Is the World Growing Better?
The Second Law of Thermodynamics suggests that closed systems always grow more disordered over time. Left to themselves, things get messier: your room won’t clean itself. Yet many people take for granted that the world as a whole should become better over time. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” said Martin Luther King, Jr., a quote that may have preceded and certainly outlived him. But it turns out that this idea that the world improves over time may be a relatively new one (alternate link). Discuss with your team: is the world growing better? Be sure to check out the artist Will Crawford’s answer to this question in this 1909 painting. What would a painting with the same title look like today?
For most of human history, people pictured time as a wheel — seasons turning, ages repeating, a golden past to mourn rather than a bright future to expect. The idea that the world steadily improves is barely three centuries old, an Enlightenment invention. We now assume progress so deeply we forget it was once a radical claim.
Key concepts
- The Belief In Progress
- The idea that humans can and should make the world better for future generations — it feels obvious now, but only emerged in the two centuries between Columbus and Newton.
- Cyclical Vs. Linear Time
- Most pre-modern people saw history as a repeating cycle or a path set by higher powers — 'progress' replaced that with the notion that tomorrow can surpass today.
- Entropy Vs. Improvement
- Physics says disorder tends to increase — set against the human faith in progress, it asks whether moral and material improvement defies the natural drift toward decay.
- Progress As A Choice
- Believing progress is possible isn't enough — someone has to make it happen; the modern world began when people resolved to actively improve their condition.
What to know
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Because progress is a belief, not a law of nature — physics actually predicts decay — every improvement we can point to was made, not given; it took someone choosing to push against the drift. That reframes optimism as a responsibility rather than a forecast.
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