The Great Story of Our Era: Average People Better Off

The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
by Gregg Easterbrook

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century - and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations.

Detailing the emerging science of "positive psychology," which seeks to understand what causes a person's sense of well-being, Easterbrook offers an alternative to our culture of crisis and complaint. He makes a compelling case that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness not only make modern life more fulfilling but are actually in our self-interest. An affirming and constructive way of seeing life anew, The Progress Paradox will change the way you think about your place in the world - and about our collective ability to make it better.

Chapter 1

Though the airfield does not appear on many charts, its existence is whispered of among pilots. The approach requires skill and timing, and there have been accidents; but when the mission is important, some risks must be accepted. Fliers who have data-pulse receivers of the extraordinarily accurate Global Positioning System satellite network use these devices when inbound, as the runway is only 2,350 feet long - short by the standards of such things - which places a premium on putting the wheels down precisely at the beginning of the field so as not to run out of runway at the end. Pilots exhale with relief when the landing is complete. Once on the ground, planes are directed to taxi to a secluded ramp, where crew and passengers quickly debark to swing into action - because there might be a wait for tables.

The aircraft are not military transports full of commandos but small private planes full of diners landing at McGehee's Catfish House in Marietta, Oklahoma, one of the increasing number of "fly-in" restaurants in the United States. The runway belongs to McGehee's and serves it exclusively. The field is lit for night landings, since the kitchen is open late. Guidance beacons with the aviator's designation Loran T40 can be used to find McGehee's, this being the international locator signal not of an airport or classified facility but a restaurant. At McGehee's, you walk from your airplane to the hostess station. Much of the dinner trade arrives from Dallas, about forty air minutes away, though diners fly in from as far as hundreds of miles distant to savor a menu highlighted by fresh farm-raised catfish, pickled tomatoes, and turtle cheesecake.

Nearly a thousand fly-in restaurants are open for business in America today, according to an organization called Hundred-Dollar Hamburger. (Small private planes cost around $100 an hour to operate.) Most are simply eateries adjacent to general-aviation airports, but an increasing number, like McGehee's, have become fly-in in the complete sense. The advent of such restaurants is exciting to the owners of small planes, many of whom learned to fly as a challenge, or in response to the romance of the air, then discovered that they crave destinations for the kind of one-hour hops that make for recreational aviation. Just imagine trying to explain to the indigent of the developing world that one problem experienced by Americans is finding something to do with their personal aircraft!

So far, fly-in restaurants offer no fly-through windows for takeout; that may only be a matter of time. Regardless of whether the fly-in restaurant is a breakthrough or an absurdity, what is telling is that the aircraft landing at McGehee's are not private jets of the super-rich. Rather, they are one- and two- engine propeller planes of farmers, oil-field workers, mid-career professionals, and others from the middle class: men and women who are scarcely oligarchs, but who can afford to own an airplane and to drop $100 on a whim for a platter of fresh catfish. Today in the United States thousands of private aircraft are owned for personal use by people who are not rich, just as millions of not-rich Americans own two homes or four cars plus a boat, or know other extravagances once reserved for the topmost fraction of the elite.

Fly-in communities have sprung up as well - entire housing developments built around runways for small planes. Spruce Creek, near Daytona Beach, Florida, is a fly-in subdivision which boasts about 1,200 homes and fourteen miles of aircraft taxiway connecting houses with the runway. Pecan Plantation, completed at the turn of the twenty-first century near Fort Worth, Texas, has 125 homes, all served by taxiways. Planes can land, taxi home to the owner's house, and be parked in the drive. Teen pilots can bring airplanes to the front door to pick up their dates. The occupants of Pecan Plantation are well-off but not millionaires. Many houses in the subdivision have hangars rather than garages, a popular option being 4,500-square-foot hangars - sized for two cars and two airplanes.

If fly-in dining and runway-based homes aren't your cup of tea, how about golf-course living? Today in the United States there are at least two hundred housing developments built around fairways. At these communities, one sees golf carts scooting along side streets: Many residents own their own carts, park them in the garage, and ride directly from the back porch door to the clubhouse. Golf-course living, with club membership typically included in the home purchase price, has grown so much in popularity that developments are now found not just near big-money cities but in states such as Missouri and Wyoming. Powder Horn, a golf community in Sheridan, Wyoming, looks out on the majestic Bighorn Mountains and offers a well-reviewed eighteen-hole course reached from the porch door via personal cart. The development's realty brochure gives this advice regarding lots: "Select a site on the fairway, one with a river or lake view, nestled in the hillside, close to the clubhouse or walking distance to the practice range." Beautiful, well-appointed homes at Powder Horn cost from about $285,000 to about $425,000 - not cheap but not inordinate, within the means of tens of millions of Americans.

Prefer the lake to ducking aircraft or dodging golf carts? In 2000, fully 13 percent of American home purchases were of second homes, mostly in vacation areas of woodland, mountain, or shore. Second-home sales have boomed so much that in many popular rustic retreats - such as the San Juan Islands north of Seattle, Washington, or Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, in the Alleghenies, equidistant from Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. - vacation homes by the thousands line the desirable riparian acreage, with land parcels growing scarce.

Copyright © 2003 by Gregg Easterbrook.

About the Author

Gregg Easterbrook is a senior editor of The New Republic, a contributing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a visiting fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution, and a columnist for ESPN.com. He is the author of six books, including A Moment on the Earth, a New York Times and American Library Association Notable Book. He has also been a contributing editor at Newsweek and an editor of The Washington Monthly. He lives in Maryland.