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Confronting Mainstream Notions of Progress
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 June 2019
Is the world heading for disaster, or getting better and better? Considering the many reasons we have to worry about the future of humanity and the biosphere (cf. Latouche 2009),1 a major puzzle for me is how so many people seriously seem to believe that we can trust that technology and the market will solve problems of global justice and ecological sustainability. Out of curiosity, I have thus followed the late Hans Rosling’s recommendation in Factfulness (2018) and seriously engaged with perspectives largely opposite to my own. After decades of efforts to understand why the world economy is generating abysmal inequalities, environmental degradation, and climate change, I have thus carefully considered the convictions of the so-called New Optimists. Besides Rosling, the most prominent writer in this genre is Steven Pinker, whose book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (2018) argues that the world is getting better and better. This is also the message of Johan Norberg’s book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016). The three authors pursue similar arguments and frequently refer to each other.
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