Progress, Growth, and Abundance Should be a Non-Partisan Movement
A new book titled Abundance from two progressive journalists, Ezra Klein of the New York Times and Derek Thompson of the Atlantic, is getting a lot of attention from their fellow Democrats. Full disclosure, I have not yet read the book in full as it was just published. However, I have been following the work of these authors, listened to numerous recent podcasts they have done to promote the book, and read the excerpt published in the Atlantic titled, "The Political Fight of the Century."
Klein and Thompson offer a left-of-center version of a progress, growth, and abundance vision that classical liberals and libertarians have been promoting for many years. By left of center, I mean they argue that politically, the Democratic Party should become the party of abundance and ideologically, despite borrowing a number of policy and cultural ideas from classical liberals, libertarians, and even conservatives, in their particular vision of abundance, they generally remain committed to a progressive view of the role of government.
As an existential psychologist, my work in human progress and abundance typically doesn't focus on politics or public policy. Instead, I examine underlying cognitive, emotional, self-regulatory, and motivational traits, states, and processes that help people pursue their aspirations, reach their full potential, and make meaningful contributions to their families, workplaces, communities, and broader world. I do frequently explore how this individual psychological level connects to broader social, cultural, and institutional analysis. Sometimes I delve into policy issues that I think significantly impact or are impacted by the wellbeing and motivational variables I study. But where I believe I am most useful in this discussion is examining the role that our individual minds and actions play in advancing human progress and flourishing. I like to approach this as a nonpartisan issue not because political differences are unimportant, but because I think our current political polarization involving a constant fixation on and exaggeration of political differences is a barrier to people coming together to solve big problems.
It's through this psychological lens that I connect with the mindset-changing aspect of Klein and Thompson's argument. Even when discussing policy and regulatory issues like housing, they're essentially talking about the need for a fundamental change in people’s thinking. They advocate shifting from what I call defense motivation to growth motivation. Defense motivation reflects our desire to protect ourselves from threats and avoid harm or loss. Growth motivation reflects our desire to improve our lives and achieve gains. Both are important. To thrive, we need to preserve what we've built (defense) while continuing to explore, experiment, learn, create and innovate (growth). The challenge is properly self-regulating these motivational orientations.
At this psychological level, Klein and Thompson join progress-oriented classical liberals and libertarians in recognizing that our culture has become too defense-oriented and not sufficiently growth-oriented. I believe this manifests as excessive anxiety, social distrust, pessimism, zero-sum thinking, degrowth mentalities, and an overemphasis on scarcity rather than confidence, trust, optimism, positive-sum thinking, growth potential, and abundance possibilities. This assessment is a big theme of this newsletter.
That said, I think Klein and Thompson unintentionally promote a scarcity mindset by arguing that Democrats should become the party of abundance, implying there can only be one such party. Why can't both Democrats and Republicans champion abundance? They might propose different policy pathways, but if it's about removing obstacles and creating opportunities for people to improve their lives and flourish, then it shouldn't matter if effective ideas come from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or all of them working together to address issues affecting all Americans. In fact, many of the scholars, writers, and thought leaders who have been working for years on advancing progress, growth, and abundance have been doing so in a nonpartisan way, not aligning with a specific political party but instead focusing on identifying ideas and policy reforms that they would like both Republicans and Democrats to get behind to help those in their communities, states, and nation flourish.
At some level, I understand why they target Democrats. That's their party and they're trying to help by addressing problems they see as most pronounced in Democrat-controlled cities and states. Yet this approach contains a contradiction. Klein and Thompson acknowledge that many Americans are leaving Democrat-run states for Republican-run ones, and that for some ideas progressives care about, such as renewable energy, it's red states like Texas leading the way. Their own observations suggest that, at least on some issues and in some regions, Republicans are already functioning as a party of abundance, at least more so than Democrats. If they recognize that places dominated by right-of-center politics have valuable lessons to teach places dominated by left-of-center politics, why do they implicitly suggest that Democrats should be the party of abundance rather than acknowledging both parties have the potential to meaningfully contribute to this vision? Ironically, their fixation on casting this as a right versus left political battle might ultimately, though unintentionally, reinforce the very defense-oriented mindset they're trying to overcome.
I believe progress, growth, abundance, or whatever framing that encourages an agentic, positive, solutions-focused, and future-oriented attitude should be championed as an American agenda and ultimately a human agenda, not a partisan one. In these polarized times, the more an idea is coded as red or blue, the less we can advance it.
In fact, the dividing line on abundance is often less about red vs. blue and more about defense vs. growth-oriented actors within each party. Again, both defense and growth motivations have their place. But if our society is currently tilted too far toward defense and not enough toward growth, we should be looking for growth-oriented allies across political boundaries who can work together.
I'm eager to read Abundance in full and am happy to see that Klein and Thompson are bringing fresh attention to this idea. This is valuable because we need more discussion on this topic that brings in diverse perspectives. If you're interested in exploring great work others have been doing in this space, below is a partial list of books, articles, newsletters, and organizations, including the one I work for, Archbridge Institute.
Have a great weekend!
Clay
Resources on Progress, Growth, and Abundance
Archbridge Institute and the Human Flourishing Lab (a project of Archbridge that I direct): We are a non-partisan think tank focusing on the economics, culture, and psychology of human flourishing. We work to empower individuals to achieve better, richer, and fuller lives by removing barriers and encouraging aspirations that cultivate capabilities. Archbridge CEO Gonzalo Schwarz writes the Living the Dream newsletter and our Chief Economist, Justin Callais writes the Debunking Degrowth newsletter.
Profectus: A web-based magazine produced by Archbridge Institute that aims to kickstart cultural and academic conversation around the key drivers of human flourishing and progress.
HumanProgress.org: An initiative of the Cato Institute led by Marian Tupy. Tupy also coauthored, with Gale Pooley, the 2022 book, Superabundance: The Story of Population, Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.
The Abundance Institute: A nonprofit organization focused on creating space for emerging technologies to grow, thrive, and reach their full potential.
The Institute for Progress: A non-partisan think tank focused on innovation policy.
The Progress Network: An initiative promoting the idea of a better future in a world dominated by voices suggesting a worse one.
The Roots of Progress Institute: Has the mission to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century and build a culture of progress. It also publishes a newsletter.
The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised (2023): A book by James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and CNBC contributor. Pethokoukis also writes the newsletter, Faster, Please, which focuses on promoting faster technological progress and economic growth.
Centers of Progress: 40 Cities that Changed the World (2023): A book by Chelsea Follett.
Heroes of Progress: 65 People who Changed the World (2024): A book by Alexander Hammond.
Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think (2012): A book from Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.
More From Less (2019): A book from Andrew McAfee.
The Rational Optimist (2010) and How Innovation Works (2020): Books from Matt Ridley.
Open: The Story of Human Progress (2020) and Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future (2016): Books by Johan Norberg.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018): A book by Steven Pinker.
We Need a Science of Progress: An article by entrepreneur Patrick Collison and economist Tyler Cowen, published in the Atlantic in 2019, proposing a new field of study—"Progress Studies"—dedicated to understanding and accelerating progress.
I am sure I am missing lots of great work, and we could certainly go further back in time to the works of writers, philosophers, economists, psychologists, entrepreneurs, and artists that have played an important role in advancing the case for progress, growth, and abundance. But this list provides a good entry point for anyone interested in exploring these important ideas further.
Clay, bookmarked, subscribed, and will read later.
Thanks!