I found this book to be incredibly hard going. And I doubt if the author reckoned on the effects of a world wide pandemic

This is at times interesting, and at time infuriating, but mostly quite a chore and full of itself. It really was a struggle to get all the way to the end.

I really appreciated the endless optimism that Pinker gives his readers. While I don't agree with all his statements, I can see his point and it is far more motivating to think that change can happen even if some of his proposals, especially like with the dialogue on environment, are going to be a much more challenging feat than he describes.

This was an interesting read even if I didn't take away much Enlughtenment. I like Pinker's style but felt he falls more towards confirmation bias in this book. I appreciate the inclusion if stats and chats - my inner scientist does a little happy dance each time. But it's worth bearing in mind that the data is cherry picked to support thd theories. Personally I preferred The Better Angels of Our Nature and Collapse: How Societies Chooss to Thrive or Fail as examinations on humanity's progressiveness. That said this cintained several interesting segments which would certainly stimulate lively debate a s discussion points.

So it is not so bad as it seems, or at last that is the opinion of Pinker. This is the age of enlightenment even if everything seems so dark....well I would like to share the author's optimism, but in a way I was not so convinced by his reasoning and suggestions of how to read the world right now. Best part is the chapter about humanism.

A quanto pare le cose non sono cosí brutte come sembrano, o almeno questa é l'opinione di Pinker, anzi siamo nella fase di un nuovo illuminismo (anche se sembra tutto piuttosto oscuro)....mi piacerebbe condividere l'ottimismo dell'autore, ma ammetto che i suoi ragionamenti non mi hanno convinto piú di tanto e nemmeno i suoi suggerimenti su come "leggere" il mondo attuale. Comunque il capitolo migliore é quello sull'Umanismo.

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

You’ve never had it so good, and Steven Pinker has the stats and charts (over 70!) to prove it. Wars are fewer and less severe, homicides are down, racism is in decline, terrorism is a fading fad, democracy rules, communicable diseases and poverty are on their way out. Life expectancy is up, and police are killing fewer people, both black and white. Even the poor have refrigerators. Inequality is a requisite sign of success. So appreciate the wonderful state of affairs you find yourself in. This is the message of Enlightenment Now, with a title that sounds like a protest placard, but which is actually a survey of the world by the statistics that states collect.

We’re so “progressive”, we’re beating back entropy itself. Steven Pinker takes 500 pages to create a world where everything is so fabulously much better than it ever has been, that anyone who says different is perpetuating an intellectual lie. This is why it is your enlightenment. The book is an endless, uplifting editorial. If you’re buying.

He’s at his best criticizing politics and science. He shows precisely how our biases prejudice our most thoughtful conclusions, and bemoans the lack of respect for science and the humanities. He says science is presented in some schools as “just another narrative, or myth”. Humanities are in danger of extinction, and they are critical to progress.

Pinker has a nice tendency to support his arguments with examples and charts. Unfortunately, he balances this with a tendency to ignore states or countries that don’t conform to his claims, and he swings numbers around to make them look better. He claims when he measures what people consume as opposed to what they earn, the poverty rate in the USA is 3%. So really, everyone is thriving. Even if they’re visibly not.

I fully realize Pinker is untouchable and slated for sainthood, but many things he says don’t add up, and a lot of it is just outrageous on its face. Let him speak for himself:

-On war: “Virtually every acre of land that was conquered after 1928 has been returned to the state that lost it.” (Something must have happened in 1927 for him to pick 1928, but he doesn’t say). Where do you even begin to refute this? Kaliningrad? Mauritania? The South China Sea? Crimea? Dombass? Palestine?

-He defends the demolition of the middle classes in the West. Yes, a hundred million Americans are worse off. But a billion Chinese are better off. “The tradeoff is worth it,” he says. That the extremely rich got fabulously more rich is fine with him, too.

-On terrorism’s “decline”, Pinker points to recently low numbers of victim deaths to show how safe we really are. He doesn’t mention all the freedom of movement, assembly and privacy we have lost to the terrorists. He’s satisfied they don’t kill that much, and that they will eventually fade away.

-On the mellowing of war: “Weapons don’t come into existence just because they are conceivable or physically possible.” Yes, they do. And worse, everything can be weaponized, from food to mouseclicks. Pinker goes even further, claiming “most historians” don’t think the atomic bombings caused Japan to surrender in three days, but rather it was the potential of Russia turning its attention from west to east.

-There is a great deal of nonsense about how much cheaper life is today. The provision of a light indoors would have cost the equivalent of £40,000 in the middle ages (if anyone could read), while today, lights cost fractions of pennies. And 100 years ago it took 1800 hours’ work to afford a refrigerator (among too many more such examples). But Pinker never bothers with the other side of the coin. That today, everyone must spend $150 a month on cable, $125 on phone (after purchasing a phone every two years, with each costing more than the fridge), a $20,000 car, a mortgage, and $50,000 in school debt (none of which were factors in the cost of living in the middle ages ) or be unable to function in society. His endless comparisons are pointless.

-He keeps repeating that because even the poor have flush toilets and refrigerators, they are much better off today than ever. He says even the fabulously wealthy Rothschilds didn’t have a washing machine like nearly everyone (80%) now supposedly has.

Pinker dismisses ecology as a pastime of the affluent. The more educated and wealthy we become, the more eco-conscious we become, so everything works out. He completely ignores the fact we have crossed the red line. That the oceans are toxic, that there is trash and plastic everywhere, that the carbon levels are at unseemly record levels. That the Paris Accord has not dented the damage one bit. But, he says, the air over London is no longer purple every day.


The book ends with an interminable bashing of religion, which Pinker considers “intellectually bankrupt”. He cites all the usual contradictions and hypocrisy, narrow-mindedness and longing for a cleaner era that never existed. Basically, religion and enlightenment are oil and water.

So you can look at Enlightenment Now in two ways, according to your own various biases. Either the greater message of positivism is too important (and correct) to criticize Pinker’s maddening claims, or the maddening claims make the whole exercise suspect.

David Wineberg