Enlightenment now - Steven Pinker

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'Bristles with pure, crystalline intelligence, deep knowledge and human sympathy' Richard Dawkins


Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible?

If
you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be
sinking into chaos, hatred, and irrationality. Yet Steven Pinker shows
that this is an illusion - a symptom of historical amnesia and
statistical fallacies. If you follow the trendlines rather than the
headlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier,
safer, happier, more peaceful, more stimulating and more prosperous -
not just in the West, but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it's
the gift of a coherent and inspiring value system that many of us
embrace without even realizing it. These are the values of the
Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress.

The
challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate
change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal
with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a
mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as
we have solved other problems in the past. In making the case for an
Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, Pinker shows how we
can use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that
inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent
universe. We will never have a perfect world, but - defying the chorus
of fatalism and reaction - we can continue to make it a better one.