What we need is not to destroy the institutions of modernity that have brought us out of the caves to where we are today, but to keep making incremental progress within their framework. The belief that the world is corrupt and in decline motivates a desire for violent revolution and upheaval: smash the system, burn it all down, because nothing could be worse than what we have. Progress is central to Pinker’s argument: it is the proof that the Enlightenment is working. “Declinism”, the idea that civilization “is in steady decline and on the verge of collapse”Īn anti-science movement that denounces science for encroaching on the domain of religion or values, or blames it for social ills from racism to war What he calls the “romantic Green movement”, which “subordinates human interests to a transcendent entity, the ecosystem” (in contrast to “Enlightenment environmentalism” or “humanistic environmentalism”) The idea that people are “the expendable cells of a superorganism” (which I would call “collectivism”, although Pinker doesn’t use that term) Therefore, we need to fortify and defend them.Īgainst what exactly? In the opening chapters, Pinker calls out a number of counter-Enlightenment ideas: But these ideals are not consistently upheld, and are often under attack. To elaborate, the message of the book is that reason, science and humanism-which Pinker identifies as the key themes of the Enlightenment-have, historically, led to massive progress in almost every area of life, and that they are our best means of continuing this progress into the future. The theme of Enlightenment Now is contained in its subtitle: it is that reason, science and humanism lead to progress. It’s a long summary, but the book deserves it. What follows is a summary plus a few thoughts of my own. I’ve recently finished it, and I recommend it to everyone. So when I heard about Steven Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, I knew I had to read it as soon as it came out. When I began this project a year ago, I had no idea that someone was already working on a well-researched but popular book on a theme very close to the central idea of this blog.

Pinker enlightenment