Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

The core of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now (2017) is the large middle section, where he repeatedly bombards the reader — bam! bam! bam! — with evidence that humans have made remarkable progress in nearly every measure of quality of life. From just about any point in the past up to 2017, and in nearly every place, we have improved: health, wealth, production, peace, security, educational opportunities…(There was one recent blip in the wrong direction related to the uptick in opioid overdose deaths. There would likely be another blip on the health graph to reflect the Covid-19 pandemic.)

The lesson I wrangled out of all this progress is that we humans are remarkably effective problem solvers. We just hardly ever give ourselves credit. In fact, we tend to skew in the opposite direction: believing that things are worse than they used to be, or just bad, bad, bad. Almost all the data shows that things are objectively good. Almost all the polls show that people think everything is subjectively bad. Do we need that bad attitude to remain good problem solvers? Would satisfaction breed complacency?

Pinker suggests that maintaining a faith in science, reason and humanism will serve us well moving forward. Those Enlightenment ideas got us this far, they can keep us going. He sees the two great threats as religion and populist hero-worship. So, he is pretty harsh on religion, although he acknowledges that religions have contributed mightily to the progress at times. He is quite harsh on President Donald Trump, seeing him as the sort of populist hero that argues against progress, science, reason and humanism. Why Make America Great Again when America is currently The Greatest It Has Ever Been?

Time will tell just how much this book has changed my life. As I was reading it, I came to understand that there are patterns to our progress, to our ability to solve our problems. Here are some of those patterns.

Almost every issue works like a pendulum, swinging back and forth. You could also think of a spectrum, with extreme ends of each possible solution. The solution is usually found in the middle of the pendulum and in the equilibrium of the spectrum. As Pinker notes, once we reach that point, the problem is as solved as it will ever be and we tend to move on to the next problem. Thing is, we rarely recognize that we solved a problem. Only in the long view do we see the progress we made.

Related to the last pattern, most solutions arise out of the struggle between opposing forces. Boy, do we love the adversarial system in this country! That’s why problem solving can feel so uncomfortable (to put it mildly) to us: the solution is the outcome of a fight. The current culture wars, especially around race, are a perfect example. The struggle is difficult, but it will undoubtedly lead to progress in that area. Honestly, it always has.

In order for this struggle to keep doing its magic, we need to zealously guard our democratic institutions. In particular, Americans must defend free and fair elections that lead to peaceful transfers of power. We must also protect Freedom of Speech. (All of the other individual rights are also important.) The struggles require the security of knowing that our government will not slide into totalitarianism and that we will remain free to speak our minds with as few limits as possible.

That’s why a (politically) liberal progressive like myself comes out in favor of protecting free speech and opposed to cancel culture. If we cancel people for their views, we stymie the struggle and neuter our problem solving ability. I also believe that cancel culture insults our intelligence.

I will re-read Pinker’s Enlightenment Now and I recommend it to everyone. You don’t have to agree with everything to learn from it.

Links

Problem Solvers Essays on this site

Posted by Drevil, 4/1/2021