THE MIRACULOUS BREAKTHROUGH YOU NEVER HEARD OF

You’re probably reading this on your computer, iPad, or smartphone. When we drive somewhere new we get precise directions with real-time traffic information via GPS. We carry music, movies, and truckloads of files in a gizmo no bigger than our thumb.

We store thousands of books and read them off of small pads, in an instant. We find any bit of information we desire to know through the Internet. And we can talk by phone to almost anyone from almost anywhere – with live video included if we like.

These technological miracles are part of our everyday lives; and such revolutionary inventions as the television, telephone, air travel, microwave ovens, and even rocket ships are so… 20th Century. They’re like background noise to us now.

But we are aware of them, and when I mention these technological breakthroughs, most readers will recognize and appreciate them immediately.

Yet there’s a much more revolutionary transformation that we enjoy today that most of us have no awareness of whatsoever… a revolution in our very humanity, a revolution that bodes well for our very existence.

The chances are you’ve never heard of this, in part because of another technological development: television news.

When we watch the news on TV, we see the worst that humanity has to offer; all of the most awful things that more than 7 billion people have done to each other. Seven billion people. There’s a lot of awful that can happen with a number like that, even when most of them are being more kind, loving, and accepting than at any time in human history.

We see it in real time, piped right into our living rooms, as though it’s happening right there in front of us. On some level, our nervous systems don’t know the difference; we take it all in as part of a larger narrative about how awful, how dangerous the world is… and how heartless and cruel humanity must be.

The revolution that I’m talking about is a revolution in empathy – what Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, calls, "The Humanitarian Revolution." I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

We, as a species, as a larger human culture, have never been so compassionate, so kind, so interested in the well-being of our fellow human beings as we are right now. And that all changed dramatically between the 1600s and the early 1800s, during the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, when the ideas of classical liberalism, the ideals of America’s founding, spread like wildfire throughout the world.

In the midst of this time, Thomas Paine said hopefully: "We have it in our power to make the world over again." I think he would be very pleasantly delighted with just how well we’ve done. But in order to appreciate this, we have to see clearly just how horrific we used to be…

It’s nearly impossible to comprehend the acceptance and even the delight with which our fellow humans of just a few centuries ago viewed the most horrific of tortures and abuses. The horror of such commonplace acts of intentional and humiliating violence as breaking on the wheel, burning at the stake, the "cat’s paw," impaling, the "Judas Cradle," and leaving one to die in a cage, are so sadistic and vile that I cannot bring myself to describe them here.

But I can guarantee they are far beyond anything almost anyone ever sees or experiences in the modern world.

These were not secretive activities played out in some dungeon. They were public spectacles, watched gleefully by the general population, anticipated as we might look forward to an exciting sporting event or new movie release. The struggles and screams of the victims were cheered as we would a touchdown, goal, or delightful performance.

And the victims were not monsters who had committed some heinous crime against humanity – what there was of it at the time. I am writing this from Freedom Fest in Las Vegas, and I can guarantee a good percentage of the visitors to this city would be guilty of far worse behavior.

Somehow, within the span of about 200 years, these practices, in addition to slavery and a host of other inhumane customs, went from delightful commonplace spectacles or widely accepted realities of everyday life, to a shocking and abhorrent rending of the social fabric.

To the point where most of us would be viscerally sickened at the mere thought of any detail I might describe here.

As to what it was that brought this revolution about… according to Pinker, you’re doing it right this very moment. You’re reading.

With the advent of the printing press and the spread of literacy, people began to write and read a wide range of books and pamphlets. They took in the perspectives, the inner thoughts, of their fellow human beings – people with whom they had no bonds of kinship, people with whom they would never have empathized before.

You might be thinking, "Yes, we came a long way, but look at the deterioration of the culture, the terrorism, the mass murders. What happened?"

Remember the TV news? We see the worst of everything among 7 billion people on a daily basis. That means that if somebody’s a one-in-a-million guy in terms of his sadism and/or sociopathy, there would be 7,000 people just like him… somewhere. That’s awful. But it’s a far cry from such behavior being commonplace and accepted.

Yet there has been a countercurrent – the counter enlightenment – propounded by such self-styled "humanitarians" as Rousseau, Marx, Stalin, and Hitler. Fascism, communism, and other anti-enlightenment political philosophies were (and are) seen by their adherents as great advances over the freshly evolved classical liberal ideals, and they did slow down the progress of the enlightenment, muddying the water of humanity’s journey toward greater humanity.

Those philosophies still hold popular appeal in universities and the media (that same media that flourishes on the narrative of violence and decline).

But don’t be fooled by the impressions you get from the evening news. Don’t buy the narrative of human depravity and decline. We are still in the midst of a transformation in human culture. A revolution in empathy, a revolution in flourishing… a revolution in our very humanity.

Look for it. It’s right there to be seen behind the curtain of popular narrative.

Joel F. Wade, Ph.D. is the author of Mastering Happiness. He is a marriage and family therapist and life coach who works with people around the world via phone and Skype. You can get a FREE Learning Optimism E-Course if you sign up at his website, www.drjoelwade.com.

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