Do You Think We've Made Progress?

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I don't think it'll ever have an answer. And part of education for me is getting comfortable with that, comfortable with the mystery of how we should live. Do you think we've made progress in the question of how to live at the individual level? Yes, I really do think we have. Education, having children learn to read, that seems like progress to me. Certain kinds of restrictions on our visceral impulses towards kind of like tribalism and group bonding, that is the sense that we have to restrain that about ourselves.

Suppose all of humanity was infected by a virus that left us all infertile--no one will come along after us. How would you react to such a world? Agnes Callard of the University of Chicago says she would be filled with despair. But why does this seem worse than our own inevitable deaths? Callard speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the meaning of life, and what exactly about the end of humanity is so demoralizing. The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether humanity is making progress.