Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/04/28/Niall_Ferguson_and_Peter_Schwartz_on_Human_Progress
Historian Niall Ferguson debates futurist author Peter Schwartz on the overall nature of human progress.
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Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz present Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress as part of The Long Now Foundation’s Seminars about Long-term Thinking.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.
He is also a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
He is most recently the author of the books The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006) and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2004).
Peter Schwartz is cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network (GBN), a unique membership organization and worldwide network of strategists, business executives, scientists, and artists based in Emeryville, California. Established in 01988, GBN specializes in corporate scenario planning and research on the future of the business environment. From 01982 to 01986, Peter headed scenario planning for the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies in London. His team conducted comprehensive analyses of the global business and political environment and worked with senior management to create successful strategies.
Schwartz is the co-author of both the 01999 books The Long Boom, and When Good Companies Do Bad Things: Responsibility and Risk in an Age of Globalization, and is the author of the 01991 book, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. He is a member of the Long Now Foundation’s Board of Directors.
You and I both know the economic reality is that if you want to put a roof over your head, food on the table, have health insurance, and work in a career with any sort of job security, you need the type of job for which at least an undergrad degree is required. It just gets even worse if you start talking about providing for a family as well.
Folks do live beyond their means, but simply providing the basics requires indebtedness that takes decades to crawl from under.
Our system of debt and credit push market prices so high that the option of working and saving is unfeasible. Debt is de facto the only option available.
The median individual income of a male HS grad is $29k. For a male w/ a Bachelor’s it is $51k. At which level of income, and in what sort of career, would it then be possible to put a roof over your head, food on the table, and have health insurance?
Who says most people need a college education? (If I remember correctly, most jobs even in America don’t require a college degree). Also, most people can walk or ride a bike to work or school. Those options aren’t so bad, it’s just that it’s more convenient to do otherwise.
I would agree, though, that our society has been living beyond their means and are way too addicted to credit. However, it is possible that we could be entering what is called a credit revulsion, which would reverse this.
“Many people are ill informed and are completely unaware that other options exist.”
So?
“the other options may be so “bad” as to not be options at all.”
Subsistence living doesn’t seem so bad to me. Neither does being frugal or fiscally responsible.
“please articulate for me the way in which a contemporary American can get a college education, a good job, a roof over his head, and a means of transportation without drowning in debt.”
Working, savings.
Also, please articulate for me the way in which a contemporary American can get a college education, a good job, a roof over his head, and a means of transportation without drowning in debt.
As I see it, overwhelming debt is de facto the way of life in America. There are other options, but they are not feasible and therefore cannot be considered options for many people.
You misunderstand my argument if you think that I am saying that we have not progressed.
It is not necessarily a false dichotomy simply because one can opt not to live according to societal norms. Many people are ill informed and are completely unaware that other options exist. Also, the other options may be so “bad” as to not be options at all.
False dichotomy. You don’t have to live in accordence with “society”, which is debt-laden consumptionism, or have to live on the streets. There are other ways.
Second, “a hiccup” can occur in any economic system. Either way, goods are scarce. Things don’t just pop up because we want them to. So, this is not an argument that can be used to say humans have not progressed. Scarcity will always be with us.
I understand that the point is highly debatable and to some extent depends on individual subjective interpretation of the terms involved, but I disagree it is only a matter of semantics.
You talk about the element of choice being a differentiating factor, but what sort of choice is it to either live withing this system of debilitating debt or live on the street? That is no choice at all. One hiccup in the system, one break in pay, and food/water, a home and cleanliness disappears.
Ferguson is quoting Clark’s A Farewell to Alms. The “human condition” is dependent on intelligence - increase in IQ are heredity, evolutionary process. In Hart’s Understanding Human History, he states that the Neolithic revolution, was drivin by IQ. The point is, that the human condition is constantly trapped in Malthusian traps,
Well, if you’re speaking about the West, I have to strongly disagree. We’re way passed subsistence living, to the point of excess and indulgence. Subsistence living requires only food & water, a safe place to sleep/dwell, and a way to keep clean. The fact that people get into endless debt and such is a lifestyle choice. So to me your argument is simply semantic. Human demand has shifted (as it always will once other demands have been met), but I don’t believe we’re worse off because of it.
A strong argument can be made that, as comfortable as our lifestyles have become, we are still a civilization comprised primarily of subsistence workers controlled by elites.
Sometimes, though, people seem to forget the former elites were a hereditary nobility or a theocratic clergy and today the elites are largely established by meritocracy.
I do not think he is necessarily arguing that material wealth is the primary measure of human progress. Look at the context he establishes: humanity trapped in subsistence living and being manipulated by a tiny minority of elites.
Advancing from subsistence living is an inarguable example of human progress, but contemporary American/Western lifestyles, fraught with endless debt and working for needless material objects, we’ve devolved into a different kind of subsistence living.
What in the blue hell are yammering about? Human progress? In what specific regard?
Why would anyone put a thumb down?
“Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.”—EINSTEIN
“Information is not knowledge.”—EINSTEIN
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. “—EINSTEIN
by the way things are going - looks like history will repeat itself soon.
What is “human progress”? Is it the amount of material wealth? Is it quality of life? Is it longevity? The conversation makes no sense, but I believe tooshed333 said it best, “There should be no real plateau of creativity in my mind, only periods of varying growth.”
I don’t believe we’ll regress to where we’ll have to rebuild modern life or something. I believe there’s a “floor” we’ve built, so to speak, and we’ll keep progressing, though not necessarily at an exponential rate.
The “historian” is wrong (and I say that as an historian myself). First of all, there is not simply one view of history, so the phrase “The proper way to think about history…” is problematic for its intellectual arrogance. But, above all, his Malthusian view of history is misanthropic. He ignores a 2,500 year history that includes the discoveries of sea-faring civilizations such as Egypt and Ancient Greece, he ignores the Renaissance, etc. and focuses only on the last 100 years.
I don’t think nutrition is a good example of the entire human race’s technological advancements as a whole. The historian seemed overly pessimistic about the human capacity. There should be no real plateau of creativity in my mind, only periods of varying growth.
historian guys argument about sugar is flawed… obesity is sometimes caused by addiction but ultimately controllable, it wasn’t caused by increase in food supply… this can’t be said for starvation and malnutrition. obesity is a problem but also a sign of progress
How is eating a lot of sugar harmful to other people?
Bravo. The historian is absolutely correct.