Societal Advancement Does Not Come Naturally

Some of the most basic and uncontroversial practices we have today - things like handwashing in medicine, lightning rods on buildings, and women's right to vote - faced tremendous opposition.

Lightning rods, those simple metal rods installed on roofs to safely direct lightning strikes, were vehemently opposed when invented, with churches claiming that controlling lightning strikes was usurping God's authority. Despite saving lives, Ben Franklin's invention faced riots. Earlier adoption of these rods would have prevented countless fires and saved thousands of lives, likely preventing a catastrophic 1767 church explosion killing 3,000. Decades passed before superstition finally allowed widespread adoption.

Even handwashing faced an uphill battle. In 1847, a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis proved that doctors’ handwashing dramatically reduced maternal deaths after childbirth. He hypothesized this was likely due to “cadaverous particles” transferred by doctors’ hands at clinics that also did cadaver autopsies. Semmelweis’ strict handwashing protocol lowered childbirth mortality rates from 13% to 2%, similar to the rate at clinic staffed by midwives who did not perform autopsies. However, the idea that doctors could be responsible for spreading disease was seen as offensive. The medical mainstream clung to archaic theories about "bad air" transmitting disease. It took decades before conclusive evidence for germ theory finally made handwashing a standard protocol.

Even when the benefits are obvious, we may be resisting societal improvements today:

• Up until recently, we've largely neglected the 7 million annual deaths from air pollution - a public health emergency of staggering proportions.

• Despite 1.2 million road fatalities yearly, countries have been slow to adopt urban designs proven to cut deaths by 50%.

• The world’s non-liberal democracies are slow to improve their governance. Less than 6% of the world population lives in a liberal democracy. The U.S., for example, is slow to fix its gridlock, gerrymandering, discrimination, and polarization/disinformation issues. Raising awareness of democracy's fragility and fixing systemic weaknesses isn't a top priority. Voters tend to back autocratic candidates if their values align.

Every transformative advance began as an annoying gnat to the status quo - people asking people to prioritize something that doesn’t seem worth prioritizing. Sometimes the changes were even considered unfathomable or blasphemous. The women's suffrage movement perfectly encapsulates this. For a century, the notion of women voting was derided as "fanatical" lunacy before finally becoming accepted democratic principle.

Today's generations will experience their own mind-bending shifts in norms. We're a young society - barely 100 years removed from women voting going from unthinkable to obvious human rights win.

One way I can tell how young we as a society are is that we haven't gotten much better at how we react to new ideas that are outside the norm. Some people are quick to cast off new technologies, like lab-grown meat or aging-reversal research as “unnatural” - even though In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and even high speed trains caused similar worries (some people believed that exposing women to high speeds would make their uteruses fall out).

New ideas seem fringe radical, until they’re not. Even revolutionary progress that people devoted their lives and bled for - women's rights, marriage equality, abolition - become the new normal.

I think about this pattern whenever I watch movies like The Princess Diaries, where the main character's moral virtue is signaled by her focus on disadvantaged children and the local needy. While that's certainly admirable, some of the biggest positive impacts throughout history came from those who pushed society to widen its norms.

That's why I try to stay humble about ideas that seem "crazy" today. Take, for instance, the push for better indoor air quality to fend off viruses, or growing trend of parents respecting their children's natural empathy towards animals, which often includes not viewing them as food. Future generations may well be surprised it took so long for these things to become more accepted.

And then there's the fact that about a quarter of the world gets by on less than $3.65 a day. Universal basic income (UBI), while a radical idea now, might be viewed differently in a few decades. It's possible that future generations will be more surprised that such a significant portion of the world once lived with such low income, rather surprised at the concept of UBI itself.