Enlightenment? Or entitlement? A response to Steven Pinker from a panel of TED Fellows
I have not read Pinker’s latest book but if it continues the arguments of his previous I find most of the critique against it misplaced. I think Rosling said it best when he argued something along the lines of ‘just because something is better this does not mean it is good, or even satisfactory’. What I take away from people like Pinker and Rosling is not that the world is perfect (that would be absurd given the current state of things) but that “we” (in the widest possible sense) clearly are doing something right. To me it is nonsensical to argue that the world used to be better in the past. Yes, of course, there are exceptions but these exceptions is not (if they are exceptions) a convincing argument against the more general change. If given a fair chance to review the choices I believe most people would like their children to grow up now, rather than at almost any other time throughout human history. And yes, there may also be problems with “the facts” and even some cherry picked statistics. But if this criticism isn’t backed up by “better” statistics, which can refute the argument that, on the whole, the world seems to be a better place today than it was in the past, well, then why should we listen to these critics? Let’s not confuse “ought to” and “could be” with “is”, because then we are not even talking about the same thing.