Consider Carefully What You Call "Progress" and the Kind of Progress That You Want

CONSIDER CAREFULLY WHAT YOU CALL “PROGRESS” AND THE KIND OF “PROGRESS” THAT YOU WANT

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    6-11

 

ABSTRACT:  Americans, and to a lesser extent, people in general, are entranced by the “new,” the “neat,” and the “slick” and automatically call it “progress.”  Several definitions of “progress” (and by implication, “the good life”) are discussed as they relate to various individual and societal outcomes, and the relation of individual choices to culture change is explored.

KEY WORDS:  progress, technology, hedonism, culture change

There is potential value to identifying cultural trends and the reasons for them, and also value to pointing out how individual choices, taken together, are what make up or validate cultural trends.  U.S. culture has been experiencing an increased rate of cultural change for a hundred years, and the recent emergence of personal electronics has accelerated that change even further.

The colonies that became the United States were founded and peopled by persons who desired greater freedom and greater opportunity.  These foci automatically imply desire for the change that naturally comes from exercising more freedoms and experiencing the results of greater opportunity.  The U.S. has been in a mode of expansion ever since, including amazing wealth-building through inventiveness and use/exploitation of the environment.  This focus and expectation have yielded material comfort and leisure for most citizens.  This period of expansion has coincided with an explosion of scientific knowledge and technological application of this knowledge that has transformed our lives in ways unimaginable to those living even a hundred years ago.  Life has become physically much easier and more secure, due to increased productivity and more labor-saving devices, and most of us would agree that our lives are truly “better” in this regard.  Food is readily available, and transportation enables us to broaden our lives almost at will.  Leisure is much greater, which makes many of us feel “rich” in this regard.

At the same time, though, we are not more secure emotionally and not much happier.  Modern life is much more relationally complex (ever more interdependence economically, increasing instability of social position, and fewer extended families living close by each other) and time-intensive (e.g., “multitasking”), and marriage is less permanent, and these things leave us just as tired and considerably more frazzled and troubled than we were a hundred years ago.  Overnight mail and instant communications via e-mail were hailed as godsends, but all they really accomplished was to allow more procrastination, allow setting work deadlines to be even shorter, and allow us to avoid the complete interpersonal event that is face-to-face interaction, in favor of a stripped-down version of communication that allows for essential concrete information to be sent and received more quickly but that decreases trust and loyalty among senders and recipients.

The leisure created by our material wealth is exploited by businesses that sell us products and experiences that are designed to seem attractive and intriguing.  Television, movies, and similar offerings distract and entertain us, but these activities fill our lives but rarely enhance our lives, suggesting that their main function is to avoid boredom or to avoid any necessity that we create our own interests and entertainment.  (The large number of horror and apocalypse films, in fact, suggest that many people in our society are quite insecure overall and feel as if lurking just out of their vision are malevolent forces (a distant government?, amoral businesses?, aliens?, people they think they know but really don’t?) that could seriously harm them.)

Entertainment presentations focus on what will sell the most tickets, and this narrows our exposure and therefore our outlooks.  Most entertainment focuses on opportunities to observe and identify with figures that we like or wish to be more like (the heroes and heroines).  Thus, we live more in fantasy than in years past, and we lose the responsibility of entertaining ourselves.  “Serious” issues and emotions are rare in entertainment (since they are not so entertaining), and since more of our communications now are more truncated and superficial, “serious” issues and emotions are becoming more rare in interpersonal interaction as well.

Our greater mobility enhances economic opportunities, but this, together with the large numbers of people who now live in expanding towns and cities, have led to greater anonymity for us.  Since we don’t know many people who live around us, we are less trusting and must guard ourselves more.  This anonymity means that parents cannot let children play “in the neighborhood” because they might be harmed, and it has given thieves and sexual predators greater opportunities as well.  This has led to parents organizing “play” for children, such as baseball leagues for five year olds, when children used to organize their own play.  This parental intrusion is leading to children who expect everything to be organized for them by someone else.  (This has had other unforeseen consequences as well, such as disinterest on the part of young doctors, psychologists, etc., in joining professional organizations and taking responsibility for their professions, since they expect that “someone else” always takes care of such things.)

The attractions of entertainment devices (TV, cell phones, computers), together with the dangers perceived to be lurking in the neighborhood, have led to greater childhood obesity (due to lack of physical activity), as well as to a change in social interactions in general.  Interactions are more frequent but also more superficial, and social networking includes for many a competitive aspect, such as who has the most “Facebook friends,” and an element of danger from trusting unknown persons too far. 

Our wealth, economics, and technology have together offered us a life of more and more pleasure and stimulation, and it now seems to be an underlying assumption of most people in our culture that this is desirable.  (“Stimulation” in this context includes all external, attention-getting and attention-holding sources, such as cell phones, computers, television, movies, etc.  Stimulation can also be sought through the outdoors, travel, books, and conservation, of course, but these are “slower” activities, whereas the new stimulation holds the attention by seeming to ask for responses or by extreme emotional stimulation.)  Unfortunately this “fast” pleasure/stimulation approach to living undercuts and ignores the “pleasures” of satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, because these qualities of life are not found through more pleasure and more stimulation.  There is nothing “wrong,” of course, with pleasure and stimulation per se, and in an appropriate mix with other things they have value, but when they crowd out other valuable qualities, our lives become smaller. 

It can be argued that if pleasure and stimulation are “enough” for people, then there is no reason to suggest doing anything differently, but each style of living has its own pros and cons.  Those who live lives of seeking, utilizing, or depending on deeper gratifications, such as satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, would claim that their quality of life is greater than that of people who depend on pleasure and stimulation.  Those who grew up depending on pleasure and stimulation are not fully able to compare the two styles of living, because they have never experienced deeper gratifications.  Those who grew up with and still seek deeper gratifications cannot fully evaluate the pleasure/stimulation style of living because they resist it and opt out of some of it.  This lack of diverse experience is one of the key barriers to making good choices, both individually and as a society.

Such a great focus on the external (the source of the next pleasure and continued stimulation) results in a decrease in self-awareness and self-knowledge, which means that those living in today’s style are less aware of their motives, particularly unconscious motives, and are therefore more subject to decision errors when it comes to important life decisions (vocation, mate choice, etc.).  They are also less knowledgeable about how current choices will affect their lives in ten, twenty, and thirty years, because current pleasure and stimulation seem so much more important than gratifications in the future.

When lives of pleasure and stimulation seem to be attainable (as they seem to us now), we tend also to forget about thinking and its value to our lives.  Everything one could want to know seems to be available through technology, and one gets a job because of one’s educational degree, not for one’s ability to think, so the value of thinking is decreased, and thinking seem like a waste of time.  The uninterrupted noise of the constantly available stimulation decreases quality of thinking as well.  Because of the decline in thinking and in self-awareness, modern life for many people could be said to be shallower and to have less meaning.

 
We have come to believe (without thinking about it) that change is a “normal” part of our way of life, but change is only necessary for economic “progress,” which in the modern world means creating (and consuming) new and different kinds of stimulation.  (Change is also necessary for accommodating the increasing numbers of human beings on the planet, but that is a different issue!)

The disjointedness and hectic nature of modern urban living call for expenditure of more mental energy than did past eras, which has made us view a high energy state as desirable (including those induced by chemicals).  High energy states are incompatible, though, with calmness and contentment—another reason for their decline in our culture.

Lives of pleasure/stimulation make immediate gratifications seem even more important than they otherwise would seem, as compared to longer-term gratifications, so investment by individuals in their futures is declining, as is the investment of the nation in its future.  Even though we are wealthier now, fewer people are saving enough for retirement, and the nation’s infrastructure is deteriorating, since immediate pleasures and consumption have been elevated far above longer-term pleasures.

Unfortunately, it is human nature to value (without really thinking about it) the immediate over future states and to value what is easy over what is harder, so the contributions of human activities that take more effort and/or take longer to produce results seem less valuable and are more difficult to discern for most people.

Lives of pleasure/stimulation make it seem to people as if growing toward greater maturity is not necessary or important.  Looking past immediate pleasures and experiences to focus also on deeper and longer-term gratifications is a characteristic of maturity.  More and more people today are remaining immature and childlike, developing only enough self-control to hold a job (and then only if they are unable to find others to depend on, as when adult “children” continue to live with their parents rather than support themselves, which is even more childlike).

QUESTIONS FOR OUR AGE

Life in modern, urban, industrialized societies, together with stimulating/engaging electronic devices and entertainment, encourage separateness and dependence on immediate pleasures and stimulation.  Some of the results of this style of living are—

• greater wealth, ease of living; fewer fears of want
• more opportunities for more types of work; more opportunities for seeing the world
• less full human interaction (and more superficial interaction)
• less trust among people (and a greater proportion of persons who are incarcerated for illegal behavior)
• less thinking (and reading)
• less self-awareness and self-knowledge
• filling life with new and engaging stimuli that are immediately available, with less focus on stimuli that are only available through planning, through more “work,” or at certain times
• more emphasis on immediate gratification (and less willingness to plan, save, or prepare); less concern about ensuring a good future for oneself
• viewing the major aim of life as immediate pleasure
• less seeking of satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, and maturity (and other longer-term gratifications)
• restricted childhoods for children, with more parental involvement and oversight and less opportunity for children to take responsibility for creating their own lives
• more specific and intense action and time demands on us, leading to greater stress (and leading us to value and seek “high energy” more)

It would be fair to say that the above represents progress in the survival and leisure realms, but it does not at all seem to describe “progress” in the realms of interpersonal relations, self-development, or self-responsibility.  (This is my personal view, of course, as someone who values the longer-term gratifications in life.)  If we are to do the best we can for ourselves and for generations to come, we must ask ourselves whether we prefer the type of living that has evolved for us, as described immediately above, or whether we would prefer a life based on different values.

Every culture will tend to produce a certain type of person, with certain values (regardless of whether or not any cultural institutions plan for it to be that way).  Our culture values and has produced people who value freedom from control (by government, by rules, and by shame, guilt, etc. that are induced directly by others who observe our behavior), privacy, personal choice, maximization of opportunity, immediate gratifications, maximization of pleasure (in large part through choosing technologically-provided stimuli), simpler (and more superficial) human interactions, and avoidance of responsibility for ourselves (instead following formulas and depending on the expectations of others).

A far different kind of people would result from valuing (and urging others to value) self-awareness, self-knowledge, personal responsibility, trustworthiness, empathy and compassion for others, knowing people more deeply, thoughtful decision-making that plans for the future, creativity (daydreaming instead of computer games?), contentment, fulfillment, and maturity.  (It is my contention that this set of values would result in greater self-esteem and happier and more cooperative relating, as well as minimizing conflict, hatred, and violence.)

It may seem odd to talk about choosing one’s values, since most people have no idea how they got to be who they are.  It does not seem as if we made choices for our society to be the way it is, but the daily individual preferences and choices of millions of people brought us to this point (including yours and mine).  The key issue is considering how our daily choices actually change our culture, in one direction or another, and accepting responsibility for those choices. 

It is just as “natural” to choose to spend time playing video games as it is to spend time reading, and it is just as “natural” to choose to spend time on Facebook as it is to talk face-to-face, but these choices shape us (and others) in different directions.  It is “normal” for human beings to adjust to whatever we face, whether that is wanting to play the same video game that our friends are playing or slanting product marketing toward appealing to people who live on their computers, but it is also human to choose other paths, for the sake of their possibly even more desirable results.

This is not an appeal simply for tradition and for keeping things the same as they have been.  This is an appeal for thinking seriously about the total consequences of our choices.  If it were true that interacting on Facebook helped people in general to be more empathic and compassionate, then that would be progress, but it appears that Facebook only helps people to be more socially facile and to believe that they are more important than they really are.  And, many people are able to be much more nasty and cruel electronically than they would be face-to-face.

You have an impact (not “you can have an impact,” but in fact you do have an impact, no matter what you choose and even if you fail to make a conscious choice at all).  Think about the total results of encouraging your children to play more video games versus taking them to the park (or wilderness) yourself—the results for them, for you, and for the people whom you touch in doing these things.  Consider ways that you could give your children the opportunity to develop the abilities to engage in both short-term stimulations and pleasures and longer-term gratifications.  (This takes time, quiet, and the application of thought to self-awareness, creating, and problem-solving.)  Think about the total results of looking on-line for someone else’s solution to your personal problem versus thinking hard about it yourself or talking it over seriously with a good friend.  Think about the total results of surfing the web for something interesting versus watching a thought-provoking movie with your spouse and talking about it (or taking a class together).  Think about what kind of culture you would like to live in, and act in ways that promote that vision.

The difficulty for the individual in considering how to shape culture is that it always seems as if one’s own choices are too small to matter, but it is the aggregate of these individual choices that actually constitute culture change and trends.  Your choices are just as impactful as almost everyone else’s, so if you care about our culture and how it is changing, act in ways that push it in the direction that you think best!

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