The Progress Paradox

Book Review by: The Lyne's man

The Progress Paradox: "How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse"

By Gregg Easterbrook

Random House, 2003

According to author Gregg Easterbrook, people are living better . . . and enjoying it less.

In the first third of The Progress Paradox, Easterbrook argues convincingly that living standards in the United States and Europe have steadily increased over the last fifty years. He offers solid, objective evidence for his claim based upon: a decrease in crime, a cleaner environment, improvement in the quality of healthcare, improving societal virtue, greater brainpower, gender and ethnic equality, and increasing economics both domestic and global. I, for one, was amazed. I had bought into the prevailing notion that the overall quality of life in western society is in decline.

Easterbrook’s question: “If most things are getting better for most people, why don’t Americans behave as though they believe this?” (p. 80). His theories about the overall attitude of pessimism include:

• The Revolution of Satisfied Expectations - “Most people judge their well-being not by where they stand but rather based on whether they think their circumstances will improve in coming years” and “now [that] we have so much it’s hard to look forward to having more” (p. 32-33)

• Collapse Anxiety – “Anxiety about a coming downturn (economy, natural resources, military) makes the mostly favorable present hard to appreciate” (p. 34). Now that we have it, we are afraid that we are going to lose it.

• The Tyranny of the Small Picture – “The lesser negative within the greater positive” (p. 99). As a society, we tend to focus only on current smaller problems instead of seeing the larger picture of overall progress.

• Complaint Proficiency – “Human beings as a group are really good at complaining” (p. 118). Complaining naturally reinforces a negative outlook.

• Abundance Denial – “Surveys show that the majority of Americans think only the rich are ‘well-off,’ despite the fact that most Americans live quite well compared to more than 99 percent of the human beings that have ever existed” (p. 119).

• Choice Anxiety – “No matter how carefully one compares products, a buyer can never be sure that he or she chose the right thing, so buyers experience anxiety before purchases, disappointment after” (p. 132-133).

Easterbrook’s theories are thought-provoking and somewhat convincing. As a result, I was looking forward to reading of his recommendations for overcoming the prevailing pessimism of our day.

Disappointment followed. His advice, based primarily on positive psychology, is that we ought simply to be more forgiving of others, more grateful for what we have, and more optimistic about the future. These rather vague proposals lack the depth of insight displayed early in the book.

Easterbrook missed a real opportunity. A passing observation made early in the Introduction reads:

“Society is undergoing a fundamental shift from “material want” to “meaning want,” with ever larger numbers of people reasonably secure in terms of living standards, but feeling that they lack significance in their lives. . . . This is a conundrum, as meaning is much more difficult to acquire than material possessions” (p. xix).

He is absolutely right! Yet, he treats this insightful observation only superficially (p. 210-212). This is an idea worth pursuing!

As I read the first chapters of The Progress Paradox, I thought to myself, “I am going to recommend this book to everyone I know.” His data is good. His conclusions are relatively satisfying, if debatable. Yet, his recommendations are vague and simplistic. Still, I’d recommend the book -– the information contained in the early chapters is paradigm-changing.

Your Lyne'sman

editor /informer

Tymeline publications

Science & Religion

Have you ever been asked a question about apparent contradictions between science and the Bible and didn’t know how to answer?

Have you ever had a science lecturer say something that you didn’t agree with but you didn’t know how to answer him?

In a decade and over, there has been an explosion of written and web-based resources on issues related to science and the Bible. In fact, science is becoming our strongest apologetics tool.

When I go preaching and ministering on campus (Makerere University), in hospitals (particulary Mengo hsptl) and upcountry (Western uganda), OR sometimes when am hanging out with people, I realise that people have many unanswrered questions on various topics.

And in this post, I can only attempt to answer this one question:

What are the scientific evidences for the existence of God?

Some say that science and the Bible have no relationship to each other, that science tells us things about the natural world and theology tells us about the spiritual world !!!

Well, consider the following scriptures.

• 
  “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:18-19)

• “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalms 19:1-2)

• “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this.” (Job 12:7-9)

Clearly, these passages say that nature is speaking to us. It is telling us about God! We cannot divorce science from the Bible.

Not only does the Bible tell us about the spiritual world it tells us about the natural world as well. And not only does nature tell us about the natural world it tells shows clear evidence of an intelligent designer as well. So what about all those conflicts between science and the Bible? Well, I think Dr. Hugh Ross says it best:
“Science is an attempt to interpret the facts of nature. Christian theology is an attempt to interpret the words of the Bible. Since, according to that theology, God created the universe and is also responsible for the words of the Bible and since He does not lie or deceive, there can be no contradiction between science and the facts of nature. Any conflict between science and Christian theology must be attributed to human misinterpretation. Such conflicts should be viewed with neither fear for the integrity of the Bible nor outrage against science, but rather should be accepted for the time being as indications that further research is needed. The Christian expectation is that such research will lead to greater understanding of both science and theology and to eventual reconciliation that will uphold both the Bible and the data from nature.” (Creation and Time)I think there are three convincing evidences from science of the existence of God:1. Scientific evidence indicates that there was a beginning to the universe.For centuries scientists thought that the universe was eternal, but the work of Einstein and Hubble clearly showed that the universe had a beginning in which all time, matter and energy came to be. Scientists call that event the Big Bang. The Big Bang is the greatest apologetics tool among the scientific evidences of God. Consider the fact that the Bible is the only holy book that says the following:
Ø Time has a beginning, time is finite, and God created time.Ø God can act entirely independent of the four space-time dimensions.Ø God has attributes that defy explanation in the four space-time dimensions.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)“This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” (II Timothy 1:9)“The hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.” (Titus 1:2)“You loved me before the creation of the world.” (John 17:24)“He chose us in Him before the creation of the world.” (Ephesians 1:4)“He was chosen before the creation of the world.” (I Peter 1:20)“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17)2. Scientific evidence indicates that the universe has been incredibly fine tuned for life on earth.Consider the following:
If the energy of the big bang were different by one part out of (10120) there would be no life anywhere in our universe.
There are more than 50 characteristics of the universe that have to be just right in order for any kind of life to exist in the universe.
There are more than 118 characteristics of our planet, the Moon, the Sun, and our galaxy that have to be just right in order for any kind of life to exist on earth.
The probability that all these characteristics would be “just right” = 10237
The predicted maximum number of planets in the universe = 1022
There is less than one chance in 10215 that even one life sustaining planet would occur anywhere in the universe. 3. Life shows evidence of intelligent design.There has been significant advancement in this area of science. Nowhere has this become more evident than in the fields of cell biology and biochemistry. Scientists are discovering more and more molecular machines that show clear evidence of design.If you would like to learn more about how science can be used as a powerful apologetics tool I encourage you to check out the following web sites.

Makerere only a mouth piece

It is november again, and of course, a time when humans begin to get tickled-up for the upcoming festivities, and the looming season of it all. Schools are doing, and others have finished their end of year academic exams. Also around this time, companies are compiling, editing and going about final touching with their books for the end of year accaountability to the stakers. End of year reports are the topmost nitch on the cooporate mind in the biz-village al'over.

And of course, it is definately happening al'over again, as quite alomst it should have always been expected, at Makerere University of Kampala. The strike clouds have been hoovering over the juirsidicated sky of The Mighty Ivory Tower of leraning, the one time pride of not just the pearl of Africa, but the continent altogehter!

Onething about this instituiton and its annual / perenial disease, is that before the symptoms actaully show up, it all begins like a cold that comes when you will catch either a couph or feaver in a matter of not more than 28hrs.

Well, it is just the 7th day of the month, aproximately a week or but less than two, when it did take place last year, and the strike is on rightnow, just when one was about to utter out somethink that sounds like "strikes are long gone on this campus", basing on the fact that there were two last year alone, and so far none this year.

And when U run?

Has God really been good?

Evidently, U can run but U can’t!!! Well, it’s been long since, but here we are again. And this time I had to carry everyone on my family team. We are a big family indeed as U can see from the attachments, but The Lord has been Really Ggoood to us.

Andddhh…, without wasting any of your time, am obliged at this level to just spill the attached content. I mean; let me introduce these guys before you can meet them in the next minute.

“Ladiz n Jentomen” (as you should notice from the ad –bar above (cc)), just Givvi’rup for my one in a lifetime lady @ my house: Viyoleti, and our Man of God, the boy CK.

Actually, he is Christian Kataama (sheep), and the other day on his dedication, our Bishop, Pastor Robert Kayanja scrapped our family name ‘KIRUNGI’ off the young lad’s paragraph of names, to add his very own KAYANJA, so it had 2 sound something like “Christian Kataama Kayanja”, instead of “Christian Kataama Kirungi”! And henceforth that day, the boy may be a Kirungi, but he is not Kirungi by name!!!

Of course we were all thumbs-up about it! And the entire Congregation called him BLESSED!!!

Did I mention somewhere ‘a para of names’?

Yes indeed; it’s a whole paragraph that goes something like: Christian Simon Trust Timothy Kataama Kirungi Kayanja Abwoli. I mean, this young man has a whole property of names. But we thought it would be nice not to call him by most of them, as a tool of protecting him from confusion. And so on your next appointment to meet with him, be learned enaf with what 2 call him. OK !!!

The other guy in the pix?

Just the helper; don’t worry about him !!!

Blessings from us:

The LOVE_RULED Kirungi’s