Over the past fifty years, have things been getting better or worse? Brian Martin sets out to address this big question by looking at a range of topics, from climate to feminism, from happiness to war, from deschooling to death. Along the way, he offers personal stories and assessments of key studies. This is an invitation to avoid excessive gloom and unwarranted optimism by thinking broadly about what's been going on, examining driving forces and resistance to them.
Over the past fifty years, have things been getting better or worse? Brian Martin sets out to address this big question by looking at a range of topics, from climate to feminism, from happiness to war, from deschooling to death. Along the way, he offers personal stories and assessments of key studies. This is an invitation to avoid excessive gloom and unwarranted optimism by thinking broadly about what's been going on, examining driving forces and resistance to them.
My friend Jørgen lives in Sweden. We usually use email to communicate, and occasionally connect on Skype. One time, he was in a pessimistic mood about world developments - the war in Ukraine, global warming, racism and so on - and said, "Brian, tell me something positive. What's getting better?" Put on the spot, what did I think of? Smoking and nonviolent action. Perhaps I should have made a joke, but I couldn't think of one. Jørgen's question hit the mark, because I had just started studying whether things have been getting better -or worse. Some young people are so depressed by the prospect of climate catastrophe that they don't want to have children. In contrast, others say we've never had it so good, so we should stop complaining and appreciate our good fortune. I had studied research on happiness. One of the important findings is that most people have their own personal "set point." After changes in their external circumstances, such as a promotion or a serious accident, they tend to return, after several months, to roughly the same happiness level as before. Figures from several countries show that when the per-capita standard of living increases dramatically, average happiness self-ratings hardly change. So maybe things are getting better, but we don't appreciate it. Or maybe they're getting worse, and we adjust to that. Or maybe both: some things are getting better and some worse. That, logically, seems the most likely possibility. There's a systematic bias in my assessments, specifically in the movements I favour. This includes, for example, feminists and peace activists. You might have different priorities, and that's fine. You can come up with different conclusions, and I hope you do on at least some topics. One of the best ways to really understand issues is to engage with clashing viewpoints. So, is the world getting better or is it going down the drain?
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