The trouble with optimism
Ilike optimists. They’re good company; a joyful antidote to the stress of living in anxious times. So I was pleased to read the psychologist Steven Pinker’s new book, Enlightenment Now, in which he argues that contemporary gloom and fear are quite misplaced.
Pinker believes we don’t appreciate the steep upward curve in humanity flourishing over the past two centuries, in everything from longevity to wealth, child mortality, happiness and democracy.
Global wealth and living standards scarcely shifted from Christ’s birth to the end of the 18th century; they took off as the rational and scientific ideas of the Enlightenment created the astounding productivity of the Industrial Revolution.
In 1800, 90 per cent of the world’s population were poor. Now it’s 10 per cent and falling.
There have been similar shifts in literacy, health and agriculture but Pinker thinks we’re hardwired to pay attention to all that’s going wrong.
That’s an evolutionary instinct vital to our survival. Ignoring possible threats, whether from people or lions lurking in the grass, got our more unsuccessful ancestors killed.
It means our brains are easily hijacked by news of disasters, failings and corruption.
This protective pessimism is, he argues, threatening us now. Our failure to understand how effective we can be at solving our problems is leading to the despair that gets populists such as Trump, Hungary’s Orban or Turkey’s Erdogan elected.
Pinker takes optimism too far. He has too much faith in the ability of our values and systems to withstand these challenges
and believes systemic forces will protect democracies. He sees the countries that slip back, torturing opponents as Turkey does, or killing them as Russia does, or stacking courts and gerrymandering elections as Hungary does, as blips on a general upward democratic curve.
Every civilisation has believed in its invulnerability until it falls, from the Greeks to the Romans, the Mongols to the Ming dynasty. Each failed because it couldn’t grasp its flaws or the threats to it until too late.
Pinker’s blind spot is believing that the appeal of liberal democracies and the enlightenment values that underpin them are so powerful they need only to be spelt out to be accepted.
If you’re an unemployed steelworker in an Ohio town where half your friends are taking opioids, Pinker’s charts will mean less to you than Trump’s praise of you and his defence of your colour and culture.
Surprisingly, for a psychologist who writes eloquently about man’s greed, lust, violence and self- deception, Pinker argues that liberal values will triumph because reason makes us recognise the humanity of others.
If only. Faith is no substitute for reality. Human nature hasn’t evolved. As the philosopher John Gray has long pointed out, we’ve just got better at developing institutions, such as law and order, that prevent us seeing advantage in hating and killing one another.
These institutions are more fragile than Pinker allows.
The bile revealed on social media, the accusations of treason over Brexit, the attacks on judges or legislators as enemies of the people, the precipitous decline in trust in US institutions.
These are all warning signs of how easily we can throw aside tolerance and rationality and start seeing others as illegitimate opponents.
Faith in human nature won’t protect us; it risks making us complacent.
The Times - London