by Robert Wright

Oct. 8, 2004

Oct. 10 update appended below

This week I published a piece in Beliefnet about an interview I did with the philosopher Daniel Dennett for my video website meaningoflife.tv. In the piece I asserted that Dennett (long famously atheist) had said that, as I paraphrased it, “life on earth shows signs of having a higher purpose.” In other words: the process of natural selection may itself have been set in motion by a designer (in some sense of that word), and the ensuing biological/cultural evolution may be moving toward some purpose that we don’t yet understand.

Dennett, in statements that have gotten wide circulation on the internet, has since complained that my piece misrepresents the views he expressed in that interview. So far as I can tell, he’s wrong.

Among the ideas that seemed to collapse along with the twin towers two years ago was a view of globalization as a kind of manifest destiny. Unlike the 19th-century version of manifest destiny, this vision didn't involve expanding America's borders. Rather, America's values — notably economic and political liberty — would spread beyond those borders, covering the planet. And this time around America's mission didn't have the widely assumed blessing of God. But it had the next best thing: the force of history. Globalization was seen by some as a nearly inevitable climax of the human story — destiny of a secular sort.

"The simpler way to account for this sort of 'excessively' moral behavior is to recall that human beings aren't 'fitness maximizers' but rather 'adaptation executors.'
"...Thus the conscience can lead people to do things that aren't in their self-interest except in the sense of salving the conscience itself. Sympathy, obligation, and guilt, unless subjected to a veritable extermination campaign during youth, always have the potential to bring behaviors of which their 'creator', natural selection, would not 'approve.'"
Pg. 225-226

How the globalization of fear will make us all better people.

Lately, various observers have proclaimed "the death of distance." A bit melodramatic, maybe, but it's true that, in an age of airplanes and optical fibers, the world seems pretty small. For that matter, distance has been in decline for millenniums. Ever since boats were first paddled and wagon wheels first turned, physical separation has become less and less of an obstacle to commerce and communication.

Unfortunately, distance has also become less of an obstacle to mayhem. Any vehicle that can carry merchants and merchandise can carry warriors and weapons. Germs can hitch a ride, too. The black death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century seems to have started in Asia and followed trade routes west. In general, the march of progress has brought fresh reasons to fear what lies beyond the horizon.

As distance enters its death throes, this sort of fear will have a richer grounding than ever. New conduits of harm will flourish. The current scare about millennium-eve terrorism is just one small example.

But cheer up! The coming globalization of fear isn't entirely regrettable. It could actually make us, in a sense, better people, more sensitive to suffering around the world. The 21st century may even witness what you could call the death--or at least the decline--of moral distance.

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
Robert Wright
Copyright 1999

The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
Copyright 1994
By Robert Wright