The New Optimism

The New Optimism

In which I make some rather catty observations about Niall Ferguson, Steven Pinker, and other representatives of the historiographical Self-Esteem Movement.

A few pieces of housekeeping before today's post. 

First, I realize I've done a rather poor job of informing any readers I may have of what to expect in terms of my schedule. The plan is for two or three posts a week, one major post and one or two minor posts. 

Major posts will be going up on Saturday afternoon; each will be a few thousand words on one of the themes I introduced in the prologue post, and are probably worth the investment of a finding a reclining chair and a new cup of coffee. 

Minor posts will generally appear in midweek: Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Generally they will just be a bite-sized reflection on something related to the main theme, hopefully either goofy or thought provoking. These are better for a spare moment on the bus, or a light brain snack when you hit a wall at work.

Second, I would really be delighted to receive comments on these posts, and will try to reply  individually to any non-trolling contributions or reactions you might have. It's a fair amount of work to put these up, so any confirmation that people are getting something of value from this project will be warmly appreciated. (If you know me personally, please just be careful to conceal my identity, I want to remain anonymous for professional and medical reasons).

But enough of that, on to this week's first minor post.

A few weeks ago, I was poking into the latest offering of the British neo-imperial historian Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest. Originally a book, it was recently turned into a sprawling documentary, airing on PBS last May. Ferguson is probably the best representative of a historical genre that I like to call the New Optimism. It has a growing number of representatives, other notables including Francis Fukuyama and Steven Pinker, whose recent book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined is fast becoming Holy Writ for the spectrum of intellectuals who are committed to some form of "everything is peachy, we just need more of it!"

Here's a rough how-to guide for writing a New Optimist book.

1) Survey the contemporary landscape, and find yourself shocked and appalled by all the negative nellies in academia and the media. On the one hand you have lacrimose leftist lindas in academia who insist on relentlessly critiquing Western Civilization, its history, its practices, its institutions, and its current trajectory. They write book after book about how bad colonialism and industrialisation were, and spend lots of time focusing on grim topics like the trauma of rapid urbanisation, species extinction and global warming. On the other hand you have all these dolorous dollies in the media, who make life look painful and dangerous by covering sensational violence and dysfunction, creating a smokescreen that makes life on the planet look worse than it really is.

2) Bravely stand up for the controversial and counterintuitive thesis that, actually, things are getting better all the time (and have been since at least 1500 AD). Peg this to a series of fuzzy but punchy sounding processes (killer apps, better angels) which are obvious  and unqualified goods, (Ferguson's list: Competition, Science, Property, Modern Medicine, Consumerism, Work Ethic) 

3) Demonstrate that, however politically incorrect it might be to say this, and whatever red-faced denunciations you might be calling upon yourself by doing so, everything good in the world comes from the West (which may be defined as widely or compactly as your evidence  makes convenient). More specifically, everything good that has happened in the last three hundred years can be attributed to the brave ideas of a unified group of 18th century intellectuals who cast off the shackles of religious superstition and Oriental despotism to create the European Enlightenment.

4) Assert that, whatever it is that the West has, everybody else in the world wants it, which is why Western Civilization has triumphed as the dominant civilisation on the planet.

5) Assert that, whatever it is that the West has, everybody else needs more of it, and we have a responsibility to give it to them. Hard. 

6) Warn your readers that the great legacy of Western superiority is a precious and fragile deposit, and if you abandon the gods of your fathers by succumbing to the rage of backwards orientals abroad or religious fundamentalists and traitorous leftists at home—if you let the torch of Western Civilization gutter out, then darkness will reign once again. 

7) Reassure your readers that, thankfully, if we can keep the faith, we will continue to ascend to a bright future of limitless material prosperity, guaranteed by the current form of  late stage techno-capitalism. 

I'm not really sure what to make of Neo-Optimist historiography. Some of the claims made are broadly factual. I think Niall Ferguson makes some good points about the mechanisms that allowed the West to conquer the globe. I'm willing to concede to Steven Pinker that we've seen a powerful localised dip in global violence with the advent of nation states able to field professional police forces and nuclear weapons, (although I'm frankly shocked by his cheery confidence in population and casualty figures from Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Early Middle Ages is my field and I know how much those numbers are worth. I keep waiting for a specialist to inform him that all figures for any period before the 17th century are wild ass guesses made on the basis of incredibly fragmentary and unreliable evidence, but nothing seems to have happened yet.) 

The thing I find myself wondering most is: "what am I supposed to take away from this?" All I've managed to come up with so far is that, as an American middle class white male, I should be more comfortable than I am with feeling really, really, really good about myself. 

It's as if the self-esteem movement has migrated into academic history. Different setting, but the message seems to be the same: "you're already perfect, just the way you are." Which raises the question: Why is Western Civilisation feeling the need to shell out for such expensive therapy in the first place?