It’s a common joke that the British conquered the world to access its spices but never bother to use them.
I’m worried I’m too much like the British in this way. I spend my time researching progress, gathering data and ideas about how the world has improved and what we need to do to build a future worthy of our hopes and ingenuity—but my writing more often conforms to the norms of academic and professional writing, where methodical, clearly articulated arguments and substantiated claims are prioritized. Those things are important but they don’t usually result in writing you could call zesty. Syllogisms may be tidy, but they don’t motivate me to get out of bed in the morning.
Does progress inspire you? We are surrounded by the fruits of progress every day, but we often take them for granted. While you may be grateful for the fact that electricity flows through your house at the flip of a switch if you stop to think of it, you probably don’t feel a flash of excitement each time you enter a room and turn on the light. Statistics can be incredibly useful and can convey facts succinctly. But GDP reports probably don’t make your heart race even if they show our trajectory of progress.
Everyone has experienced a moment when they felt inspired. Or heard a story that helped them understand an idea in a way they never had before. There are moments in which you realize that the opportunities you enjoy are precious and exciting and perhaps not guaranteed—when you realize the potential for further progress and feel the spark of joy that motivates you to strive for that progress. I think those are just as worthwhile to save and share as statistics are.
One of my favorite examples is a French slogan from the 1970s. France was in the middle of the oil crisis and with no domestic fossil fuel sources, they were facing sharp price hikes and pinched supply. The government decided that energy security was a priority and they were going to achieve it whether they had oil or not. They came up with this rallying cry,
“In France, we do not have oil, but we do have ideas.”
And they delivered, eventually building 56 nuclear power plants that supply more than half the country’s electricity.
Slogans and proverbs help you convey ideas better. They are more memorable than statistics. They are worth using even if they aren’t as descriptive as datasets. Communicating your ideas in a memorable and compelling way isn’t cheating, it’s actually an act of generosity.
I’ve been keeping a commonplace book for several years. It is basically a journal of ideas. Instead of a diary, it’s a collection of ideas, quotes, jokes, and stories that you want to remember. The goal is to have a repertoire that you can pull from when needed.
Perhaps you will serendipitously have something happen to you the week before you give a speech and it will perfectly illustrate your main point. If not, it’s helpful to have read a bit of history, to have brushed against a few ideas, and it’s even more helpful to have a collection of those anecdotes, idioms, and ideas that you can sift through when you need inspiration or just the right analogy.
I’ve already built a personal collection of my own. I try to do the same thing on a smaller scale for my work projects—writing down the particular phrase or analogy someone used to communicate an idea, or jotting down a story that helps illustrate why I think my position is justified. Usually, I abandon these mini commonplace books when the project is over—their scope is too narrow to be useful long term. But as I have realized that progress and abundance are animating principles that pervade every area of my work, I’ve decided I should develop a commonplace book specifically for those topics.
Quotes are like spices. If you have a nice full spice rack, chances are your cooking tastes better. You won’t use every spice in every dish, but having a cabinet full of options gives you the opportunity to bring out unique flavors for each meal. My spice rack is too empty at the moment, and I want your help to fill it.
My colleague, Josh Smith, is great at this. He is an immigration researcher and I often hear him say, “people bring prosperity.” That phrase brings color to a policy topic that is usually mired in debates about labor market effects and visa backlogs. It’s the most succinct way I’ve heard the value of immigration explained, and he gets bonus points for using alliteration. I’ve already tucked his proverb into my progress commonplace book, and I’m hoping you will help me add even more entries.
“People bring prosperity.”
What are your favorite quotes or stories about abundance? My hope is that by gathering these together, eventually we can begin to build a shared vocabulary for progress—shortcuts to help us understand each other and recognize our shared beliefs and motivations. Hopefully, these nuggets will catch the attention of other readers, people who would be interested in progress studies but haven’t ever come across the idea presented in a way that intrigues them.
With that in mind, here are a few more samplings from my collection on energy, abundance, and progress.
“Appreciation begets abundance.” Robin Wall Kimmerer is a professor of ecology and a member of the Potawatomi nation. Her book “Braiding Sweetgrass” outlines an optimistic framework for humans to engage with a world that is experiencing the consequences of human action. Here is the full quote:
“It’s such a simple thing, but we all know the power of gratitude to incite a cycle of reciprocity. If my girls run out the door with lunch in hand without a “Thanks Mama!” I confess I get to feeling a tad miserly with my time and energy. But when I get a hug of appreciation, I want to stay up late to bake cookies for tomorrow’s lunch bag. We know that appreciation begets abundance. Why should it not be so for Mother Earth, who packs us a lunch every single day?”
“We can be the first sustainable generation.” Hannah Ritchie, editor of Our World in Data.
A reframing of an increasingly common worry among young people—that we could be the last generation, or at least the last generation that will experience prosperity and a livable climate. Ritchie’s Ted Talk walks us through the evolution of human energy use over time, concluding that we currently have the best chance of being the first truly sustainable generation on earth.
“Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.” - From Zadie Smith’s essay “On Optimism and Despair”
As the closure of nuclear plants in Germany illustrates, progress isn’t permanent. Continued progress relies on our ability to articulate its value in terms that speak to current concerns and values.
Coming from a community where most people’s cabinets had at least one collaborative cookbook, I understand the value of gathering together everyone’s good ideas into one place. You find things you never would have on your own when you have a cookbook that each person in the neighborhood contributed to— grandmothers and novices alike. I’d like to create something similar by gathering all our favorite stories of progress, energy, and abundance and building a shared resource we can all refer back to.
So please share your own favorite quotes and stories about human progress and ingenuity, energy abundance, or even your favorite joke. I’ll collect them over the next three weeks, combine them all, and then share them back to you the week of Thanksgiving. Each entry will have a note showing who contributed it (unless you would rather stay anonymous). I hope it will be a way for us to gather ideas and find like-minded people. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to reflect on the progress we enjoy and to give thanks for everyone who has helped us achieve it. I’ve left the comments open on this post or you can reply directly via email. Please send your comments to me by November 19th so I can include them in the final collection!
This is a really great idea Jennifer! I've enjoyed reading what other people submitted. Here are some of mine:
- On our current status: "The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time." ~Max Roser from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better
- On data: "We have many ways of learning about the world and we should make use of all of them. A statistical view without personal experience lacks depth, and personal experience without statistical knowledge lacks perspective." ~Max Roser from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/limits-personal-experience
- On optimism: "Optimistic but dissatisfied is the road to progress." ~Hannah Ritchie: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23622511/climate-doomerism-optimism-progress-environmentalism
- On pragmatism: "There are no guarantees that things will turn out very well for anyone. A sunny disposition is not an action plan or a to-do list. “Just have faith” is a strategy that forecloses our capacity to challenge power. If the world is going to get better, it will only happen through concerted, shared, collective effort." ~Dave Karpf: https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/on-technological-optimism-and-technological
- On infrastructure: "Nevertheless, the fact is that mature technological systems — cars, roads, municipal water supplies, sewers, telephones, railroads, weather forecasting, buildings, even computers in the majority of their uses — reside in a naturalized background, as ordinary and unremarkable to us as trees, daylight, and dirt. Our civilizations fundamentally depend on them, yet we notice them mainly when they fail, which they rarely do. They are the connective tissues and the circulatory systems of modernity. In short, these systems have become infrastructures." ~Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan: http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/twente.pdf
Must be Inherit the Wind's progress is never a bargain scene!
https://youtu.be/vtNdYsoool8?t=42
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
- CS Lewis
“One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say.”
- Puddleglum, (The Silver Chair, CS Lewis)
There is no way out for Man but steeply up or steeply down. Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.
- H. G. Wells, Mind at the End of its Tether (1949)
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. … To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.
- C. S. Lewis
It is not the bad people I fear so much as the good people. When a person is sure that he is good, he is nearly hopeless; he gets cruel--he believes in punishment.
- Clarence Darrow (reportedly to a group of inmates)
Civilization is merely a thin veneer we have put on top of our anciently derived instincts, but the veneer is what makes it possible for modern society to operate. Being civilized means, among other things, stopping your immediate response to a situation, and thinking whether it is or is not the appropriate thing to do. … In summary, I began by warning you about dealing with experts; but towards the end I am warning you about yourself when in your turn you are the expert.
- Richard Hamming, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, pg. 186 (ch 26 - Experts)
- Note: There are tons of Hamming quotes worth pulling in this book and in particular, for the progress studies crowd, a lot in the chapters on creativity and experts.
If you haven‟t been reading the newspapers for a few months and then read them all together, you realize how much time is wasted with these sheets of paper. The world has always been divided into parties, and this applies more especially nowadays; and whenever there is a situation of uncertainty, the journalist baits either one party or the other, either more or less, and boosts our inner preference or dislike from one day to the next until, in the end, there is a decision and then, what has happened is an object of wonder, as though it were an act of God.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
I am a rudderless, burning, large garbage barge.
- Diane Nguyen
I do not intend to destroy segregation by physical force. That would entail human waste and would not gain my objectives. I hope to see it destroyed by a power greater than all the robot bombs and explosives of human creation––by a power of the spirit, an appeal to the intelligence of man, a laying hold of the creative and dynamic impulses within the minds of men. The great poets and prophets have heralded this method; Christ, Thoreau, and Gandhi have demonstrated it. I intend to do my part through the power of persuasion, by spiritual resistance, by the power of my pen, and by inviting the violence upon my own body. For what is life itself without the freedom to walk proudly before God and man and to glorify creation through the genius of self-expression. I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods. When my brothers draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them....
- Pauli Murray, An American Credo, 1945, Common Ground.
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
- Kant
Don’t get it right, get it written.
- James M. Buchanan (as quoted by Tyler Cowen on MR).
Man is “adaptive in many if not any direction,” he wrote in his 1969 book, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. “Mind apprehends and comprehends the general principles governing flight and deep sea diving, and man puts on his wings or his lungs, and then takes them off when not using them. The specialist bird is greatly impeded by its wings when trying to walk. The fish cannot come out of the sea and walk upon land, for birds and fish are specialists.”
- Buckminster Fuller (You Belong to the Universe - page 43)
We were going to say that we were going to cure cancer. Curing it is someone else’s department.
- Sam Seabourne, The West Wing, S3xE12, 100,000 Airplanes
Deep down, you almost always like how a real leader makes you feel, how you find yourself working harder and pushing yourself and thinking in ways you wouldn’t be able to if there weren’t this person you respected and believed in and wanted to please.
In other words, a real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own
- David Foster Wallace, in Rolling Stone
"To appreciate the importance of fitting every human soul for independent action, think for a moment of the immeasurable solitude of self. We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us, we leave it alone, under circumstances peculiar to ourselves.”
The Solitude of Self - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“We take ourselves seriously whether we lead serious lives or not..”
Thomas Nagel - The Absurd - pg. 719