Global challenge: Stay enlightened

There’s a lot of gloom in the world these days — war, famine, poverty, disease, pollution, power grabs, political and religious repression. It can be downright depressing.

But a recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Harvard psychologist and author Steven Pinker tells a different story. Pinker highlights the remarkable progress civilization has made since the dawn of the Enlightenment — an epoch of reason that reached full flower in the latter part of the 18th century. He makes the startling, and reassuring, assertion that 2018 is the best time to be alive.

China might agree. Its own progress across a wide spectrum has been astonishing since reform and openingup germinated under Deng Xiaoping. While problems remain, the country’s momentum is unmistakable — from alleviating extreme poverty to building a prosperous middle class; from edging into the world’s top rank in science and technology to cleaning up its environment; from sustained economic growth to reaching out to build a global community.

In many ways, China’s enlightenment parallels the Western intellectual watershed in its embrace of rational pragmatism.

There’s still plenty of bad news. But Pinker argues that it’s not representative of the big picture. He suggests it’s unhealthy to drink deeply from the cup of gloom when we should be rejoicing. We should pause now and then, he writes, to take stock of how far the world has come — even in just the past 30 years.

In 1988, for example, 23 wars raged around the world. Today he counts 12. “War between countries today is obsolescent, and war within countries is absent from five-sixths of the world,” he wrote.

In 1988, the world experienced 46 oil spills. Last year, there were five. Three decades ago, extreme poverty affected 37 percent of the world population — people barely able to feed themselves — compared with 9.6 percent today.

Globally, people are onethird less likely to be murdered today than they were two dozen years ago.

A few other Pinker metrics:

• The world is about 100 times wealthier today than it was 200 years ago, and wealth is being distributed more evenly.

• Up through the 19th century, a newborn was expected to live about 30 years. Now, average life expectancy worldwide has risen to 71 years. (It’s 81 in developed countries.) Two centuries ago, one-third of children born into wealth died before their fifth birthday. That applies to just 6 percent of children in the poorest countries today. Infectious diseases “are in steady decline”, as is the exploitation of children for their labor.

• In the United States three decades ago, 20 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide and 34.5 million tons of particulate matter belched into the atmosphere annually. Today, it’s 4 million and 20.6 million, “despite generating more wealth and driving more miles”. In Beijing, average PM2.5 particulate concentrations dropped to 58 micrograms per cubic meter last year, from 89.5 mcg per cu m in 2013.

• Not long ago, half the world’s countries discriminated against racial minorities, women and homosexuals. “Now, tolerance is on the rise,” Pinker writes, “particularly among the young, a portent of the world’s future.”

• Only 12 percent of the world could read and write 200 years ago. Now it’s 85 percent. Literacy and education will soon be universal.

To what do we owe such progress? Pinker’s answer is simple: Enlightenment works.

“Our ancestors replaced dogma, tradition and authority with reason, debate and institutions of truth-seeking. They replaced superstition and magic with science. And they shifted their values from the glory of the tribe, nation, race, class or faith toward universal human flourishing.”

All this is food for thought for lawmakers and political advisers meeting in Beijing. Enlightenment requires a clear head in an era of breathtaking change, because progress is always at risk from retrograde influences.

So here’s to the optimists, in China and elsewhere, for whom the glass is always half full. Their ongoing challenge is to make it overflow.