What’s makes for a meaningful life? Steven Pinker knows
Harvard professor talks about what drives human beings in ‘Enlightenment Now’
Steven Pinker is a rarity, an academic intellectual whose specializations in evolutionary psychology and linguistics have translated into a career as a best-selling author of popular-science books.
His latest best-seller, “Enlightenment Now,” argues that humans have it better than ever before: living longer, healthier and happier lives than at any time in human history. He discussed these trends — and the reasons behind them.
Q: In “Enlightenment Now,” you lay out an optimistic view of where humans are as a species, even as we are surrounded by negativity.
A:
“Enlightenment Now” is a book that documents human progress on many frontiers. People now live longer, healthier, richer, safer, happier and more interesting lives, and this may surprise people who get their picture of the world from the news. Media outlets typically report on things that go wrong and seldom on what goes right.
Q: You go beyond documenting this progress. You attempt to explain how it has occurred. What did you find?
A:
I attribute this progress to the ideals of the Enlightenment, the family of ideas that emerged in the 18th century involving an emphasis on reason and science as opposed to authority, tradition, dogma and superstition. It’s a movement that prioritized human well-being over other goals, such as the glory of the tribe or fate.
Q: People expect things to turn out well, and they are surprised — and, in turn, look for answers when things don’t turn out well. You argue that this is a natural product of entropy and evolution. Can you explain that?
A: People often assume that the natural state of affairs is for everyone to be prosperous, equal and harmonious, and that any deviation from that perfect state is an outrage that has to be blamed on an evildoer.
I suggest that, because of the laws of the universe, we have no right to expect this scenario. Instead, the universe is largely indifferent to our well-being. The second law of thermodynamics, entropy, means that disorder increases over time. That’s not because the universe has it in for us but because there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than for things to go right.
A second principle at play is evolution. We are products of a competitive process — natural selection — that does not select for harmony and happiness but for reproductive success. Q: You argue that information is what allows
humans to counter entropy and evolution in order to achieve progress.
A: Yes, the third principle
I discuss is the fact that humans are information-processing animals. We have big
brains, and we can think up solutions to problems, share them via language and, bit by
bit, fight back against entropy and evolution and achieve small improvements that accumulate over time.
Q: Why do you think a large book — 550 pages and dozens of charts — is needed to convince people that they are happy and prosperous if they are, in fact, happy and prosperous?
A:
Because we are flooded with information that paints a very different picture. If your impression of the world comes from the news, then you would likely think that the world is getting worse, even as things are getting better.
The good developments don’t make headlines.
Q: One of the distinctions you make in the book is the difference between a meaningful life and a happy life. Can you discuss that?
A: The distinction between living a meaningful and a happy life is one that goes back to Aristotle. Of course, there is a lot of overlap between the two: Generally, happier people lead more meaningful lives and vice versa, but they aren’t perfectly correlated. When people have children, for example, their reported happiness levels go down, on average. But very few people regret having a child. In fact, a lot of people say it’s the most meaningful thing they have done in their lives, and the same can be true for other accomplishments, such as writing a book or leading a campaign for political change. These things may prove frustrating, or there may be setbacks, but they are often the things that make life more worthwhile.
Q: You regularly show up on lists of the most influential intellectuals in the country. What does it mean to be a public intellectual?
A: I guess an intellectual is someone who works with ideas for a living. They write, speak, analyze data and think. I use the term broadly, not restricting it to university professors or newspaper columnists but educated people who take ideas seriously. I guess people who are identified as public intellectuals are those who try to make a living writing, speaking and thinking about ideas.
Q: You are an academic, but you are also known for the clarity of your writing, a quality often lacking in academic circles. How do you achieve that?
A: Indeed, my previous book was “The Sense of Style,” which was a writing style manual rooted in cognitive science and linguistics. I’m fortunate in that I purposefully strive to write clearly while also having language as my primary research area. I can apply some of what I know about how language works to the task of explaining how things work, and that’s what I try to do.
‘People often assume that the natural state of affairs is for everyone to be prosperous, equal and harmonious, and that any deviation from that perfect state is an outrage that has to be blamed on an evildoer.’ Steven Pinker