Are we getting better?

Are we becoming less violent, more empathic, more caring?

Is humankind evolving into humankinder?

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker thinks we are, and he’s stated the case convincingly in his panoramic 696-page tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). His argument is not new. Jeremy Rifken, in Empathic Civilization (2009), masterfully demonstrated that Homo sapiens has been evolving on an upward empathic curve throughout the centuries, a progression toward seeing others more and more as, well, fellow members of Homo sapiens. It is true: Understanding that there will be occasional declines on the curve (and we may very well be on the brink of experiencing one now), the overall arc of humanity is toward the empathic and the less violent.

I can hear the skepticism: How can one take seriously the proposition that we are getting better in a world in which horror surrounds us, in which one cannot watch the news without being assaulted by the seeming ordinariness of war, terrorism, and near continuous acts of random violence? The 24-hour news cycle impinges on our psyches the unrelenting message that we are experiencing the worst of times, that “the blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” in the poet’s words, with no relief on the horizon—a time-honored recipe for the emergence of demagogues, as historians and philosophers have observed for centuries: “The world is going to hell, those people are to blame, I alone can save you.”

But the world as it is presented to us through television, radio, and the internet is not the world as it is. We do not tune into the news expecting a Hallmark card-style report on the state of planet Earth. We expect conflict, tragedy, and general mayhem, on a global scale, and the media delivers it, 24/7. If it bleeds, it leads, as they say. No wonder we respond with healthy skepticism toward suggestions that things are getting better.

The folks populating the villages of, say, 14^th or 15^th century Europe had this advantage over us: They were largely unaware of the scope of the horrors taking place on the world stage. They were aware of the violence and cruelties in their own villages but ignorant of inhumanities elsewhere. But inhumanity abounded, on a massive scale: If you harbor any doubts about the gruesomeness of life in Europe during the centuries before the “discovery” of the Americas, google “medieval torture.” No matter what horror we might experience in today’s world, we can be assured it was much worse in the not-so-distant past. No doubt about it, we’ve come a long way. And, yes, we have far to go.

Pinker refers to the evolution of our species in moral terms—a progression away from, for example, burning witches and heretics at the stake and toward more humane approaches to crime and punishment (and more reasoned approaches to what constitutes crime). He refers to what he calls the Humanitarian Revolution as a broad descriptor of what has been taking place over the past few centuries, the long slow movement out of tribalism and toward civic community that led to one of the most noble proclamations of the Age of Reason, “that all men are created equal . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” At least within the world’s democracies, that statement, over the subsequent 250 years, would lead to the abolition of state-sponsored slavery and the almost universal end to capital punishment, among numerous other reforms. 

But there’s a larger point that needs to be made here, one that focuses on the importance of our intentional response to Pinker’s and Rifken’s (and many others’) research: If our natural evolutionary direction is toward the empathic and away from the violent—and the evidence appears incontrovertible—what are we then called to do? Are we to rest on the laurels of the millions of reformers of the past who have made this march toward humanitarianism possible, hoping that it will continue with little effort on our part today? Or should we, instead, focus our energies, steel our consciences, and increase our efforts to advance this movement, both individually and through community-based entities such as social service agencies, humanitarian organizations, universities, religious communities, philanthropic foundations, and local, state, and federal government agencies? 

More to the point, are we up to the task? 

Better still: Is there an alternative?   

It’s been said that we remember what we remember because it’s important to us in the present moment. As I reflect on Mother’s Day, three memories from childhood present themselves, each with a critical life lesson for today:

1. Racism is a sin. I am around 10 years old, looking out the front window of our home on a quiet street in Bronx, New York. I notice a boy, five or so years older than me, looking a little too suspiciously at my bicycle, which is lying on the sidewalk. He is of a different ethnic background, and I yell to my mom that someone is trying to steal my bike. I use a racial epithet to describe that someone. Enter Mom, who takes me aside and explains, gently but firmly, that it is wrong to use those words. In fact, she tells me, it is just as wrong to use those words as it is to steal a bike. I don’t know if that was the first time I used a racial epithet. I do know it was the last.

2. It’s OK to be an introspective introvert; Carl Jung said so. I’m thinking Mom’s careful explanation of the difference between introversion and extraversion took place when I was 13, as that was the year Jung died. I imagine there were articles in the newspapers about his death and references to one of his many gifts to the world, the understanding that there are different personality styles, each with its own perspective on the world. Mom, an extravert to the core, was telling me, in her kindly way, that it is OK to be an introvert and that spending time in my room reading books or sorting and categorizing baseball cards rather than socializing was perfectly OK. (Although I think she might have been worrying a little about me too–for good reason!)

3. What matters most is how we treat each other. I am seven or eight, lying in bed. Mom is sitting on the edge of the bed reading a poem to me. It’s “Abou Ben Adhem,” by James Leigh Hunt. You know the poem’s story: A man is awakened one night and notices, in the corner of the room, an angel writing in a large golden book. He asks the angel what he is writing, and he replies, “The names of those who love the Lord.” The man then asks, “And is mine one?,” and the angel responds in the negative. Undaunted, the man replies, “Then write me as one who loves his fellow man.” The next night the angel reappears and shows the man the list of “the names God has blessed,” and there at the top was his. Through this poem–which I have just this past month committed to memory (my New Year’s resolution is to memorize a poem each month)–I learned that the path to God is through love for our fellow men and women. It is much less about doctrines and institutions and rituals, and much more about how we treat each other, whoever that ‘other’ might be.
Each of these memories occurred before the tumult of the ’60s descended upon America and the Brock home. The cultural upheavals of those years hit many families hard. Some families adjusted to the changes reasonably well; others, not so well, occasionally retreating to unhealthy belief patterns, negative stereotyping, and the demonization of supposed enemies. Our family took the latter course. And when Dad died at the close of that decade, leaving Mom with eight children, six still living at home, the retreat intensified, unsettling the simplicity and contentedness of those early years.

Yet those three memories remain, and I will always hold Mom close in my heart for the lessons she taught me. I can’t say I’ve always lived up to them; the Golden Rule has proved to be far easier to preach about than follow for me. But I have those memories, those three life lessons, to fall back on whenever life throws a nasty curve. They serve as the perduring legacy of a mom who accepted me for the nerdy introvert that I was and let me become, well, the nerdy introvert that I remain today.

Happy Mother’s Day.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost

A quick google search results in the following definition for the somewhat antiquated idiom of a certain age: “not yet old but no longer young.” I can certainly testify to the “no longer young” part. And I choose to remain in denial about the “not yet old.”
The famed developmental psychologist Erik Erikson taught us that every life transition has its own challenge, and the challenge of old age is to achieve a level of integrity, the sense that in spite of all the sins of the past one can look back and say, I did some good, I’m OK. If not achieved, Erikson added, the result is despair, which we more familiarly experience as deep depression.

No one has offered a more poignant cinematic example of the importance of integrity during the closing years of life than Steven Spielberg in the opening and closing scenes of his Oscar-winning World War II epic, Saving Private Ryan. In the first part of the scene, which opens the movie, Private Ryan is now “of a certain age” and has returned to Normandy to find the grave of Captain John Miller, who lost his life in the mission to save him. Spielberg plays out the scene for maximum effect: We see the elderly Ryan advancing toward the cemetery, his wife a step or two behind—it is his pilgrimage, after all, and she defers to him in this moment of truth. Behind them are their adult children and grandchildren, the younger of whom indicate no awareness of the import of what is taking place. The camera pans the thousands of stone markers, bare crosses and Stars of David, otherwise identical save for the names of the fallen soldiers. Ryan finds the captain’s grave and, weeping, drops to his knees. The scene then shifts to Omaha beach and the Normandy invasion, followed by the titular search, which takes up the bulk of the story. Mission completed, the movie returns to the aged Ryan kneeling at Captain Miller’s grave. He rises, turns to his wife, and implores her in words that have no doubt defined his life mission: Tell me I’m a good man.Tell me that I lived a good life, one worthy of this man dying for me. Assured that it is so, Ryan turns again toward the grave, straightens himself to attention, and salutes the man who saved him. And the movie closes.
I have never been able to describe that scene with dry eyes. Can you imagine reaching the closing years of your life and wondering if you have lived in a manner worthy of another man’s giving his life for you?

I am glad that any claim to integrity that I might deserve will not be measured against the value of someone dying for me. I need only repent for a life of self-obsession, self-absorption, careless insensitivities, and a multitude of poor decisions (and a few godawful ones), with the occasional good deed thrown in to keep things somewhat in balance. Frankly, that’s enough of a burden to carry, and my prayer is that I have enough years left to make up for the sins of the first seventy.