20130902

Stay away from Anger..
It hurts ...Only You !

💬 If you are right then there is no need to get angry,

💬 And if you are wrong then you don't have any right to get angry.

💬 Patience with family is "love".

💬 Patience with others is "respect".

💬 Patience with self is "confidence".

💬 Patience with GOD is "faith".

💬 Never Think Hard about the PAST, It brings Tears...

💬 Don't think more about the FUTURE, It brings Fear...

💬 Live this Moment with a Smile,It brings Cheer.

💬Every test in our life makes us bitter or better,

💬 Every problem comes to make us or break us,

💬 The choice is ours whether we become victims or victorious.

💬 Beautiful things are not always good but good things are always beautiful

💬 Do you know why God created gaps between fingers?

💬 So that someone who is special to you comes and fills those gaps by holding your hand forever.

💬 Happiness keeps You Sweet..But being sweet brings happiness.

Tears in Heaven

Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same if I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven.

Would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand if I saw you in heaven?
I'll find my way through night and day,
'Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven.

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart, have you begging please, begging please.

Beyond the door there's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more tears in heaven.

丹堤咖啡 與眾不同的度量衡

市面上不管是高級的或平價的咖啡店
中杯容量都是 12 oz ( 360 cc )

但是
丹堤咖啡只有 8 oz ( 240 cc )

換言之
你在丹堤咖啡花中杯的價錢買到的是小杯的量

丹堤咖啡深知飲用咖啡過量有害健康
主動幫消費者減量        真是【【【良心】】】事業

李登輝這世人，最後一次加大家拜託。

超感動的

 

各位現場以及全國的，親愛的鄉親，大家晚安、大家好！
這段日子以來，我一直想要出來甲大家逗陣，為咱台灣的前途打拼，但是身體實在不好勢。不過，看到咱的國家退步這勒體，就算我在厝內休睏，我的心，實在講，無法度休睏。
今仔日，不管他們安怎給我苦勸，講我身體凍未條，但是我一定要站出來，跟大家站作夥，為台灣拼最後一場啦。
因為這一場不只是蔡英文要贏，是咱台灣一定要贏啦。
對不對阿。
我已經九十歲，乎日本人統治過，乎國民政府管過，我看到在咱台灣這塊土地的人，不管是原住民、早期的移民、還有二次大戰後來台灣的移民，攏吃過甚多甘苦，因為大家共同在這塊土地忍耐打拼，經濟才有一點仔基礎，才有機會選家己的總統，選咱家己的生活，咱希望代代子孫，攏會凍永遠在這塊土地發展落去，作一個幸福的台灣人，嘛做一個有希望的台灣人。
做生意的人希望生意興旺，農民希望好收成，農產品有銷路，做工的人希望有賺錢，沒失業，大學生希望不免借錢讀冊，畢業找有頭路，少年人敢娶某生子，買一間厝建立家庭，老大人希望年老有人照顧。
咱希望有一個公正的司法制度，有一個公平的經濟制度，有一個台灣文明的教育制度；咱更加希望萬一咱受著災難的時，政府會凍甲咱保護。
咱嘛希望建立一個民主、自由、繁榮，有人權、有尊嚴的國家，不免煩惱乎人統一，乎別人管，會凍大聲講我是台灣人。
不過在現在的政府領導之下，咱的希望沒可能實現。
現在的政府沒希望阿，對不對阿。
但是咱相信，咱有能力改變，因為台灣是民主的國家，咱的命運就掌握在咱手頭的選票，咱用咱的選票選咱家己的希望，選咱幸福的未來。咱相信家己，咱嘛相信蔡英文，會凍帶領咱的國家，實現咱的希望。
我已經年歲多啊，身體啊無外好，什麼時存會離開我心愛的台灣不知，會凍擱做的實在有限，未來就要靠你們大家打拼阿。
大家為台灣繼續拼，好不好阿。
票數非常接近，拜託大家一定要去投票，全力拉票、催票、固票，支持１號，支持蔡英文博士，乎蔡英文成為台灣第一女總統，創造台灣民主新的典範。
好不好阿。
明阿載，選蔡英文，選咱的希望，選咱的幸福；相信咱家己，相信蔡英文；乎家己一個的機會，乎台灣一個機會。
我李登輝這世人，最後一次加大家拜託。
台灣，交給大家囉。
祝，大家平安。台灣平安。
再見。

神隱少女 之 合先敘明

神隱少女   是我見過

最愛用 也 最敢用   「合先敘明」這四個字的人

王澤鑑 老師 都沒妳這麼豪邁

佩服 !!! 佩服 !!!

還好你到美國當學生了  天佑台灣

希望學堂

赴台東成立「希望學堂」

嚴長壽決定退休！

撰文者：陶傳正
2010年起，亞都麗緻飯店總裁嚴長壽決定，到台東建立希望學堂，實踐他的第二人生築夢計畫。

嚴長壽計畫引進專業師資，提升原住民創作者的視野與格局，讓天賦發光，讓外界看到。（商業周刊資料照片）

亞都麗緻飯店總裁嚴長壽將於二○一○年退休，逐漸淡出亞都麗緻經營事務，由該飯店幕後老闆周志榮之子周永裕（現任蘇州亞緻精品酒店董事長）接棒。不過，嚴長壽是「退而不休」，打算在台灣東部，以公益事業，開啟他的第二人生。

近日，他與三十年老友、奇哥董事長陶傳正，以及周永裕、普訊創投董事長柯文昌等四人，成立「公益平台基金會」，並邀集台灣松下董事長洪敏弘、香港大學新聞及傳媒研究中心專任教授龍應台、實踐大學資深顧問林澄枝、嘉利實業董事長辜懷如（前海基會董事長辜振甫么女）等多人擔任基金會董事。

該基金會初期，將在台東重建一所廢棄小學，成為社區化的「希望學堂」，引進外部師資，為當地居民上課，包括電腦、英文、音樂、手工藝、民宿經營等。若一校運作順利，再逐步擴大，活化東部數十所廢棄學校資源。

十二月十九至二十一日，嚴長壽率領該基金會一行十餘人，赴東部解說他的退休計畫。以下是陶傳正（陶爸）以好友身分記述此行：

嚴長壽要退休了！

嚴長壽？跟他不太熟。因為難得兩、三個月才碰到一次，偶爾通一次電話，每次都是只聽他講要幹什麼了，或又到哪兒去演講了。我是個俗人，問他演講一次拿多少錢？他老說那怎麼好意思拿錢。我說，那演講要幹什麼？他說：「 可能我老了要當傳道人，現在先開始練習。」

他說，我想退休了……
想退休下來，然後到台東去做點事
上個月跟他通電話，他說「我想退休了！」我說這下子可好，你可以跟我出國去旅行了！他說 「大概還不行，」他想從目前的工作退休下來，然後到台東去做點事。我說 「那哪叫退休啊！那叫退而不休。」電話那頭傳來一陣嘆息：「那你就叫我老不休吧！ 」

他說：「你這老粗大概聽不懂，乾脆跟我跑一趟花東，你就全明白了！」

就這樣我跟著他來了一趟花東之旅。同行還有我慕名已久的藝文界朋友，不少企業界友人，大家都是要來聽聽他的退休計畫。

我們由花蓮下機後，因為時間緊迫，車子沒停過。隨時有嚴長壽的當地朋友上車來匆匆的跟我們打招呼，又下車了！他們下車以後，嚴長壽才介紹這些人是幹什麼的。其中大半是有理想的年輕人，在當地經營與旅遊有關的事業。

我們於晚間住在太魯閣國家公園中的布洛灣山月邨，一個位於山谷中的世外桃源。站在群山中的大草原上，看著這美麗的一切。我居然慚愧起來！因為我只要有機會旅行，大半都是會想到出國。想想第一次經過太魯閣，居然是我十六歲參加救國團活動，由霧社開始走了五天的路，到了太魯閣，我只顧腳上的水泡，當年榮民拚了老命在峭壁間挖掘出來的路，都沒有好好看一下。這些年巴黎不知道去過幾十次後，而對太魯閣才真正的第一次能看上一眼。是我對不起自己的國家，不是國家對不起我。

晚上，我們大家在房間裡，圍坐成一個小圈圈。聽嚴長壽講他的退休計畫。

他說，想為台灣多做點事……
想幫助原住民，發揮藝術天賦潛能
他說，一生都為台灣的觀光旅遊業服務，看到台灣這些年因為內鬥，而造成的混亂，使得台灣的經濟發展已看不到大前途。連觀光旅遊業都受到嚴重的影響，實在是很痛心。但自己到了這個年紀，雖然該退休了，但是「心中仍有一個夢，希望在有生之年 ，為台灣再多做一點事。」這次他並沒有越講越激動，反而是在座所有人都跟他有同樣的看法、共識。

他說，大家都知道他是個充滿活力的人，雖然身體並不如年輕時那麼好，但是腦子還行。大家也都知道他並不是個有錢的人，「但是要為台灣做點事，並不只需要錢。」

所以他想由二○一○年開始，一年花一半以上的時間到花東，由最被大家忽略的台東開始，辦一所教育中心，幫助原住民同胞將他們的潛能發揮出來。幫助災區災民如何建立信心，學習使用電腦、上網，學習英文。原住民的孩子，大半都不喜歡呆板課程，但對藝術有天賦潛能。與其讓他們自己摸索，為什麼不能有一些學有專長的藝術家來指點他們，跳過摸索階段，讓他們能有所發揮？

還有很多在外鄉流浪的原住民同胞，如果他們的故鄉有生存空間，可以幫助他們回鄉謀生，回鄉貢獻才藝，像民歌之父胡德夫。

近年開始背包客式旅遊，居住以民宿為主。花東地區近千家民宿，水準良莠不齊。如果能教他們把基本民宿應該怎麼經營、被單該怎麼疊、早餐該怎麼做，將來如果開放大陸客來台自由旅行，就不會措手不及，或一直要等大觀光飯店蓋起來！因為他們與我們同文、同種，尤其年輕人喜歡自由旅行。住民宿較便宜，又可主人互動，對互相了解有很大的好處。

他說，想從小地方開始做……
把廢校變訓練中心，提供免費學習

說到這裡，忽然天搖地動起來。難道是嚴長壽又激動了起來？原來花蓮發生了芮士規模六．八的地震。我們沒有人往外跑，因為嚴長壽開始講重點了！

他說：「我想從小地方開始，一點一點做。」台灣的偏遠地區，因招生不足，有五十幾所廢棄學校。他想在台東鄉下找一所，略事整理，把它改成一個訓練中心。其中有專門的音樂教室、手工藝教室、電腦教室、語文教室等等，樓上則改成宿舍。

只要是此地的原住民朋友，或是災區小朋友，都可以來這裡免費學習，並供膳宿。經營民宿的朋友，可以免費學習民宿的經營與管理。有藝術天分的原住民，希望他們能回到故鄉發展長才。當然會提供他們表現的舞台，讓他們能有所發揮，不要長期在外流浪。與其到外面找人看你表演，為什麼不叫大家到你的故鄉來看你的表演？

為表示決心，嚴長壽已在台東都蘭租下兩間民宿房間。二○一○年起，把亞都麗緻工作漸漸交出。他開始台北、台東各住一半的時間。

等他講完了，看看表，已近午夜。大家已忘了才經歷了芮士規模六．八的地震，各自回房休息，我想其中一定有很多人會失眠。不是因為怕地震，而是會躺著想：「我也可以做些什麼？」

第二天一早，我們上車看不知多少次讓嚴長壽感動的人事物。在港口部落，我們品嘗了一個沒有舞台的阿美族青年耀忠的美食，以及原住民特有的幽默感。嚴長壽決定邀請耀忠到台北亞都麗緻飯店學習法式及中式料理，然後回到故鄉，利用當地原住民特有食材，發揮他在烹飪上的專長。我們在鳳林山上的月廬餐廳，看到一對年輕夫婦利用舊倉庫改成的品茶餐廳，一邊俯瞰花東縱谷，一邊心想 ，「我怎麼從來不知道在東海岸有這麼典雅的地方？」

他說，現在不做我會後悔……
要在這裡辦藝術夏令營和創意學苑

下午，我們在海邊的一所廢棄了近五年的小學前停了下來，兩層樓的學舍其實還不算糟。嚴長壽說，如果我們能利用廢棄無用的校舍，只要花少少的金錢，就能在當地辦一所希望學堂，「我如果現在不做，將來一定會後悔。」（這句話，好像以前也有人講過。）

大家一間、一間的參觀校舍，一邊聽嚴長壽計畫要如何改造。當我們爬到屋頂上時，嚴長壽還沒講完：「你看這裡風水多好啊！背山面海，這就是我退休以後要住的地方。我要在這裡辦原住民的青年藝術夏令營，還有他們的創意學苑！」他的話還真多啊！

次晨，我們到了八八風災台東受創最嚴重的嘉蘭村。在乾枯的河床上，村長告訴我們，我們正站在水災前村子裡的兩條巷子間，如今只剩下兩棟還未拆除，但是已整個翻了一個面的房屋。這是胡德夫的故鄉。彷彿間，我好像看到一堆政客於災後到此視察，胡德夫的妹妹對著他們哭喊著： 「不要再來作秀啦！回去想想我們也是人啊！」

看到了慈善團體在山坡地上，為他們所建的第一批組合屋已經落成了！大家的心情才輕鬆了一點。我們不是沒有同胞愛，我們需要的是一個可信任的公益平台。

他說，資金、人力這個不難……
目前已有好幾個基金會表示願支持
沿著利嘉林道，我們來到大巴六九的藥用植物園，享用一頓有二十幾種野菜的午餐。連我這個肉食動物都感覺偶爾多吃一點野菜，是多麼的輕鬆與幸福啊！怪不得嚴長壽看起來那麼輕鬆及有機。

鹿野鄉，一個極具農村人文風采的小村落。我們跟著阿度（一個帶著理想到東部發展的年輕人）騎著單車，在田野裡享受台北無法感覺到的自在。看著兩旁鳳梨田及茶樹，小徑兩旁則是高聳的小葉欖樹（第一次聽到的樹名）。

在鄉間野道，阿度居然叫我們下車，躺在地上，享受與土地親近的感覺。他說只有這樣，你才會感覺到什麼叫真正的愛台灣。八八水災後，媒體對災區過度誇張報導，使得大家以為整個東區都是災區。來此觀光旅遊的人，大幅降低，阿度的腳踏車店也跟著遭殃。但由他樂觀的笑容中，可以看到他不怕打擊的毅力。嚴長壽在我旁邊輕聲的說 ：「這一切不值得我們退休以後來鼓勵的嗎？」

我問嚴長壽，你退休的計畫好像有點與別人不一樣，需要一些資金及人力？他回答我：「這個不難，開始資金不需要太多。目前已有好幾個基金會表示願意支持。」人力呢？「政府主管部門支持我的想法。藝文界，企業界以及地方上，都有很多朋友願意當志工。你放心！我只是扮演一個公益平台的角色。」

我問他：「我可以做什麼呢？」只見他對我眨了一下眼睛，露出了他慣有的笑容對我說 ：「你等我下一個通告吧！」

The idea of progress

The idea of progress



Onwards and upwards

Dec 17th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Why is the modern view of progress so impoverished?

Illustration by Matt Herring

THE best modern parable of progress was, aptly, ahead of its time. In 1861 Imre Madach published “The Tragedy of Man”, a “Paradise Lost” for the industrial age. The verse drama, still a cornerstone of Hungarian literature, describes how Adam is cast out of the Garden with Eve, renounces God and determines to recreate Eden through his own efforts. “My God is me,” he boasts, “whatever I regain is mine by right. This is the source of all my strength and pride.”
Adam gets the chance to see how much of Eden he will “regain”. He starts in Ancient Egypt and travels in time through 11 tableaux, ending in the icebound twilight of humanity. It is a cautionary tale. Adam glories in the Egyptian pyramids, but he discovers that they are built on the misery of slaves. So he rejects slavery and instead advances to Greek democracy. But when the Athenians condemn a hero, much as they condemned Socrates, Adam forsakes democracy and moves on to harmless, worldly pleasure. Sated and miserable in hedonistic Rome, he looks to the chivalry of the knights crusader. Yet each new reforming principle crumbles before him. Adam replaces 17th-century Prague’s courtly hypocrisy with the rights of man. When equality curdles into Terror under Robespierre, he embraces individual liberty—which is in turn corrupted on the money-grabbing streets of Georgian London. In the future a scientific Utopia has Michelangelo making chair-legs and Plato herding cows, because art and philosophy have no utility. At the end of time, having encountered the savage man who has no guiding principle except violence, Adam is downcast—and understandably so. Suicidal, he pleads with Lucifer: “Let me see no more of my harsh fate: this useless struggle.”
Things today are not quite that bad. But Madach’s 19th-century verse contains an insight that belongs slap bang in the 21st. In the rich world the idea of progress has become impoverished. Through complacency and bitter experience, the scope of progress has narrowed. The popular view is that, although technology and GDP advance, morals and society are treading water or, depending on your choice of newspaper, sinking back into decadence and barbarism. On the left of politics these days, “progress” comes with a pair of ironic quotation marks attached; on the right, “progressive” is a term of abuse.
It was not always like that. There has long been a tension between seeking perfection in life or in the afterlife. Optimists in the Enlightenment and the 19th century came to believe that the mass of humanity could one day lead happy and worthy lives here on Earth. Like Madach’s Adam, they were bursting with ideas for how the world might become a better place.
Some thought God would bring about the New Jerusalem, others looked to history or evolution. Some thought people would improve if left to themselves, others thought they should be forced to be free; some believed in the nation, others in the end of nations; some wanted a perfect language, others universal education; some put their hope in science, others in commerce; some had faith in wise legislation, others in anarchy. Intellectual life was teeming with grand ideas. For most people, the question was not whether progress would happen, but how.
The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society. In the extreme, without the possibility of progress of any sort, your gain is someone else’s loss. If human behaviour is unreformable, social policy can only ever be about trying to cage the ape within. Society must in principle be able to move towards its ideals, such as equality and freedom, or they are no more than cant and self-delusion. So it matters if people lose their faith in progress. And it is worth thinking about how to restore it.

Cain and cant

By now, some of you will hardly be able to contain your protests. Surely the evidence of progress is all around us? That is the case put forward in “It’s Getting Better All the Time”, by the late Julian Simon and Stephen Moore then at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, DC. Over almost 300 pages they show how vastly everyday life has improved in every way.
For aeons people lived to the age of just 25 or 30 and most parents could expect to mourn at least one of their children. Today people live to 65 and, in countries such as Japan and Canada, over 80; outside Africa, a child’s death is mercifully rare. Global average income was for centuries about $200 a year; a typical inhabitant of one of the world’s richer countries now earns that much in a day. In the Middle Ages about one in ten Europeans could read; today, with a few exceptions, such as India and parts of Africa, the global rate is comfortably above eight out of ten. In much of the world, ordinary men and women can vote and find work, regardless of their race. In large parts of it they can think and say what they choose. If they fall ill, they will be treated. If they are innocent, they will generally walk free.

It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too

It is an impressive list—even if you factor in some formidably depressing data. (In the gently dissenting foreword to her husband’s book Simon’s widow quotes statistics claiming that, outside warfare, 20th-century governments murdered 7.3% of their people, through needless famine, labour camps, genocide and other crimes. That compares with 3.7% in the 19th century and 4.7% in the 17th.) Mr Moore and Simon show that health and wealth have never been so abundant. And for the part of humanity that is even now shedding poverty, many gains still lie ahead.
The trouble is that a belief in progress is more than just a branch of accounting. The books are never closed. Wouldn’t nuclear war or environmental catastrophe tip the balance into the red? And the accounts are full of blank columns. How does the unknown book-keeper reconcile such unknowable quantities as happiness and fulfilment across the ages? As Adam traverses history, he sees material progress combined with spiritual decline.
Even if you can show how miserable the past was, the belief in progress is about the future. People born in the rich world today think they are due a modicum of health, prosperity and equality. They advance against that standard, rather than the pestilence, beggary and injustice of serfdom. That’s progress.

Every day, in every way…

The idea of progress has a long history, but it started to flower in the 17th century. Enlightenment thinkers believed that man emancipated by reason would rise to ever greater heights of achievement. The many manifestations of his humanity would be the engines of progress: language, community, science, commerce, moral sensibility and government. Unfortunately, many of those engines have failed.
Some supposed sources of progress now appear almost quaint. Take language: many 18th-century thinkers believed that superstitions and past errors were imprinted in words. “Hysteria”, for example, comes from the Greek for “womb”, on the mistaken idea that panic was a seizure of the uterus. Purge the language of rotten thinking, they believed, and truth and reason would prevail at last. The impulse survives, much diminished, in the vocabulary of political correctness. But these days few people outside North Korea believe in language as an agent of social change.

Every time someone tells you to “be realistic” they are asking you to compromise your ideals

Other sources of progress are clothed in tragedy. The Germanic thought that individual progress should be subsumed into the shared destiny of a nation, or volk, is fatally associated with Hitler. Whenever nationalism becomes the chief organising principle of society, state violence is not far behind. Likewise, in Soviet Russia and Communist China unspeakable crimes were committed by the ruling elite in the pursuit of progress, rather as they had been in the name of God in earlier centuries. As John Passmore, an Australian philosopher, wrote: “men have sought to demonstrate their love of God by loving nothing at all and their love for humanity by loving nobody whatsoever.”
The 20th century was seduced by the idea that humans will advance as part of a collective and that the enlightened few have the right—the duty even—to impose progress on the benighted masses whether they choose it or not. The blood of millions and the fall of the Berlin Wall, 20 years ago this year, showed how much the people beg to differ. Coercion will always have its attractions for those able to do the coercing, but, as a source of enlightened progress, the subjugation of the individual in the interests of the community has lost much of its appeal.
Instead the modern age has belonged to material progress and its predominant source has been science. Yet nestling amid the quarks and transistors and the nucleic acids and nanotubes, there is a question. Science confers huge power to change the world. Can people be trusted to harness it for good?
The ancients thought not. Warnings that curiosity can be destructive stretch back to the very beginning of civilisation. As Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, so inquisitive Pandora, the first woman in Greek mythology, peered into the jar and released all the world’s evils.
Modern science is full of examples of technologies that can be used for ill as well as good. Think of nuclear power—and of nuclear weapons; of biotechnology—and of biological contamination. Or think, less apocalyptically, of information technology and of electronic surveillance. History is full of useful technologies that have done harm, intentionally or not. Electricity is a modern wonder, but power stations have burnt too much CO2-producing coal. The internet has spread knowledge and understanding, but it has also spread crime and pornography. German chemistry produced aspirin and fertiliser, but it also filled Nazi gas chambers with Cyclon B.
The point is not that science is harmful, but that progress in science does not map tidily onto progress for humanity. In an official British survey of public attitudes to science in 2008, just over 80% of those asked said they were “amazed by the achievements of science”. However, only 46% thought that “the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect”.
From the perspective of human progress, science needs governing. Scientific progress needs to be hitched to what you might call “moral progress”. It can yield untold benefits, but only if people use it wisely. They need to understand how to stop science from being abused. And to do that they must look outside science to the way people behave.

…I am getting richer and richer

It is a similar story with economic growth, the other source of material progress. The 18th century was optimistic that business could bring prosperity; and that prosperity, in its turn, could bring enlightenment. Business has more than lived up to the first half of that promise. As Joseph Schumpeter famously observed, silk stockings were once only for queens, but capitalism has given them to factory girls. And, as Mr Moore and Simon argue, prosperity has brought its share of enlightenment.
The Economist puts more faith in business than most. Yet even the stolidest defenders of capitalism would, by and large, agree that its tendency to form cartels, shuffle off the costs of pollution and collapse under the weight of its own financial inventiveness needs to be constrained by laws designed to channel its energy to the general good. Business needs governing, just as science does.
Nor does economic progress broadly defined correspond to human progress any more precisely than does scientific progress. GDP does not measure welfare; and wealth does not equal happiness. Rich countries are, by and large, happier than poor ones; but among developed-world countries, there is only a weak correlation between happiness and GDP. And, although wealth has been soaring over the past half a century, happiness, measured by national surveys, has hardly budged.
That is probably largely because of status-consciousness. It is good to go up in the world, but much less so if everyone around you is going up in it too. Once they have filled their bellies and put a roof over their heads, people want more of what Fred Hirsch, an economist who worked on this newspaper in the 1950s and 1960s, called “positional goods”. Only one person can be the richest tycoon. Not everyone can own a Matisse or a flat in Mayfair. As wealth grows, the competition for such status symbols only becomes more intense.
And it is not just that material progress does not seem to be delivering the emotional goods. People also fear that mankind is failing to manage it properly—with the result that, in important ways, their children may not be better off than they are. The forests are disappearing; the ice is melting; social bonds are crumbling; privacy is eroding; life is becoming a dismal slog in an ugly world.
All this scepticism, and more, is on display in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Brave New World”, the two great British dystopian novels of the 20th century. In them George Orwell and Aldous Huxley systematically subvert each of the Enlightenment’s engines of progress. Language—Orwell’s Newspeak—is used to control people’s thought. The individuals living on Airstrip One are dissolved by perpetual war into a single downtrodden “nation”. In both books the elite uses power to oppress, not enlighten. Science in Huxley’s London has become monstrous—babies raised in vitro in hatcheries are chemically stunted; and the people are maintained in a state of drug-induced tranquillity. And in the year of our Ford 632, Huxley’s world rulers require enthusiastic consumption to keep the factories busy and the people docile. Wherever the Enlightenment saw scope for human nature to improve, Orwell and Huxley warned that it could be debased by conditioning, propaganda and mind-control.

Crooked timber

The question is why neither Orwell’s nor Huxley’s nightmares have come to life. And the answer depends on the last pair of engines of progress: moral sensibility in its widest sense, and the institutions that make up what today is known as “governance”. These broadly liberal forces offer hope for a better future—more, indeed, than you may think.
The junior partner is governance—not an oppressive Leviathan, but a democratic system of laws and social institutions. Right and left have much cause to criticise government. For the right, as Ronald Reagan famously said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” For the left, government has failed to tame the cruelty of markets and lift the poor out of their misery. From their different perspectives, both sides complain that government regulation is often costly and ineffectual, and that many decades of social welfare have failed to get to grips with an underclass.
Yet even if government has scaled back its ambitions from the heights of the post-war welfare state, even if it is often inefficient and self-serving, it also embodies moral progress. That is the significance of the assertion, in the American Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. It is the significance of laws guaranteeing free speech, universal suffrage, and equality before the law. And it is the significance of courts that can hold states to account when they, inevitably, fail to match the standards that they have set for themselves.

Illustration by Matt Herring

Such values are the institutional face of the fundamental engine of progress—“moral sensibility”. The very idea probably sounds quaint and old-fashioned, but it is the subject of a powerful recent book by Susan Neiman, an American philosopher living in Germany. People often shy away from a moral view of the world, if only because moral certitude reeks of intolerance and bigotry. As one sociologist has said “don’t be judgmental” has become the 11th commandment.
But Ms Neiman thinks that people yearn for a sense of moral purpose. In a world preoccupied with consumerism and petty self-interest, that gives life dignity. People want to determine how the world works, not always to be determined by it. It means that people’s behaviour should be shaped not by who is most powerful, or by who stands to lose and gain, but by what is right despite the costs. Moral sensibility is why people will suffer for their beliefs, and why acts of principled self-sacrifice are so powerful.
People can distinguish between what is and what ought to be. Torture was once common in Europe’s market squares. It is now unacceptable even when the world’s most powerful nation wears the interrogator’s mask. Race was once a bar to the clubs and drawing-rooms of respectable society. Now a black man is in the White House.
There are no guarantees that the gap between is and ought can be closed. Every time someone tells you to “be realistic” they are asking you to compromise your ideals. Ms Neiman acknowledges that your ideals will never be met completely. But sometimes, however imperfectly, you can make progress. It is as if you are moving towards an unattainable horizon. “Human dignity”, she writes, “requires the love of ideals for their own sake, but nothing requires that the love will be requited.”

Striving, not strife

At the end of Madach’s poem, Adam is about to throw himself off a cliff in despair, when he glimpses redemption. First Eve draws near to tell him that she is to have a child. Then God comes and gently tells Adam that he is wrong to try to reckon his accomplishments on a cosmic scale. “For if you saw your transient, earthly life set in dimensions of eternity, there wouldn’t be any virtue in endurance. Or if you saw your spirit drench the dust, where could you find incentive for your efforts?” All God asks of man is to strive for progress, nothing more. “It is human virtues I want,” He says, “human greatness.”
Ms Neiman asks people to reject the false choice between Utopia and degeneracy. Moral progress, she writes, is neither guaranteed nor is it hopeless. Instead, it is up to us.