Claude Lévi-Strauss theorised that human progress actually happens without a clear goal and doesn’t follow a straight line, but rather goes in leaps, changing direction…
I wasn’t expecting that from Levi Strauss of all people.
Martin Luther King Jr’s similar quote is that the moral arc may not be straight, but it bends towards justice. I’m far from being an optimist, but i think humanity generally progresses to better moral values. The hiccups and backlash we see are typically from people who are resistant to changes because they are more comfortable with what they grew up to be familiar in, even if it’s wrong.
“Better moral values” is an interesting phrase, since moral values are the thing by which you’d judge if a thing is better or worse, which just means that better values are those that are closer to whatever one’s own values are.
It seems to me that it should look like this is the case to a typical person regardless of where people’s morals go, because the average person can be expected to have the average values of their time (otherwise how would those be the average values?), and as such, a typical person is going to see a world that mostly agrees with them on what is fundamentally right and wrong, but which historically did not and which eventually changes into values close to their own with time, without there needing to be any kind of arc or force of history that shape’s people’s values towards a given conclusion.
Also, I’d argue, because reality isn’t a zero-sum game. We simply earn more by working together and helping each other, and so more altruistic societies are more resilient. Over time this might average out into morally better societies winning out more than they lose out
A lot also depends on what the society does. If it’s only resource extraction, you give people a pick axe and whip them until they start digging. If you want people to do science and engineering, you have to take care of people or you’ll have subpar results.
But a society that does just resource extraction won’t outperform a society that does research and engineering. It all kinda plays into everything else
Claude Lévi-Strauss theorised that human progress actually happens without a clear goal and doesn’t follow a straight line, but rather goes in leaps, changing direction…
See Race and History chap. 5
Surely these alpha brains were discussing this!
I wasn’t expecting that from Levi Strauss of all people.
Martin Luther King Jr’s similar quote is that the moral arc may not be straight, but it bends towards justice. I’m far from being an optimist, but i think humanity generally progresses to better moral values. The hiccups and backlash we see are typically from people who are resistant to changes because they are more comfortable with what they grew up to be familiar in, even if it’s wrong.
“Better moral values” is an interesting phrase, since moral values are the thing by which you’d judge if a thing is better or worse, which just means that better values are those that are closer to whatever one’s own values are.
It seems to me that it should look like this is the case to a typical person regardless of where people’s morals go, because the average person can be expected to have the average values of their time (otherwise how would those be the average values?), and as such, a typical person is going to see a world that mostly agrees with them on what is fundamentally right and wrong, but which historically did not and which eventually changes into values close to their own with time, without there needing to be any kind of arc or force of history that shape’s people’s values towards a given conclusion.
Because those with bad morals just don’t last as long. Rebellion and corruption bring them down sooner or later.
Also, I’d argue, because reality isn’t a zero-sum game. We simply earn more by working together and helping each other, and so more altruistic societies are more resilient. Over time this might average out into morally better societies winning out more than they lose out
That doesn’t mean they can’t lose out, though
A lot also depends on what the society does. If it’s only resource extraction, you give people a pick axe and whip them until they start digging. If you want people to do science and engineering, you have to take care of people or you’ll have subpar results.
But a society that does just resource extraction won’t outperform a society that does research and engineering. It all kinda plays into everything else