Pragmatic Leftist Theory

It's possible to comprehend things we wouldn't otherwise be able to through the use of models and frameworks that help us make sense of things.

An example I would give is the atom. I'm a scientist, so I understand atoms pretty well, but if I think about it too hard, then it becomes clear that I don't really understand them — "an atom" is just an abstract concept that has no perceivable connection to anything in my life that I can make sense of.

However, by learning these abstract models, we can then use them to make sense of larger, more complex phenomena. 100 years ago, we didn't know what vitamin C was, which meant that Arctic explorers struggled to understand why fresh meat prevented scurvy where lime juice did not (lime juice has much lower vitamin C content than lemon juice, especially when processed in the manner it was). Now, we understand that vitamin C is a molecule that degrades easily, and that it's necessary for the conversation of proline to hydroxyproline, an essential component of collagen. This explains why scurvy causes the symptoms it does: insufficient vitamin C → insufficient collagen →deterioration of connective tissues

After travelling through the process of continually creating new models that contain the sum of the previous models, continually moving upwards in complexity, we have arrived at a point where this knowledge does have concrete, real impact on the world. I had a friend in college who got mild scurvy due to eating too much processed food, and they solved it by taking a multivitamin regularly (though eating the occasional vegetable would have been ideal). I know about the nitty gritty of how scurvy happens because I'm a biochemist who likes to nerd out about this stuff, but my friend wasn't.

It's hard to tell how much knowledge is enough (and indeed, we thought we had solved scurvy in 1747, when James Lind showed that citrus juice was an effective cure (he was using lemon juice, and he nor the people who came after him realised that limes would not work as well). However, this is a significant example of how progress is possible, even if it takes a super long time and requires the integration of many different models of thinking. Sometimes a field may stall for a while because it requires integrated knowledge from a different field move to the next hierarchical level of understanding. This may require either waiting for those other fields to progress, someone who is doing interdisciplinary work and is well situated to recognise when perspectives from different fields could be valuable, or both of these things.

We don't need to be able to understand trillions of dollar, or billions of people all at once. We can understand it in stages. In terms of getting our head around the vast number of people on this planet, the existence of countries can be seen as an attempt towards that. A flawed attempt, perhaps, but it does help to make things more manageable. And each level of understanding has nested structures within it: my country has almost 70 million people in it, which is just as incomprehensible to me as 8 billion. However, this is why countries are broken down into smaller levels of governance, which can reach a level that is comprehensible by the average person.

I'm not saying that this system is working; it very much isn't — we are very much on the same page on that front. However, there are instances where we've been able to make sense of things that would otherwise be unfathomable. 150 years ago, "citrus juice prevents scurvy" was a flawed model, but we improved on that until we found a system of models that worked. That's where we're at with politics and economics. I don't honestly believe that I'll live to see a world where we get that working, but I do believe it's possible. A large part of why I'm still around is because I feel like there are things I can do that will help get us closer towards a working understanding of things — to iterate towards something better than what we have now, even if actually getting it to work will take longer than my lifetime.

Regardless of the possibility of hope though, I'm glad you're here with us. I don't know what compels you to stick around, but I'm glad you're here nonetheless. Personally, I think I am hopeful about the future because I need to be, because it's the only thing that stops me from imploding when I look around at how awful things are. I don't presume to be able to convince you towards hope and I hope that my comment doesn't come across like that's my intention. We don't need to agree on that front (and like I say, my own hope is arguably pretty irrational, even if I think the objective argument for the nebulous possibility of progress is strong). Right now, I'm just glad you exist because I appreciate not having to spend words talking about how awful everything is — you get it. Hope or no, that makes me feel a little less alone.