of evidence and argument that support the idea that evolution moves not entirely randomly but rather towards greater complexity and consciousness.
In human history, this looks like simpler ways of viewing and acting toward each other and the world evolving into more complex ways of viewing and acting toward each other world. For Merlin Donald this took the form of human cognition evolving from simpler, embodied forms of communication and understanding (which he called mimesis) to much later, more complex forms of communication and understanding (which he called theory). The sociologist Robert Bellah outlined the evolution of religion from a simpler tribal religion that enacts our relationship with the universe and others to modern, individualistic, complex and therapeutic spiritualities. From a macro-social perspective, we can see the evolution from chiefdoms to empires to representative democracy. And of course in human practical, technological understanding, we can see the long march to the scientific worldview that predominates today.
Over the long run, the move has been from simple to complex, from less conscious to more conscious. The psychologist Robert Kegan outlined five psychological developmental stages humans can move through from birth through old age, each stage representing greater awareness (or consciousness) of who one is and how one is related to others and the world. Few people progress through all five stages, but action in the world tends to pull one from one stage to the next over time.
Things get better.
I wanted to write all this down because, as I start the new year, I’m feeling really connected to this idea of a universal, evolutionary force pulling toward greater complexity, consciousness, and wholeness. It doesn’t happen linearly, cleanly, or quickly. Obviously! Nazis, climate change, and the list goes on! The evolutionary pull isn’t something we can be complacent toward—at least not on an individual level, in an individual life time. In this single life we’ve been given, we don’t have a lot of choices. The circumstances of our birth and family, our privilege and limitations, are given to us at birth. If we’re lucky, we become more aware over time, and when we become aware enough to choose, we have the opportunity to choose to cooperate with this evolutionary force.
What do such choices look like?
Choosing to engage in practices that bring greater self-awareness and self-understanding, like Internal Family Systems!
Choosing to engage in practices that help us see complexity and nuance in our relationships, like Authentic Relating!
Choosing to engage in practices that allow us access to deeper emotions and connect us more firmly to our bodies, like breathwork and conscious dancing!
Choosing to spend more time in our heart space, more time loving and helping, and more time listening
In 2024, my aim is to make these choices again and again and again. Things are getting better, and we can help this universal, evolutionary process along one choice at a time.