Month: January 2020
From: Zach Olsen, English Instructor
Book Title: Enlightenment Now
Book Author: Steven Pinker
"In this book, Steven Pinker makes a case for the power of "reason, science, humanism, and progress" to shape a better world. He argues that the world is getting better, has been getting better, and is likely to continue getting better because of the aforementioned values. While we may feel that our world is seeing a surge of violence, bigotry, income inequality, and environmental destruction, the data don't support these conclusions.
He's careful to note that the progress we made was not inevitable and future progress isn't guaranteed but argues that we should continue to trust in the processes that have brought us to where we are, and points to cognitive biases and the business model of media reporting as sources of the catastrophizing about the world and the nay-saying and criticism directed at capitalist economies with market regulation from social-democratic governments.
Pinker acknowledges that we can (and should) imagine a better world than the one we live in, but that we should also believe in the power of reason and humanism to bring that world into being.
It would be dangerous to misread this book and use its conclusions to justify inequality that certainly exists (this book is likely to be cherry-picked by conservatives and neo-liberals) as a direct result of our current political and economic systems, but a charitable reading of Pinker would say that he believes we ought to reform the broken parts of the system to extend its benefits to a wider circle of humanity and to continue such progress until all feel its benefits.
Pinker's argument requires us to accept two major premises: first, that reason is something that human beings are capable of and that can lead to a better world, not a biased, culture-dependent label placed on Western, colonialist thinking. This is where he makes his strongest case, unsurprisingly, because as a cognitive psychologist and linguist, this argument is in his area of expertise. The second premise we need to accept is that market economies regulated by social democracies are the inevitable outcome of reasoned processes and must be essentially good; where they fall short of encouraging human flourishing, the very ideals they are founded on can reform and improve them. This argument seems weaker to me, as it doesn't take into account the possibility that a better system for achieving those ideals could exist. While modern social democracies produce more human flourishing than anything that came before them, we might argue that feudal societies were superior to anarchy by the exact same measures, and "better," while good, is not always sufficient. The best social structure is not necessarily the best that currently exists, but the best one that could exist.
To be fair, it's possible I misunderstood Pinker and he does a better job of proving his second premise than I give him credit for here; I did listen to this as an audiobook while I was running.
Certainly, there is a lot of data and evidence to support Pinker's view, but all data must be interpreted, and even morally or politically neutral interpretations can fall prey to cognitive biases and preconceived notions about how the world works. I look forward to reading thoughtful critiques of Pinker's book from Marxists and anarcho-socialists that don't mislabel it as mere propaganda for the Neo-Liberal establishment and are willing to contend with the meat of his arguments.
This book didn't change much of what I thought about the world before I read it, but I always find following Steven Pinker through his thoughts to be an interesting journey that provokes my own thinking."
The William C. Bonaudi Library does not have this book. We do have some of Pinker's other titles.
The blank slate : the modern denial of human nature, BF 341 P47 2002
How the mind works, QP 360.5 P56 1997
The language instinct, P 106 P476 1994
The Moses Lake Public Library has this book online, as audio, and in print.
https://libguides.bigbend.edu/blog/New-Books-January-2020
#LifelongReadingIsLifelongLearning #NewYearsResolution #12In12 #ReadABookAMonth
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