Is our Vision of Progress Really Progress?

Every year we make a host of new resolutions—steps and actions intended to carry us toward some vision of progress or betterment. Whether or not they are lived up to is a matter of motivation, not the quality of the resolutions themselves. This is true whether we are talking about UN resolutions or New Year’s resolutions. At this time of year, therefore, I find myself wondering: What is it that motivates us to behave the way we do?

We can explore this question in layers of significance, like peeling an onion, or alternatively like a chain of causality, stretching from the proximate and superficial all the way back to the structural and deep.

We all know, for example, the appeal to basic justice that is common in climate circles: that those least responsible are the most impacted. Shouldn’t this clear moral truth motivate action? Shouldn’t those in control of wealth (individuals, nations, corporations, etc.) be convinced to give generously to address the problems? It should, but empirically it does not, so we need to look deeper.

For nations, providing more money requires raising the tax base or shifting resource allocation. Both of these steps run the risk of upsetting constituencies and, ultimately, resulting in backlash. This is a real and consequential possibility.

But policy can be crafted in ways that avoid such pitfalls. Taxation can be focused on extreme wealth, luxury goods, and the like, for example, to alleviate the concerns of those who might fear a threat to their livelihoods. Resources can be allocated to ensure a just transition for various populations. Obstacles in this regard are far from insurmountable, particularly in the face of existential risks. Yet they remain, so we need to look deeper.

What is the culprit at the heart of the onion, the base of the chain? My suggestion would be that it is somehow connected to the way that we, collectively, conceptualize progress and success. This is what motivates us.

How do we envision progress? Do we equate it with GDP growth and per-capita income relative to our geopolitical rivals? Do we equate it with growing market capitalization and market share relative to our industry competitors? Do we equate it with personal wealth, status, and prestige relative to our colleagues, peers, and neighbors?

If the answer is ‘yes’, as I believe it has often come to be, then all the failures and breakdowns outlined above follow naturally, as logical and predictable conclusions. Not only that, their effects will only accelerate and worsen until we choose new ends to guide our actions.

A key discussion at the next COP, the next G20, the next UN General Assembly, therefore, should be unpacking notions of progress. The policy debates, the national positions, the latest crisis—all of these are emanations of an understanding of progress that no longer works.

What is true progress? If we focus our attention on this question, we might be surprised to find the kinds of answers that emerge from caring families, trusting neighborhoods, healthy communities: like love, service, and relationship. We might be able to build new economies around these values, rather than current values of accumulation, wealth, and victory.

Moving in this direction would require sacrifice on the part of all involved; we should be honest about this point. Certain regions, like North America and Western Europe, would have to question their comfortable position of being “winners” of the modern global order. Many other areas would need to give up long-held and deeply-cherished aspirations of enjoying, in their own right, those same enticements of affluence and consumption.

But sacrifice, by its very definition, denotes the exchange of something lower for something higher. What higher good do we stand to gain by sacrificing the excessive material enticements? Prominent among the dividends that I can see are refuge, care, safety, protection, and peace.

The modern order offers phenomenal material spoils to a select few, but offers little protection from countless threats and harms. From the effects of climate change, microplastics, toxic chemicals, misinformation, exploitation, capture of attention, poverty, mass shootings—the list is virtually inexhaustible. The present order is willing to expose us to all of those harms, again and again, in exchange for the opportunity to accumulate profit.

Is this a trade we are willing to continue to make? What if we constructed a world that does care for us, nurtures our families, protects our children? What would a world like that be worth to us?

Unmooring ourselves from dominant notions of progress will not be simple. It will require rethinking many dominant assumptions. For example, can progress for just a few be considered progress at all? If wealth is concentrated in those select few, does it contribute to the wealth of a society? But increasing numbers of people are questioning our trajectory at this fundamental level, asking what it is that should be motivating our behavior.

One way or another, the experiment with pure materialism is coming to an end. The question is whether we choose an alternative through an act of consultative will or whether we are driven to it by escalating horrors and suffering. Let us all choose the former. Let us begin the serious and sober work of defining a new vision of progress and success, a new source of motivation, for ourselves, our communities, and our nations.

Daniel Perell is a Representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations
and a member of the International Environment Forum

SOURCE: https://www.bic.org/perspectives/thoughts-new-year-our-vision-progress-…