Pragmatic Wisdom: Can Meliorism Ameliorate Life's Inherent Suffering?

(The DROPS IN LIFE'S BUCKET)

First, a word about us women. When people, or, should I say, writers, wax philosophical, they pretty much always turn to men for inspiration and expertise. Make no mistake, we women have had our toes in the rivers of deep thought forever.

Maitreyi (1000 BCE), Gargi Vachaknavi, Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 370–415 CE). Look them up. And remember, the female contribution to great thinking continues all the way through today's Martha Nussbaum at my hometown's University of Chicago. That brings me to British novelist George Eliot (AKA Mary Ann Evans) and the much-disputed theory of meliorism, my topic at hand.

"I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word meliorist except myself." —George Eliot

How the word worked its way into English

After George Eliot wrote this in a personal letter or two in the last quarter of the 19th century, her peers generously credited her with coining meliorist and meliorism. Before Saturday Night Live made the idea of deep thoughts iconically sardonic, Ms. Eliot spent a fair amount of energy pondering the world's condition and how to improve it.

To be honest, meliorism had been bandied about for 20 or 30 years before she penned it. The root is meliorate (yes, a synonym for ameliorate) that dates back to the 15th century. (End of etymology lesson.)

What meliorism is or is not

Think about Stoicism. There's a plentitude of pop-writing extolling the virtues of that philosophy to make sense of the increasing setbacks in modern life. Stoicism, the pschooled people to observe life's ups and downs and foibles without being all judgy. Experience life. Contemplate life. Respond to it (reasonably). But resist becoming overwhelmed and trying to wrestle life to the ground and control it. Thats apatheia. Kind of a Buddhist perspective—it is what it is.

Apatheia begets peace of mind, which begets acceptance without passion, which precludes coveting that which we don't have and that which we are not.

All good. Enter Ameliorism.

"A term given to that view of the world which believes that at present the sum of good exceeds the sum of evil and that, in the future, good will continually gain upon evil. The term is said to have been invented by George Eliot to express a theory mediating between optimism and pessimism." —1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

Partner that with reasonable Pragmatism and Stoicism and, to my mind, now you have something to work with. There's more to it, for sure.

Stepping away from the women of philosophy for a second, William James's Pragmatism opines that another movement—Pragmatic thinking—shows the wisdom of focusing on duty and values. He sees that as naturally favourable to the melioristic view. Now we can blend acceptance with duty, values, and (wait for it) melioristic thought.

To get there, we have to accept that progress can be a real thing, and any one of us can disrupt natural processes to make the world better. James described meliorism as being "halfway between metaphysical optimism and pessimism."

Humans can inform positive change, improving our world and existence, by actively incorporating empathy, creativity, and kindness into our way of walking our personal path. To be clear, the idea does not require us to go around like giggling Polyanas wearing rose-colored contact lenses.

It's a good word and idea, but what's in it for me?

James was all on about rational faith, or a committed belief in human progress. We can all latch onto that, right? I mean, just look at where we once were and where we are now. Progress.

To make progress, we have to act. Couch-sitting doesn't cut it. In order to motivate ourselves to think, act, and produce change, we can't hang onto a fear of failing or screwing up. That's not to say we put our heads down and charge forward without considering the end game.

The pragmatic element of this combination theory hones in on Pragmatism—a school of practical action—which espouses a scientific method of gathering data that can underline your purpose and give you a leg up in your chance of success. It's about being realistic and looking ahead to possible outcomes without being immobilized by the chance of failure.

William James makes a lot of sense when he encourages us to be courageous in not allowing fear of messing up to prevent us from seeking ways to enhance life. For sure, we will all trip over our own feet, and be seduced into believing fake news, but that's ok as long as we dust off, reassess, and dive in again. Or we will not ameliorate.

We have to own the doctrine that the world is neither the worst nor the best possible, but that it is capable of improvement. And we are the agents of improvement.

What's in it for us could be magnificently liberating. Here's how I try to frame my thinking:

I can't prevent mass shootings. I can't cure climate change on my own. I can't make the US Congress behave like adults and focus on fraught issues that negatively impact our lives. I am powerless to put a reasonable, pragmatic, right-thinking, honest person at the head of my government or any other. I can't make sure all people get adequate or safe, food, water, medical care, or housing. As humans, we are going to be challenged by these things. Bad stuff happens to good people.

I accept that these things are part of our world. But instead of collapsing under the weight or being depressed because I can't make everything right, I choose to recognize the scope and limits of my influence.

It's okay to make the best of that. A friend once told me to have two metaphorical buckets before me. One holds those things that I can do nothing about. The other contains challenges I can influence or fix. I don't worry about the former, and I devote appropriate energy to the latter. It works.

I remain mindful, calm, centered, and purposeful. I take action wherever I can. That keeps me sane and fuels my self-esteem so I can use my capabilities for positive change on manageable scales to help those I can reach. That's all I should ask of myself in each moment.

"The truth lies at the foot of every error, and human progress cannot be made without it." —James, 1972

Well, why isn't everyone enamored of this approach?

The positivity of meliorism is the very thing that fires up its critics. Some say the idea ignores the fact that humankind cannot control everything. That desire to control is exactly what may be the root of most of our ills. Out of every new technology, ostensibly created to serve mankind, there is a dark side full of potential or actual harm. Consider AI technology. Right now, under our noses, great good is coming from medical AI technology, while, at the same time, humans have to be wary of the incredible problems artificial intelligence may unleash on us.

With that in mind, we will attempt to exert still more control and will likely make some poor decisions and take faltering steps as we seek to better our world by being its sole agent of change.

Daniel Sommer Robinson's A Critique of Meliorism points out: "Any sound social philosophy must begin by accepting the irremovable fact that human intelligence and all human accomplishments are dependent upon and fall within an infinite, non-human reality. Such a reality, whether interpreted in the sense of the infinite duration or space-time matrix of the new realism, or as the immanent absolute of objective idealism, or in the still more friendly sense of the personal God of theistic idealism, must be postulated as the enabling act for every social program of human meliorization. Meliorism will not acknowledge this reality. It irreverently slaps the universe in the face and boastfully turns to the stupendous task of making it better through the sole instrumentality of creative human intelligence."

Robinson admonishes that meliorists scathingly condemn the existing world as "a sorry state of affairs," and affirms with confident assurance the ability of human intelligence to make it over." And all the while, we have proven that we can't always succeed.

Still, what kind of thought or action does always succeed? No one philosophy or school of behavior will ever, for me, answer all questions and solve all problems. To whatever extent I can, I have a pragmatic need to stoically ameliorate situations that do not serve mankind.

The rest of the story

We all feel the looming presence of an undetermined future. Dystopia? It could happen, I suppose, but it's highly likely that we can work with natural processes and come up with solutions before the Zombies shuffle across Main Street.

Utopia? There's a fatal flaw in utopian thinking: Utopia fails to acknowledge the differences between people that result in differences in experience. Those differences are essential to our survival.

Homosapiens will together, purposefully or accidentally, determine our collective future, whether we want to embrace our society or reject it. It seems like thinking in meliorative terms will move us further forward in a better way than will parking our entitled asses on designer sofas and wringing our hands.

Do us all a favor and pick one tiny challenge to address melioratively right now. Then consider making that a habit.