NYT on Progress in history

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NYT on Progress in history

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1Urquhart
Feb 15, 2016, 2:46 pm


Is Humanity Getting Better?
By Leif Wenar February 15, 2016

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/is-humanity-getting-better/?acti...

2Muscogulus
Feb 17, 2016, 12:02 pm

Leif Wenar is a professor of philosophy and law at Kings College London. He studied under John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and T.M. Scanlon. He is the author of Blood Oil, subtitled "tyrants, violence, and the rules that run the world."

Here's my one-minute version of his essay, all in Wenar's own words:
The 20th century marked an inflection point — the beginning of humanity’s transition from its ancient crises of ignorance to its modern crises of invention.

Our new crises of invention are so challenging because the bads are so tightly bound with the goods. Breaking the world’s slave chains was a moral triumph; breaking the world’s supply chains is not an option. Climate change is a crisis of invention.

The world now is a thoroughly awful place — compared with what it should be. But not compared with what it was. Keeping both eyes open gives depth to our perception of our own time in history, and makes us better able to see where paths to more progress may be open.

Something is happening — especially since World War II — as we add more energy to our species. What future generations might marvel at most will be if we, in the midst of it, do not see it.
He notes at one point that as humanity has "added more energy" we have also gotten more peaceful. This is a mere association, though, and to suggest that there is a causal relation is the essay’s weak point. Wenar does observe that the apparent trend could end at any moment, and he advises us to be smart and vigilant. But he clearly believes that, as he puts it, "more energy = more humanity."