Human progress can be measured along a linear scale, where at one end is terrible evil and suffering and at the other end is an ideal society of goodness and peace, or heaven and hell, if you prefer. In my mind I like to orient the scale vertically along a cliff. A climber slowly makes his way to the crest. Where he is represents society’s cumulative progress, the higher the better. Misjudging a hand- or foothold can always happen and is what makes the climb a venture. Obviously, the closer you are to the bottom, the less costly it is to start over and the more daring you can afford to be in scaling. On the other hand, the higher you are, the more aware you are of the wind and the security of every hold, the more precarious your situation feels. When you are very high, you carefully plan each move and execute it with precision.

The great problem with this analogy is that when a society becomes successful, people get shielded from much evil and suffering in the world and forget it exists–in terms of the analogy, they forget about the bottom. People have a strong tendency to do this. Think of Adam and Eve in the garden. They had it good, everything they could ever want, in fact. There was only one tree God denied them, but it became their focus and they took the rest of their good situation for granted. No matter how good we have it, all we tend to see are the ways in which it could be better, which we can be wrong about, the cliff we have in front of us.