Guys, it’s really not that bad. In fact, it’s the best it’s ever been.
That’s Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s argument in his new book “Enlightenment Now” (Viking). We may be inundated with horrific stories of school shootings, natural disasters due to climate change and Russian hacking — but Pinker still believes there’s never been a better time to be alive.
His 550-page door-stopper, a spiritual follow-up to 2011’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” which argued the world is less violent than ever, shows that our planet is also smarter, safer, richer and happier. Bill Gates is one of the most vocal supporters of the new tome, calling it “my new favorite book of all time.”
“The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being. Here is the second shocker: Almost no one knows about it,” Pinker writes.
He argues that the 18th century Enlightenment ideals of reason over irrationality, science over dogma, and humanism and peace over tribalism and war have been cornerstones of progress — and are now in need of a passionate defense.
“Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas,” Pinker writes.
Pinker urges people to look at the bigger picture and dive into the data.
Specifically:
- The global average IQ score is rising about 3 points every decade.
- The world is a hundred times wealthier than it was two centuries ago and prosperity is becoming more evenly distributed.
- Today people work less, have more vacation days and spend less time on housework.
“Remember your math: An anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: The fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past,” Pinker argues. “For all the bleeding headlines, for all the crises, collapses, scandals, plagues, epidemics and existential threats, these are accomplishments to savor.”
Here’s even more evidence of his theories from “Enlightenment Now” . . .
We’re less prejudiced
The search for racist and homophobic jokes took a precipitous fall from 2005 to 2017 — while sexist jokes (oddly) show an uptick between 2010 and 2014 followed by another fall from 2014 to 2017. This data, gathered by Google Trends, suggests that “Americans are not just more abashed about confessing to prejudice than they used to be; they privately don’t find it as amusing.” This trend continues “contrary to the fear that the rise of Trump reflects (or emboldens) prejudice.” Pinker writes: “Private prejudice is declining with time and declining with youth, which means that we can expect it to decline still further as aging bigots cede the stage to less prejudiced cohorts.”
We have more disposable income
In addition to having more time on our hands thanks to reduced housework (time doing laundry dropped from 11.5 hours a week in 1920 to an hour and a half in 2014, for example), we also have more disposable income for non-essentials. In 1929, Americans spent more than 60 percent of their money on necessities — today, that number is closer to a third. “As the necessities of life get cheaper, we . . . have more time and money left over.”
We’re smarter
Pinker believes that the growth of education — represented by the growth of literacy — is a “flagship of human progress.” Educated people tend to be less racist, sexist, homophobic, place higher values on imagination and are more likely to vote, volunteer and trust their fellow citizens. Before the 17th century, literacy was “the privilege of a small elite in Western Europe.” Now 83 percent of the world is literate. Even that figure underestimates the future of literacy, writes Pinker. “In many Middle Eastern and North African countries, more than three-quarters of the people over 65 are illiterate, whereas the rate for those in their teens and 20s is in the single digits. The [world] literacy rate for young adults (aged 15 to 24) in 2010 was 91 percent.”
We are living longer
Life expectancy in America in 2015 is 78.96 years — nine years longer than it was a half-century ago. Since the mid-18th century, global life expectancy rose from 29 years (where it had hovered for 225 years) to around 71.4 in 2015. Back in the 1700s, “a third of children born in the richest parts of the world died before their fifth birthday; today that fate befalls 6 percent of the children in the poorest parts,” writes Pinker.
We are safer
From driving a car to walking the streets, it’s safer today than it was during the first half of the 20th century. This is thanks to “laws, building codes, inspection regimes and best practices” that have worked to make our world safer. Since the 1930s, the chance that Americans will fall to their death has declined by 72 percent because they are protected by railings, signs and guards. Deaths by fire or water have declined by around 90 percent each thanks to preventative measures like fire education and increased awareness of the risks of allowing small children near even shallow water. The only increase on the graph (and it’s a large increase) is seen in poisonings — because accidental poisonings include drug overdoses.
We are freer
After a big increase in democratic countries following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a “third wave” of democracies in the form of “color revolutions”— which include countries like Croatia, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan— that have helped push the total number of global democracies to 103 as of 2015. These 103 countries house 56 percent of the world. “If we add the 17 countries that were more democratic than autocratic, we get a total of two-thirds of the world’s population living in free or relatively free societies, compared with less than two-fifths in 1950 and seven percent in 1850,” Pinker writes. “Of all the people living in the 60 non-democratic countries today, four-fifths reside in a single country, China.”
We are richer
The story of global wealth goes as follows: “nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . . boom!” writes Pinker. The world’s income tripled between 1820 and 1900; 50 years later it tripled again; another 25 years and it tripled again; 33 years later it once more increased by a magnitude of three. And this isn’t true of just the world’s richest nations. Since 1995, 30 of the world’s 109 developing countries, including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Panama, Rwanda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam have enjoyed income growth rates that doubled every 18 years.
Birth rates are falling
The world population growth rate peaked at 2.1% in 1962, falling to 1.2% in 2010. Pinker estimates that by 2050, our growth rate will be less than .5 percent and might hit zero by 2070. He attributes this trend to the growing wealth and education in the world, where “parents no longer breed large broods as insurance” and women delay having children. Though fertility rates have fallen in developed countries like Europe and Japan, he’s also seen this trend in other parts of the world. “Despite the widespread belief that Muslim societies are resistant to the social changes that have transformed the West,” writes Pinker, “Muslim countries have seen a 40 percent decline in fertility over the past three decades, including a 70 percent drop in Iran and a 60 percent drop in Bangladesh.”
Nature is rebounding
As the world has grown richer, nature has started to “rebound,” Pinker writes. Since 1970 when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the US saw emissions of five air pollutants fall by almost two-thirds, while energy use has leveled off. Meanwhile, the population grew by 40 percent and became two-and-a-half times richer. Pinker writes that “these diverging curves refute both the orthodox Green claim that only a degrowth can curb pollution and the orthodox right-wing claim that environmental protection must sabotage economic growth and people’s standard of living.”