Krishna
Talks about the triumph of rationality. “Even at the time of the 45th President” as he puts it, referring to Donald Trump!
As usual, this author is thorough in everything he does. (See our review of How The Mind Works and The Better Angels of Our Nature for some examples of his other works reviewed here).
He defines Enlightenment first. (I will spare you the details). Remarkable that he starts from the Second Law of Thermodynamics ‘Entropy always increases, left to itself’ to explain the organization of the universe! Remarkable but, after you read his reasoning, you realize it is logical.
He talks about counter enlightenment arguments through the ages and the polarization now you find in US and other countries is just an extension of the trend. He argues convincingly that your political views have become a kind of religion that binds you to like minded people and conceive of an ‘enemy’ in the opposing ranks. He does not spare the left who have their own dogmas of a different kind.
He now talks about how people perceive the world as worse than it really is – some echoes of his other book The Better Angels of Our Nature – and why that is. He talks about the predominance of bad news in the media and how the mind construes more frequent news as the predominant news of the world, even though, if you dispassionately count the numbers and look at the proportion – the world is getting better and better.
The arguments are, as usual, resoundingly convincing. First, let me give a disclaimer before I proceed. The following should not be construed as me being against inequality. Far from it – I think that all nations should strive to eliminate the wide disparity between rich and poor. Steven Pinker concurs too. However he demolishes the myth from pseudo science writers who claim that inequality is the cause of much misery in the world. He demolishes Thomas Pinketty’s claims in Capital in the Twenty First Century that, ‘because the poorer population in the world is five percent, barely moving from 1910 to 2010, poverty has not been eradicated at all’ showing how this is a very misguided argument resulting from the lump fallacy. He also gives a funny example of two poor farmers, one slightly poorer than the other because the other has a scrawny goat, wishing for equality by wishing the goat of the other farmer dead!
He demolishes the argument that the poor are a lot happier today because ‘in absolute terms, they are far more comfortable (‘richer’) than they were and showing evidence as to why claims from the proponents of inequality theory (The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is another example) are plain wrong.
The same issue clouds that climate discussions – as my aside, not the author’s – where technological means to fight climate change by geoengineering is resisted by the eco warriors because ‘it will give the world an excuse not to reduce emissions’ to the point of scuppering the plans. (Another disclaimer : I am not a global warming denier or denier that the cause of it is human activity).
Anyway, he talks about how the poor have gotten better when the economic development swept through all countries. The rich may have correspondingly got richer and the inequality may be the same in relative terms and as measured by the Gini coefficient which is the standard indicator used to measure inequality, but undeniably, the poor of today are way better in health and lifestyle than the poor of the past. Very powerful argument supported by data produced from known research.
In addition, he makes two other eye opening points : If you define the median as the dividing line and then count a deviation of poverty, there will always be poverty by definition! Also, the richest 1% of today are definitely not the same richest 1% in earlier years – not even from the same family! People drop in and out of the bands as their life opportunities increase or decrease. The lucky few now are not the lucky few of yesterday. The same applies to the bottom percentiles too (say the bottom 10%). So you are not really tracking what happens to individuals but are only comparing the most unfortunate with the most fortunate (defined in purely monetary terms). Amazing point, again proven with research. This is why Steven Pinker’s books are so interesting to read and widen your perspective on many things.
Steven also takes on the global warming and has very interesting views there too. Not that global warming is not real or that we do not have to do anything about it, far from it. But he portrays how the death gloom in conversations about global warming is a bit overdone and hides all the progress (although not enough) made in a million different ways by science. The suggestions of some activists that we need to roll back progress to save the planet is grossly wrong, as he so eloquently points out with data.
He cogently and politely exposes the anti scientific and illogical polemic of Naomi Klein who sabotaged the single most useful law – that of carbon tax – from being passed in the US on ‘anti capitalist’ grounds. He shows how her tirade against measurement (‘bean counting’) is counter productive and on patently false logic. He is quite gentle and restrained and yet completely demolishes the argument in his logical way.
Steven also shows how knowledge and comfort have exponentially increased, making everyone – even the poor- well off and how, perversely, the happiness has not gone up proportionately, and in most cases, not gone up at all.
Steven tries to provide a balanced view, neither hewing to the left nor to the right. Though he castigates the several decisions of Trump personally, he has an amazingly clearheaded argument about why so many Republicans chose to follow wild theories that are easily debunked by fact checking (Samples include Obama being somehow involved in 9/11 attacks, Democrats running a child sex ring from a Washington pizzeria, a blind belief in creationism that flies in the face of all archeological evidence and many others. One clue: It is not income level – in fact the poorest people chose Democrats in the election where Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. (Read the book to find out why, the book is rewarding in multiple ways). The explanation is brilliant.
It gets even better, if such a thing is possible. He explores why there is so much opposition to enlightenment. How the religious groups are exasperated with the enlightenment ideals and science, thinking that these are the basis of the evil of atheism – which seems to be spreading even as evangelicals are ecstatic that ‘religion is making a comeback’.
He does not spare the Islamic world. He points out how Islam itself is not a culprit, pointing out that anachronistic things are there in the Bible which has been reinterpreted (mostly and even by the fully faithful who deem it to be the literal word of God) but how the West got out of the religion standing in the way of progress by the separation of church and state that was implemented quite a while ago – helping the laws to focus on rights and equality unencumbered by any religious bias. He also points out that it is the liberal elite who argue that the Islamic outlook is ‘logical’ and that the West should not assume that humanistic values can take root in the Muslim world.
He also deconstructs Nietsche who, in his own way of Superman (Ubermench which actually means Superior Man or ‘above man’ literally) being led to lead the humankind and the common man – weak, indecisive, inefficient – can be sacrificed in the advancement of the nation. This, he shows, with a minor modification from ‘man’ to ‘clan or tribe’ directly gives way to Nazism and Facism. Mussolini openly admitted the fact and Hitler considered Nietzsche (posthumously) as his Spiritual Guide. He also points out how many artists and intellectuals revered Nietzsche even after WW II and continue to respect him today. Those also are fans of dictators of the world. He also points out that Ayn Rand, though she later denied it, has a very similar philosophy to Nietszche.
The list is shocking: Shaw, Yeats, Erza Pound were all fans of Mussolini; Shaw and HG Wells admired Lenin; Shaw (again), Sartre, WEB Dubois, Pablo Piccaso were admirers of Stalin; Sartre, Foucault, Dubois were fans of Mao Tse Dong; Foucault admired Khomeni; Sartre, Graham Green, Normal Mailer were all fans of Castro.
He finishes with a very inspiring call to reason. It is a fantastically argued, cogent, logical and inspiring argument. You will remember it long after you have finished reading it.
9/10
== Krishna