Narrator: In 1955, a survey asked the Swedish public if they thought there were "intolerable conditions" in their society. At the time, 13 percent said yes. Half a century later, after decades of unprecedented peace, rising incomes, expanded human liberties, and dramatic improvements in healthcare, the same question was asked again. This time, more than half of all Swedes believed conditions were intolerable. This paradox is the central puzzle explored in Johan Norberg's book, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. It investigates the profound disconnect between the overwhelming evidence of human advancement and our persistent feeling that the world is falling apart. Norberg argues that we are living through a golden age, but our own psychology and the nature of news prevent us from seeing it.

Narrator: Norberg begins by dismantling the myth of a romantic past, arguing that for most of human history, life was defined by a brutal and relentless struggle for survival. The "good old days," he contends, were mostly awful. Famine was not a rare catastrophe but a recurring feature of life. He recounts the harrowing story of the 1868 famine in northern Sweden, where people were forced to mix bark into their bread. Three starving children who begged for a few crumbs at a farm were later found frozen to death between the houses, a stark reminder of the fragility of life.

This grim reality began to change not by chance, but through human ingenuity. The book highlights the Haber-Bosch process, the invention of artificial fertilizer in the early 20th century, as one of humanity's greatest achievements. This single innovation is credited with feeding nearly half the world's population today, preventing Malthusian catastrophes on a global scale. This was followed by the Green Revolution, spearheaded by agronomist Norman Borlaug. By developing high-yield, disease-resistant wheat, Borlaug’s work saved millions from starvation in countries like Mexico, India, and Pakistan, turning them from food importers into self-sufficient nations. Borlaug famously criticized Western environmental lobbyists who, from their comfortable offices, sought to deny developing nations the very tools—fertilizers, tractors, and irrigation—that had lifted the West out of hunger.

Narrator: The book puts forward a provocative idea: poverty has no causes; only prosperity has causes. Poverty is the default state of humanity, the starting point from which we have only recently begun to escape. For millennia, economic growth was virtually non-existent. Norberg illustrates this with descriptions of pre-industrial Europe, where estate inventories of deceased workers revealed little more than a few old clothes, a stool, and a straw-filled sack for a bed.

The first "Great Ascent" from this universal poverty began with the Industrial Revolution in England. By embracing new technologies and scaling back mercantilist controls, the nation unleashed a wave of productivity that doubled workers' real earnings between 1820 and 1850. A more recent and even more dramatic example is found in the story of Xiaogang, a village in China. In 1978, after years of starvation under Mao's collective farming policies, eighteen families secretly agreed to divide the communal land and keep whatever they produced after meeting the state's quota. The result was an immediate explosion in productivity. The grain output in a single year was more than the previous five years combined. This small act of rebellion was eventually endorsed by the Communist Party and became the model for reforms that lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of extreme poverty in a single generation.

Narrator: Beyond material well-being, Norberg demonstrates a profound, if often unnoticed, decline in violence and an expansion of human rights. He challenges the perception that we live in uniquely violent times by pointing to historical data. In medieval Europe, homicide rates were 30 to 100 times higher than they are today. The rise of centralized states, the rule of law, and commerce created powerful incentives for peace. As Frédéric Bastiat’s worldview is summarized, "Where goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will."

This progress extends to the expansion of what the book calls the "moral circle"—the group of people to whom we extend empathy and rights. This is powerfully illustrated by the story of Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery in America. When his owner discovered that Douglass was learning to read, he forbade it, stating that literacy would make a slave "unfit" for servitude. The owner was right. Reading opened Douglass’s mind to the "silver trump of freedom," tormenting him with the injustice of his condition and ultimately fueling his escape and his life's work as an abolitionist. His story is a testament to how knowledge and freedom are inextricably linked. This same expansion of rights is seen in the movements for women's equality and LGBTQ+ rights. The Stonewall Riots of 1969, for instance, began as a spontaneous resistance to police harassment but galvanized a global movement that has led to decriminalization and marriage equality in dozens of countries.

Narrator: If the evidence for progress is so overwhelming, why do so many people believe the world is getting worse? Norberg dedicates his final analysis to this "paradox of pessimism," attributing it to a collision between the nature of progress and the nature of our minds. First, the media is structurally biased toward bad news. Gradual improvements, like a 0.05% daily decline in child mortality, are not newsworthy. Sudden disasters, like a plane crash or a terrorist attack, are. This creates a skewed perception of reality. A study in Baltimore found that even as crime rates plummeted, residents who watched local news frequently were the most fearful, as their perception was shaped by dramatic reporting rather than the improving reality.

Second, human psychology is wired with a negativity bias. As psychologist Steven Pinker notes, "bad is stronger than good." We are more affected by criticism than praise, by loss than by gain. This is compounded by nostalgia—the tendency to romanticize the past and believe that society was better in our youth. Finally, complaining about the state of the world can be a form of social signaling, a way to show that one is a caring, morally engaged person. The combination of these factors creates a powerful illusion of decline, blinding us to the greatest improvements in human history.

Narrator: Ultimately, the most critical takeaway from Progress is that human advancement is not an accident or an inevitability. It is the direct result of a specific set of ideas and institutions: the Enlightenment commitment to reason and science, the liberal respect for individual freedom, and the expansion of global cooperation and trade. These are the engines that have pulled humanity out of the mire of poverty, violence, and ignorance.

The book is not just a feel-good story; it is a warning against complacency. The progress Norberg documents is fragile and can be reversed by the very forces it overcame: superstition, tribalism, and authoritarianism. It leaves readers with a powerful challenge, echoing the epitaph of the architect Sir Christopher Wren: "If you are looking for a monument, look around you." We must learn to see the monuments of progress not as a finished museum piece, but as a living, breathing project that requires our active participation and defense to continue for generations to come.