December 31 / Eve of Holy Name Day

The end of the year is a time for making lists, more so the end of a decade. So, here’s a list of rules for writers, one of which I have already violated:[1]

1. Never under any circumstances quote Nietzsche about anything that fails to kill you making you stronger;
2. Be very sparing in your use of first person singular pronouns, because (i) your reader isn’t nearly as interested in you as you are yourself, and (ii) when you are writing an opinion piece, you don’t really need to say that something is “my opinion.”
3. Writing humorous pieces is ok, but only if you are, in fact, funny. Not being a funny person is not a character flaw but trying to be funny when you’re not may be, albeit a minor one.
4. When you finish a piece, go back and cut out your favorite sentence; it’s probably too clever by half.

And, for the rule already violated in this piece:

5. Never under any circumstances quote or play off of the most famous line from any A-list work of literature: “To be or not to be…vegan” gets a thumbs down, as does “truth is beauty, beauty truth, and that is all you need to know (except for where you parked your car last night).” The only exception to this rule applies solely to Nobel Prize winners: so, The Sound and the Fury is an allowable title, as is For Whom the Bell Tolls (because I don’t suppose we can blame Hemingway for it becoming a complete cliché), but Horseman Pass By awaits Larry McMurtry’s laureateship.

Of course, I’ve already violated Rule # 5. I have three defenses to the charge: (1) this blog is nominally about equity, the premise of which is that rules occasionally need to be broken; (2) the quote was from a Dickens book other than A Christmas Carol, which at this time of the year qualifies as a mitigating factor, and (3) it seems like a shorthand way to summarize my reaction to an editorial by Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times, “This has Been the Best Year Ever.”

Mr. Kristoff starts out this way:

If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.

The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.

Knowing that his headline is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, Mr. Kristoff beats the reader to the punch:

But … but … but President Trump! But climate change! War in Yemen! Starvation in Venezuela! Risk of nuclear war with North Korea. …

And then:

You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralyzing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but also helpless.

The piece is well worth reading closely, if for no other reason than that it makes an essentially quantitative argument for the notion that the quality of life is better than ever. Certainly numbers can deceive. Ask Dallas Cowboy fans. America’s Team outscored its opponents by 113 points in their 16-game season (for the math-impaired among us, that would be a touchdown a game, with one two-point conversion thrown in), and yet somehow managed to lose half of those games and miss the playoffs. If rankings were determined by comparative scores, or even highlight reels, Cowboy fans would be in front of their televisions this weekend, rather than taking down the Christmas decorations and cleaning out the refrigerator.

Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to look at the state of the world as Oxford economist Max Roser, quoted by Mr. Kristoff, summarizes it: “We are some of the first people in history who have found ways to make progress against these problems. … We have changed the world. How awesome is it to be alive at a time like this? … Three things are true at the same time. The world is much better, the world is awful, the world can be much better.” In other words, this is neither the best of times (which are in fact to come) nor the worst (evil having already done its worst, and failed). That seems pretty much spot-on.

Mr. Roser also captures the truly interesting thing to me about Mr. Kristoff’s article: it assumes that there really is such a thing as progress, as things being better for everyone, and that history can be guided in that direction. The concept that history is progressive is shared by Christianity and by Enlightenment philosophy, which are so much at odds in some many other ways. Christians think the teleological nature of history to be a matter of divine providence, where the Enlightenment thought that human capabilities alone could pull it off. But both thought the achievement of true, universal human flourishing was not only possible but inevitable (even if they had profoundly different view of what constituted flourishing.) More importantly, both assume that Life with a capital L has a purpose, and that individual lives gain their purpose from advancing the cause.

Sadly, such views are not without controversy today. Many people, and powerful ones at that, see life as a zero-sum affair, with everyone’s win being someone else’s loss. The only purpose in life is individual self-realization, the function of government is to prevent interference with individual freedom, but not more, and collective advancement is at most a byproduct of individual accomplishment. Social justice, the thought goes, is a fiction imposed by the weak as a means of restricting the rights of the powerful. Google “F. A. Hayek” (Margaret Thatcher’s favorite philosopher, and Ronald Reagan’s) and you’ll get the idea.

This is a profoundly pagan view of reality. On the other hand, Mr. Kristoff in fact casts a vision strikingly similar to that from today’s reading from the Book of Isaiah (Chapter 65):

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
 They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.

The things that Mr. Kristoff cites as making 2019 the best year ever are the same things that Isaiah forecast as the manifestation of God’s kingdom: no more infant death, or early death from disease; no more homelessness; no more working only to enrich others. But it also includes things – such as reconciliation between ancient enemies – at which we are not doing very well, and may actually be doing worse than a generation previous. (See “Cold War, End of”).  While we may not be at the “end of history,” in Francis Fukuyama’s unfortunate phrase, it helps to be reminded that there is reason to hope that history will have a happy ending, and that we are moving, even if only stumbling, towards it.

Happy New Year.

[1] Hint: take another look at the title.