Why Murray's Human Accomplishment is Wrong: Part II

One problem I have with Murray is that the age of lone geniuses is over. In order to make progress, massive collaborations of universities, corporations, even nations work together to reach the next step of human progress.

The CERN lab for instance, the only way to improve upon the standard model (except perhaps a giant telescope in space, which would also require enormous collaboration), has taken and will take decades of work, funded by hundreds of millions of people, and staffed by thousands if not more. The discoveries will far surpass the thinking of Niehls Bohr or Lord Kelvin, but who would Murray give credit to? In this way, Murray attempts to inflate the achievements of old hats over the modern age, simply because they were individualistic like his preferred libertarian way of thought. The new age is socialist--cooperative, it has no room for egos or heroes. Everyone does their part, everyone contributes, everyone had some hand in the results. Instead of comparing the number of 'great achievers,' shouldn't Murray be comparing the number of 'great achievements?' Furthermore, it isn't enough to just list great achievements on an unweighted scale, as though early inventions were as difficult as later ones. Every new invention requires something more than whatever came before. It's easy to make a name for yourself if you're Archimedes, but today there are thousands of mathematicians better than him, working on more difficult problems than he ever attempted. Archimedes may not have had the help of various textbooks and teachers, but then again he only had to pick the lowest-lying fruit. Virtually no one had done any math before him that he'd have to outshine.

Inventing the car or the airplane was a million times easier than inventing a quantum computer or synthetic life. Simply listing them as equal advances for mankind, and then noting that most advances occurred earlier, is absurd. Of course the low-lying fruit was picked first. Does anyone think the Wright brothers could do the science we're doing today though? Does anyone think the Wright brothers could build a 3d invisibility cloak? Well, current scientists have. But the Wright brothers will go down in history and today's scientists won't. That's an easy way to make the modern age look bad.

Recently I read Anabasis, by Xenophon. (I read his History of our Times years ago). Xenophon makes the list of Murray's Human Accomplishment, and indeed, for his time, Xenophon was an impressive historian who witnessed and performed impressive things. But does anyone think that Xenophon would be anybody if he were alive today? The reason we care about his literature is because his works are the only ones that have survived through time and document an important part of our heritage. The writing of Xenophon is rather straight-forward and simplistic, and betrays a character whose morality and introspection is about as developed as a lump of clay. Am I to believe that Xenophon is superior to E.E. Doc Smith's Lensmen series? To Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series? To David Zindell's Requiem for Homo Sapiens? This simply isn't possible. I've read both and it's clear to me that modern writers write more beautifully and have far better things to say. This is just comparing authors.

I could just as easily point to the Lord of the Rings trilogy of films, or the Star Wars series, and ask again if Xenophon stands out, or will stand out, as a greater story-teller, a greater artist, than these works?

Or what if I were to list Final Fantasy or Warcraft as an opponent? Both of these series have been going for decades, beloved by tens of millions, rich in music, art, plot, and interactive gameplay. Murray says this doesn't count -- but Anabasis does. If I had to name a single person, for instance the director of the series, or perhaps the music composer, I could probably stick them on the list of human accomplishment directly across from Schubert and Vivaldi. But that's not accurate, because these people are all parts of large groups. Part of the enchantment of Nobou Uematsu's Final Fantasy music is the story and graphics and gameplay that work alongside it. The same for John William's music in Star Wars. It isn't right to try and separate these artists out. The only thing that can be compared is the finished work, not the individuals behind it.

If people were stuck on a desert island and they had access to all media made before the year 1900 in whatever form -- books, music, plays, operas -- or all media made after the year 1900 in whatever form -- new artists in the old categories as well as the whole new categories of television, video games, movies, sports, etc -- who would really choose the old ones? Since people of the modern era still have access to the works of the ancients, and choose with their own time to almost wholly ignore them in preference of the modern era, what are we supposed to believe? That everyone's wrong?

I will not as of yet try to knock down Shakespeare and Beethoven as 'not worth our time,' I think the retrospection of a longer time frame may be necessary to prove our current art is just as deep and abiding as our love for those greats. But the injustice of not counting any modern work as Great at all should be thrown out immediately. The idea is preposterous and insulting. If we refuse to place modern artistic works in the top ten of history, we can at least start seeding the top 100 or top 500 lists.

Furthermore, there are accomplishments in fields that Murray doesn't even list that deserve just as much attention as science and art. For starters, average length of life has increased something like four fold! How is that not an argument in our favor?

Length of Life is a very important field, and hidden within it is quality of life. We can get people back on their feet, restore sight to the blind, anesthetize horrendous levels of pain, cure schizophrenics, and work any number of health miracles previous generations couldn't dream of doing. An enormous amount of our intellectual class and our economic production is devoted to increasing people's length and quality of life, to a far larger human population than the past had to support. Murray dismisses this all, it doesn't even merit a category. But a utilitarian's simple formula of multiplying the number of people by how happy they are, would find the medical advances of the modern era something worth noting. It's not fair for us to compare modern and ancient efforts, when ancients get to devote 100% of their achievement to non-health related fields, but we devote at least 20% of our efforts to health.

What about another modern achievement? For the first time in history, modern man can expect a reasonable standard of living. He has enough to eat. He has a building of brick, wood, cement -- something solid that can keep out the cold. There's usually running water, bathing, lighting, and toilets for all. In the past peasants lived so poorly whole villages would simply disappear from famine. Those who did live didn't get to bathe more than once a year, and only owned a single set of unwashed clothes. They usually didn't have any sewage to take away their waste and would often just throw it out in the streets. Can you imagine the smells from such a hell? Every day would just be a continuous assault on the senses, not to mention the lice and what-all constantly itching the skin and biting away. The largest source of these gains was discoveries of how to use natural resources like coal, and subsequent gains in efficiency from how we used said resources to continuously get more out of them at lower cost. Today we do more, with less, of a resource that used to just be left in the ground. How proud should the ancients really be when they realize the ridiculous amounts of wealth they ignored lying right underneath their feet in the midst of their often fatal poverty?

Murray has no list for 'socialist relief efforts,' or 'capitalist wealth creation' even though a utilitarian would point to these categories as far more important than music or painting. What good is leisure if you're starving to death or freezing cold? Until all physical needs are met, it's impossible to even embark upon the mental pleasures, the pain of want is just too distracting.

Another accomplishment modern man can be damn proud of -- we ended war. Who could ever have imagined mankind would stop warring with each other? Sure, there are sporadic violent events here and there, but no two major powers have been in conflict for over 50 years. Furthermore, measured by the % of mankind that has died due to political violence, it would quickly become apparent that we live in a wholly unprecedented age. For all those people who died in their prime, never getting to enjoy the wonders of life. For all those left behind who were still relying on them. For the endless wealth that was wasted poured into these destructive conflicts, and the life's work of back-breaking labor that waste represents. There can be no doubt in their mind, that world peace is the greatest human accomplishment of all. So of course, it isn't worth mentioning to Charles Murray.

Cynics might say the only reason war ended is because of nuclear weapons, and once the method of nuclear deterrence is countered, war will spring up again. But that's pointless. Utilitarians don't care about why things happen, only that they do. What matters is results. Who's to say that some other method of peace won't have been discovered before nuclear deterrence is overcome? If you think of war as a steadily evolving disease which has gained a partial resistance to our first antibiotic, nuclear deterrence, then what's to stop us from developing drug cocktails with all sorts of different lines of defense waiting in reserve? For instance, non-nuclear WMD that are just as dangerous. Or free trade and cultural exchanges that bring people together? Or just by giving women the vote and a voice in government? No one can say what it would take to bring about a new world war, because it hasn't happened yet. We have every reason to believe world peace is going to be a permanent feature of mankind's future, and that all subsequent conflicts will be on such limited, penny ante scales as the world conflicts we see today. After all, measles and mumps haven't come back, so why should war?

Even if the European Union fails, it is absolutely incredible that it even happened. This is a consortium of countries that have been at non-stop war with each other for millenia. They have endless differences and grudges between them, many within living memory. Their could not be a more tempestuous cauldron of warlike tendencies than Europe anywhere else on Earth -- but instead they formed a common government, gave each other free access across each other's borders, and started trading with the same currency. Are you kidding me? How is the EU not a human accomplishment all in its own right? Even God would be jealous of the miracle Europe performed since WWII.

It's not only the lack of external violence, there is also a considerable improvement in human rights. Today we live in one of the freest and most humane eras in human history. Instead of torture, mutilation, slavery, and rape of conquered foes being the norm, it's practically unheard of. When before peasants could be cut down by samurai who simply wanted to test their new swords, now everyone has a long list of human rights that protects them from their rulers. How wonderful it must be to drive through town secure from the random search and seizure of our governments, able to say what's on our minds, and to see whom we please. No era before ours granted as much freedom and safety to the individual. No one is being whipped to row our galleys anymore. No one is being fed to lions for entertainment. Girls won't be seized by the hair and dragged out of their homes by conquering victors to become someone's 3rd or 4th wives. The sheer horror of the past is hard to even imagine.

As recently as 1990, the world freed hundreds of millions of people from the Soviet Union. At the same time, China underwent reforms that for the first time offered its people a measure of security, prosperity, and freedom for a billion people more. Has any greater increase in freedom and security occurred in human history? Why can't we list THAT as a human accomplishment? Put it down under Reagan, or Gorbachev, or Deng Xiaoping. Or put it down to the people of those countries, or to the world. It doesn't matter who gets credit, what matters is the ancients could never boast of such a thing. All they ever gave us was empires and tyrannies, from beginning to end.

It's impossible to predict where the economy will go from here. If anyone could predict the economy, they'd be the next Warren Buffet. But we can at least look at what did happen. And what has happened is an economic recovery. The stock market has nearly reached 11,000, that's a lot higher than where it started a year ago. GDP has grown across multiple quarters. Inflation has remained tame and interest rates have remained low. Our economic prospects look far better than the 1970's, and the 1970's, after all, had thirty years of economic growth after them. So if our economic health is higher now than then, isn't it safe to say we have another thirty good years ahead of us, like before? Claiming the ancient world is superior to the modern, because the modern world is going to collapse 'any day now,' just doesn't cut it. I think our environment is being given excellent care and that people have shown more love and attention to our world than ever before. I think the economy, built on a backbone of continuous technological innovation, continuing growth in under-performing high IQ countries like China and Russia via simple law changes, and continuous improvements in productivity from those already working (The gains in the last year have been obscene, they were so high. 10% or more!), constitutes an unsinkable ship. There may still be all sorts of recessions and weak patches ahead, but I just don't see how a 105 IQ China stays at $5,000 per capita GDP. China's growth alone to, say, $30,000 a year would be enough to lift the entire world's economy indefinitely.

A lot of recent human accomplishment is premised on the wonderful economic performance of the last century. If it's true that all of this will soon vanish like a dream overnight, and we'll be cast back into a hard-scrabble existence of subsistence farming, then one could argue that all recent 'accomplishment' is an illusion. But it's not true, nor is it fair to argue based on future events that haven't happened that we should rejudge our present or our past. Tomorrow space aliens could come down and shoot us all. Invoking the future can justify any argument whatsoever. It's not serious thinking. If we have to wait one hundred years to verify Star Wars is more beloved than Beethoven, then the same should be true of man-made disasters. For instance, people cannot be judged harshly until a hundred years after the mistake was made, to put it in perspective. Compare that to future forecasters who are already judging us for a global warming disaster that is slated to occur a hundred years from now!. So we don't get credit for Star Wars until 2077, but we get credit for the global warming in 2077 today. Nice system! No thank you.

I'm content to see that, all around me, the present is the best time in human history. If the future is worse, people can judge it then. Leave the present out of it. The present deserves a healthy round of applause. Don't let calumny and vanity take away as proud and precious a present as today's.