There are a few points that Steven Pinker raises that can be considered as right. However, he is also making statements that are wrong in their universal application. In the way the arguments are presented to prove something in particular, they also uncover the exact opposite in some cases and the gravity of what is left out.
The Data
The data that Pinker shows us and the statements he makes about progress illustrate real aspects of growth that came out of the world. However, the correlation he makes between his selection of quantitative data and universally better lives tends to be reductive and/or misleading. Firstly, the relevance of how we ‘measure’ a good life might not be relevant at all in other times, and that compromises the data’s capacity to being used as comparison. Secondly, economic growth doesn’t mean much if it is also putting other people into poverty and poor life quality in order to gain quantifiable profit. For example, in the case of in India in early colonial times, through mechanisms imposed by the British, export increased dramatically and the economy [GDP] benefitted from the situation, while a significant percentage of people starved and poverty rose dramatically (Hickel, 2019).
“If you enclose a forest and sell it for timber, GDP goes up. If you burn subsistence farms and turn the land into cotton plantations, GDP goes up. But this accounting tells us nothing of what local communities lose in terms of their use of that forest or their access to food. The costs to their livelihoods and wellbeing is swept under the statistical rug. For these reasons, GDP is not a legitimate proxy for measuring poverty – particularly not during an era characterized by enclosure and dispossession.” (Hickel, 2019, pg. 69)
Omissions
Two omissions that are starkly present in Pinker’s presentation are the state of our environment and the lives of animals or biodiversity in general. While Pinker mentions C02 emissions, he fails to provide other more encompassing data on harmful emissions and what this has been doing to our environment. Pinker also fails to mention anything about biodiversity, how many animals are in captivity and how much this is affecting our environment. The below graphs show some more data about average temperature anomalies (which are rising dramatically) on land and sea, and the decline of vertebrates to illustrate a portion of the decrease in biodiversity we are seeing.
Figure 1 (above) from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline (Links to an external site.)
Figure 2 (above) from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/sea-surface-temperature-anomaly (Links to an external site.)
Figure 3 (above): The Global Living Planet Index, showing a decline of 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012. ["The Global Living Planet Index measures biodiversity by gathering population data of various vertebrate species and calculating an average change in abundance over time" (WWF International, 2016, pg. 18)] from http://assets.wwf.org.uk/custom/lpr2016/
Optimism & Concluding Remarks
When Steven Pinker claims through his clever picks of data that life is better, he is not incorrect. Life is better in some ways, but also worse in others. The argument for optimism and progress is also helpful in theory. Our “human nature” to always look at what needs to be better is largely due to natural selection doing its thing at keeping us alive and thriving (Wright, 1994). Knowing and recognizing these areas is not a bad thing, however. It is actually very important to recognize where we have went wrong in the past.
In the end, I do tend to agree that media doesn’t need to be so exclusively fatalistic – and this is a mechanism that media use to their benefit (another issue in itself). However, the way Pinker streamlines and applies selective, linear data to present complex systems as proof that all is well and that we are naturally moving in the right direction can be very harmful to learning from our past and present. In my opinion, this kind of thinking keeps us back from moving forward more holistically and harmoniously with our environment. Such an argument framed in such a way allows us too easily to overlook what has gone wrong or what needs rethinking in building this “better life” because it will always become better – which is not necessarily true.
References:
Hickel, J. (2021). Progress and its discontents. New Internationalist, (520), 64-70. Retrieved from https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents (Links to an external site.)
Lent, J. (2018). Steven Pinker’s ideas are fatally flawed. These eight graphs show why. [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/steven-pinker-s-ideas-are-fatally-flawed-these-eight-graphs-show-why/
Living Planet Index: what does an average decline of 68% really mean?. (2021). Retrieved 15 August 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/living-planet-index-decline (Links to an external site.)
Sea surface temperature anomaly. (2021). Retrieved 15 August 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/sea-surface-temperature-anomaly (Links to an external site.)
Wright, R. (1994). The Moral Animal. London: Pantheon Books.
WWF International. (2016). Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and Resilience In A New Era. Gland, Switzerland: WWF International. Retrieved from http://assets.wwf.org.uk/custom/lpr2016/
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