The future is a prisoner's dilemma

Humans are naturally conservative. Small c.

Not in the sense of a political ideology, but of an inclination. We Homo sapiens are contradictory creatures. We dream of change, but we also fear it. We're full of hopes and wishes for the future, but all too often, instead of buckling down and doing the work to make those dreams a reality, we fall into a rut of doing what's familiar and comfortable. Everyone's familiar with the lies we tell ourselves: "I'll quit tomorrow," "I'll make a New Year's Resolution to go to the gym more," "When I get that next promotion, I'll really turn my life around."

What's true of individuals is also true of society as a whole. Everyone wants a better world for themselves and for their children. And it's not as if we don't know what we'd need to do to make this happen. The solutions to most of our problems aren't mysterious.

In fact, most problems seem like they should be easy to solve, because they're caused entirely by human decisions. War could end tomorrow if everyone laid down their arms and settled their grievances at the bargaining table. We could agree to rid ourselves of the guns that are the cause of so much suffering and death. The rich nations could end poverty for good with just a tiny fraction of their wealth. We could stop climate change in its tracks with a global commitment to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to green energy as rapidly as possible.

That these evils still exist could be taken as an indictment of human apathy. It could be used as evidence of how sinful we are. However, I think there's another explanation.

It's not that we don't care. Everyone has instincts toward kindness, generosity and compassion. Even if they're not being watched, most people do the right thing most of the time. Society couldn't hold together if that weren't the case.

However, change presents a fundamental paradox. Everyone aspires to a better tomorrow: safer, more comfortable, more prosperous. At the same time, people distrust change for fear that it will leave them worse off. The Declaration of Independence got it right when it said: "all experience hath shewn, that [human]kind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

This principle holds across class, race and other arbitrary tribal dividing lines. We all want the best for our own family (or race, or religion, or nation, or gender). At the same time, we don't trust what those other guys are up to. We'd rather keep everyone in the same relative place than see someone else pull ahead at our expense.

This pattern plays out in almost every political clash. Everyone wants to pay less in taxes, but no one wants to cut the government programs that they personally benefit from. We'd all be better off if there was more affordable housing, but homeowners organize to block new construction because it would decrease their property values. No one is happy with the state of health care in America, but consumers don't want to pay more or lose the doctors they have, doctors don't want to be paid less or be told how to practice, pharmaceutical companies don't want to be more regulated or make less profit, and insurers don't want to be cut out as middlemen. Everyone points the finger at someone else who should accept change first.

In the economic arena, the rich want to get richer, even when they already have more than enough, and unite against any tax increase or law that would limit their ability to profit off the rest of us. The middle class aspires to scale the social ladder and fights fiercely against any change that they perceive as pulling it up and out of reach. And the poor, who are at the bottom of the heap and should be the biggest supporters of change, tend to resist it out of the (historically justified) suspicion that the promises they hear are empty and meant to enrich everyone else at their expense.

All these are examples of the moral framework called the prisoner's dilemma, a thought experiment in which two individuals can cooperate for mutual benefit or betray each other for individual reward. Everyone benefits if they work together, but every individual has a selfish incentive to take advantage without contributing themselves. But if everyone reasons that way, everyone ends up worse off.

The prisoner's dilemma pops up repeatedly in thorny moral debates, and shifting the course of the future is a big example.

There's a lesson in this for would-be revolutionaries and messiahs. We should be skeptical of grand utopian dreams where the world will be remade overnight and all evils will be fixed in one fell swoop. The vast majority of people, even those who stand to benefit most, will never rally to support change so drastic. It's that small-c conservatism that makes them prefer things as they are now to an uncertain future. It's not that revolutions never happen—or never succeed—but those are the very rare exceptions, not something we should count on.

More often, change slips in unnoticed and unappreciated at first. The rise of renewable energy is a perfect example—at first, it was a curiosity that posed no threat to anyone. It began small, started slow, but it gathered momentum until it was unstoppable. Now it's eclipsing fossil fuels. In the very near future, it will reshape the world.

This, too, is a facet of small-c conservatism. It's easier for people to accept change when it's incremental, as opposed to when it comes crashing down on them. That's a lesson for progressives and reformers. Instead of trying to change the world all at once, we should aim to make things a little better, and then better still. It's slower, more frustrating, less satisfying—that much is true. But in the final accounting, it's more likely to bring about the brighter future we all want.