Saving the World By Lowering Your Expectations

Philanthropy Action: Saving the World By Lowering Your Expectations

I’m not an “impatient optimist” like Bill and Melinda Gates. When it comes to making the world a better place, I think impatient optimists are quite possibly a part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Led by some terrific organizations, the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship sector is generating solid evidence on the effectiveness of programs aimed at alleviating poverty, combating homelessness, preserving natural resources, and the like. The Obama administration has embraced this emphasis on rigorous evidence—and caused many in the sector to raise the specter of “epistemological nihilism” or paralysis due to demands for proof that is too hard and expensive to generate.

The real problem, and the real fear, among nonprofits and social entrepreneurs is not the difficulty and expense of finding evidence, however—it’s that the changes realized are often small ones. Indeed, sociologist Peter Rossi has gone so far as to coin the Stainless Steel Law of Evaluation: “The better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero.”

There’s good reason for this, and it’s not a flaw of evaluation. It’s that human beings, political systems, economic systems and the social problems they create are complex. …

…What’s the solution? Patient optimism—a view that combines the belief that change is possible with the belief that any significant transformation takes a great deal of time and effort. It recognizes that programs that produce small or marginal benefits even for a small portion of aid recipients are good programs. It funds continued experimentation to find ways to achieve a little bit more with each dollar. It doesn’t believe in silver bullets but is willing to place small bets on risky innovations with potentially high returns. …

… Impatient optimists are like investors in subprime mortgages in 2007. They can be so blinded by the upside that they fail to do their due diligence. In the end, their impatience and pursuit of outsize returns fuels waste and disappointment. Patient optimists, by contrast, have lowered their expectations of any particular program or intervention, but not their belief in a better world over the long term. If we’re going to succeed in making the world a better place, we need to convince more people to lower their expectations, too. Then we can get about the work of trying, failing, learning, improving—and truly making the world a better place.

I like the label "patient optimism." Back when I was blogging on John Stackhouse's Christian Realism in Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World, I noted the paradox of seeking the Kingdom of God in a world. We are called to seek the greatest shalom possible in a world that cannot fully know God's shalom until the consummation of the new creation. I agree that there are many de facto accommodationists in the Church who simply uncritically adapt to the status quo. But I also reject the idealism of the Cultural Transfomrationist (right and left) who believe it is in their power to change the world overnight if everyone just became true believers in their cause. I see "patient optimism" as closely tied to the Christian Realism Stackhouse writes about, and I strongly identify with it.