Both Better Off and Better: Moral Progress amid Continuing Carnage

Abstract

To victims of twentieth-century atrocities, my argument may seem sin ister and hollow. To intellectuals who equate sophistication with cyni cism, it will appear naive and perhaps shallow. To seekers after perfection who find each number wanting because it falls shy of the infinite, it will be a lesson in futility. But to the rest of us, what I have to say may serve as a useful reminder of how fortunate we are to live today and not even just a few hundred years ago. It may also evoke rea sonable hopes for the future and establish a standard by which to meas ure the magnitude of the tasks on the road ahead. I wish to show that in spite of the misery and wickedness that still remain in the world, the human race has enjoyed significant moral progress over the course of history. Only fools would deny that, on the whole, there has been striking material progress. But many believe, quite wrongly, that there is no connection between material and moral advancement or even that growth of comfort entails loss of character. At the very least, the ways in which being better off contributes to being better are poorly understood and inadequately appreciated. I hope to be able to clarify the connection. The facts fall considerably short of proving John Stuart Mill's nine teenth-century hope that humankind is by nature a progressive being.1 There is no assurance that the positive changes achieved through cen turies of effort will continue or that we have once and for all escaped the threats of nuclear annihilation, ideological repression and murder ous intolerance. I have, moreover, no desire to deny or explain away the evidence against moral improvement. Progress is not universal and