Do these diverse changes represent “progress” or “betterment”? With their
high productivity, modern societies have the ability, in principle, to provide
everyone on Earth with a high material living standard. They have solved the
fundamental problem of the Agrarian era: underproduction.
Less clear is the relationship between material consumption and well-being.
Research into the preconditions for happiness, which has been conducted
for many years, points to two clear conclusions. First, rising material living
conditions clearly raise levels of well-being as they lift people out of dire
poverty. Second, beyond a certain level, increasing consumption has little
impact on the sense of well-being. In the U.S. and Japan in the last 50 years,
surveys of “contentment” have shown no increase despite massive increases
in consumption levels. Is continued growth necessarily a sign of progress? A
second deep question is whether the growth of the Modern era is sustainable.
Are there ecological limits to growth? And is it possible that the extraordinary
complexity of modern human societies is creating new forms of fragility?
We have seen that the Modern Revolution has solved some of the most
fundamental problems of the pre-modern world. But it has created new
problems as well. Above all, how sustainable is it? Can it possibly endure
as long as the Agrarian civilizations or the Paleolithic communities of earlier
periods of human history? Ŷ
Brown, Big History, chap. 12.
Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 14.
Harrison, Inside the Third World.
Held and McGrew, Global Transformations.
Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century.
Essential Reading
Supplementary Reading