The economic case for a more optimistic Brussels Bubble
Last time, I wrote about how, between 1999 and 2024, falling levels of European public and political optimism coincided with a growing share of European Parliament seats for the extremes.
I will argue that this matters beyond the usual Brussels Bubble ‘who’s-up-who’s-down?’ discourse. Without optimism, there is no drive for scientific and technological progress. And without scientific and technological progress, there is no societal and economic prosperity.
The ‘Good Vibes Only’ revolution
Optimism, a desire for progress, and material prosperity are causally linked. A long-held theory is that the United Kingdom’s industrial revolution was partly powered by the culture of progress at the time. According to the theory, the great minds of the contemporary elite believed the future could be harnessed, that progress could be focused, to improve one’s lot in life. They began channeling their efforts into making this belief a reality, culminating in the industrial revolution.
Last year, academics took this hypothesis further. They demonstrated that the elite’s sense of optimism (their ‘Good Vibes’), permeated the culture of the time. An analysis of 173,031 written works from 1500 to 1900 found that, from the 18th century, more and more people were writing about science, and the themes of optimism, progress, and hope.
NB: The above shows a growing number of literary works on science (bottom right corner), coinciding with a growing number of literary works featuring more progress-driven language (the yellow dots).
The study concluded that this shift in the cultural zeitgeist accounts “in some part” for the industrial revolution that was to come.
It’s a great argument: that vibes and culture fueled one of the greatest period of innovation and economic growth. It’s also a trend that FT data analyst John Burn-Murdoch claims is in reverse today. Studying modern French, English and German novels, Burn-Murdoch found that since the 1960s, mentions of “progress, improvement and the future [have] dropped by about 25 per cent … while those related to threats, risks and worries have become several times more common.”
Put differently, the increasingly-pessimistic public and political vibes I highlighted last week can also be found in the cultural domain.
Things can only get better?
This vibeshift has a knock-on economic effect. Burn-Murdoch argues that cultural references to optimism, progress, and positivity were a lead indicator for economic growth and improved productivity.
If today’s sense of pessimism isn’t reversed at a vibes- cultural- and political-level, is Europe setting itself up for further economic decline? If so, this would surely only reinforce the sense of pessimism and lead to even more votes to the margin and – in my opinion – further weaken Europe’s prosperity and undo the progress it has managed to forge and maintain.
Call it a vicious cycle, call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever it is, Europe needs to find a way to pull out of its psychological nosedive.
More reading
Joel Mokyr on the industrial revolution and the culture of progress.
Almelham, Iyigun, Kennedy and Rubin on the cultural analysis supporting Mokyr’s claim.
John Burn-Murdoch, the FT data journalist who has asked ‘Is the west talking itself into decline?’
Ruxandra Teslo, whose excellent blog my piece lifts heavily from. She expresses things much more clearly than I could.