The Myth of Progress
- Thread starter Thomas
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Human rights is a material benefit?
Can you please state succinctly what your definition of progress is?
For me an easier life, less work, less starvation, more equality, less oppression more freedom is progress.
Can you please state succinctly what your definition of progress is?
For me an easier life, less work, less starvation, more equality, less oppression more freedom is progress.
Lol....
Immaterial benefits....
Immaterial benefits....
Global perspective of privilege?
Again... I need your defintion...example.
Here in the US I have privilege as a white hetero male cis gender human, differing locations in the globe that may not be the same.
If you are lucky enough to earn more than £10,000 per year in the UK, that puts you amongst the top 16%, of the richest people on Earth. Your income is more than 4 times the global median. The median average salary for all workers in the UK is £27,756.
If you are interested, you can see how rich you are, compared to the rest of the world, link below.
www.givingwhatwecan.org
If you are interested, you can see how rich you are, compared to the rest of the world, link below.
How Rich Am I?
Calculate how rich you are compared to the rest of the world. Are you in the top global income percentile? Does your household income make you wealthy?
www.givingwhatwecan.org
Out of curiosity I plugged in a dollar amount for theoretical income, I’m in the US, that for a family of 2 adults and 2 children is so low that survival without help from an outside source would be virtually impossible. The website tool, however, announced how wealthy I am in comparison to most of the world. Without taking into consideration other factors, such as what it costs to live where one lives, the tool is of no consequence.
Countries vary in income and amenities? Shocker!
Hence exactly why I said america...but we are feeding and clothing a larger percentage of the world than we ever have. We are living longer than we ever have as a human race. (Unless you want to use some 3 hundred year old in the Bible as "evidence". More people have access to health care. Folks travel further, see more of the world.
By most any metric other than mythological we have progressed over the millenia and continue to do so.
Now do we have anecdotal evidence of places with issues? Of course we do...
But globally...on the average....progress.
Me? I make less money in the past ten years annually than I have in the past 40. But I have also cut my expenses 10 fold.
No .. that is not true.
GDP per capita, is a good measure of what goods can be bought by an individual.
Imports / exports .. come on! You know..
But if you lived in a shack in the woods in the US, with no running water, no electric, gas or wifi, and grew your own food, you could live on less than you are living on now. This is the lifestyle thrust on hundreds of millions of people, who go to bed hungry at night.
But mean income is not the same thing as GDP per capita, and GDP per capita was not within the purview of the website tool.
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I don’t think you understand what I wrote. I didn’t deny the horrible conditions that all too many people daily have to live through and deal with. I didn’t deny that love and justice demand that we each do our part to alleviate and correct those conditions. I simply noted that the tool on the website you directed us to was, to be charitable, inadequate.
Maybe .. but not that bad..
Much of the economic data we use to understand the world – for instance on the goods and services bought or produced by households, firms and governments, or the incomes they receive – is initially recorded in terms of the units in which these transactions took place. That means this data starts out being expressed in a variety of local currencies – as so many rupees, US dollars, or yuan, etc. – and without adjusting for inflation over time. This is known as being in ‘current prices’, or in ‘nominal’ terms.
Before these figures can be meaningfully compared, they need to be converted into common units.
International dollars (int.-$) are a hypothetical currency that is used for this. It is the result of adjusting both for inflation within countries over time and for differences in the cost of living between countries.
The goal of international-$ is to provide a unit whose purchasing power is held fixed over time and across countries, such that one int.-$ can buy the same quantity and quality of goods and services no matter where or when it is spent.
The price level in the US is used as the benchmark – or ‘numeraire’ – so that one 2017 int.-$ is defined as the value of goods and services that one US dollar would buy in the US in 2017.
<<referenced site>>
..so for example, in the US, the poverty line would be ~$35 int. a day (GDP per capita $60,000),
whereas in China, it would be ~$3 int. a day(GDP per capita $13,500).
i.e. it takes into account the cost of living
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Just to clarify the OP, material benefits are not in doubt. Progress in that sense is not in question – John Gray's issue is with those secular humanists who believe that human nature is getting inherently better.
Take, for example, the Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – A version appears ion Ancient Egyptian wrings circa 2040–1650. It is universal. The point is, the rule still applies, and adhesion to its principle is no more in evidence today than it was 2,000 years ago.
A person looks up and sees the stars. Another looks through a telescope. Another through a radio telescope. Another through an array of devices mounted on a platform launched into orbit ... each person sees further out (and deeper back), each knows and learns more, their insight and understanding far exceeds those who went before ... but is that later person morally and ethically better, or superior to, the former?
As for 'human rights' – these are negotiable, and can be suspended in law under certain conditions. Here in the UK we looking to undo human rights advances that were instituted while we were a members of the European Union.
According to the UN, one in three women will suffer sexual violence in their lifetimes.
More and more of the global wealth resides in the bank accounts of fewer and fewer individuals.
If we were evolving somehow into 'better people', then laws like the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments would be no more than notes in history books ... but they aren't.
Ethically, morally, 'progress' is not inevitable, nor evidential, as the myth supposes.
Take, for example, the Golden Rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – A version appears ion Ancient Egyptian wrings circa 2040–1650. It is universal. The point is, the rule still applies, and adhesion to its principle is no more in evidence today than it was 2,000 years ago.
A person looks up and sees the stars. Another looks through a telescope. Another through a radio telescope. Another through an array of devices mounted on a platform launched into orbit ... each person sees further out (and deeper back), each knows and learns more, their insight and understanding far exceeds those who went before ... but is that later person morally and ethically better, or superior to, the former?
As for 'human rights' – these are negotiable, and can be suspended in law under certain conditions. Here in the UK we looking to undo human rights advances that were instituted while we were a members of the European Union.
According to the UN, one in three women will suffer sexual violence in their lifetimes.
More and more of the global wealth resides in the bank accounts of fewer and fewer individuals.
If we were evolving somehow into 'better people', then laws like the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments would be no more than notes in history books ... but they aren't.
Ethically, morally, 'progress' is not inevitable, nor evidential, as the myth supposes.
The golden rule in Christianity is to love God, and to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves. This is sacrificial, we put God first, our neighbours second and ourself last. If we truly wanted to lift our brothers and sisters out of grinding poverty and starvation, we can only do this by giving up some of our own resources.
Sen McGlinn
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and (in a comment):
"The idea of humanity's spiritual progress marches on, is modern, founded on misinterpreted religious texts. There's nothing in the Abrahamics, as far as I know, that hints of this spiritual 'progress'."
Which is your predominant idea: that the Abrahamic religions do or do not see history as redemptive?
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