As I start reading Steven Pinker’s corrective to modern pessimism “Enlightenment Now”, the feeling is that he has set himself an uphill task to convince us that most things are better than they used to be. My own inherent pessimism to one side, I am inclined to take Mr Pinker’s word as written and concede that being alive today is much better for more people than has ever been the case. Despite the usual gloom on such topics and considering the world is hugely over-populated and undergoing climate change, he offers reasons for greater cheer than are usually found in the news. Pinker champions the case for the Enlightenment presenting a defence of humanism, science and reason as the underpinnings of human progress and flourishing.
However positive the data, zooming out from the frame for a clearer and more objective view of the world flies in the face of the narrow and individualist ways we see it. This will not of course have the slightest effect on the data itself though it perhaps will on the underlying mood and the resultant effects engendered by subjective feelings.
The available data for once incurable maladies makes for positive reading and most people these days are unlikely to know a leper or anybody with polio despite the best efforts of anti-vaxxers and other sundry heel draggers. Pinker’s research covers health, education, travel, living standards and much else to make a solidly optimistic case for the future and in many talks online he goes into his research further.
The stoic outlook offered by irrefutable data becomes less calming of course when you are at the epicentre of your own concerns and petulantly interrupt with “yeah, but…” Feeling cheered by the overall good fortune of our species abruptly hits the wall when it is us who contract that one in a multiple-million misfortune. Why this and not a lottery win we may well ask.
When watching a nature documentary in which one or two creatures are killed by lions or crocodiles, we wince but remain calm in the knowledge that the survival of the species doesn’t hinge on the loss of a few individuals. However, see and feel the world from the point of view of those individuals and things take a darker turn. There is a real lived experience of being set upon by hungry lions and although there is no malice in the lions and the rest of the herd has escaped unharmed, the world probably seems less rosy to those subjected to the attention of the lions.
Our available vision is epically vast these days and anybody who had an inkling of today just 20 years ago probably falls into the category of visionary, tech guru and quite possibly billionaire. Access to almost everything all the time is extraordinary and there is no parallel for this ever. With our brains still the brains of our hunter gatherer ancestors; it must be an interesting field of research to see how they are faring with these advancements. On an evolutionary timescale it has all occurred in the space of barely a day or two.
The past 100 years has seen mankind go from the struggle to get airborne in any meaningful way to having a permanently manned space station and ambitions on Mars. The past 20 or so years have seen computers straining to do anything with their memory measured in bytes to a machine that comfortably outplays chess grandmasters. Mobile phones are the indispensible keys to modern living as we eschew hi-fi for wi-fi, hardware for soft and personal service for algorithms.
As I see it, time-saving devices have never actually saved time but rather repurposed how it is put to use. The time we might once have used to do the household chores isn’t now spent sipping cocktails in an unending bacchanal but on other stuff from an interminable drop down menu of things to do, to plan and bucket list with eyes down, memory outsourced and attention to the moment on indefinite hiatus.
My feeling, and it is feelings that throw spanners into the works of so many things, is that Steven Pinker’s case for most things being better might yet be undone by our greatest enemy; ourselves. Our propensity to navel gaze, to see what we don’t like, to hear what we’d prefer not to and to personalise it may undo all the good that has thus far been achieved. The idea of change coming from within is passé; change is what we expect from others.
Among the greatest enemies of reason, feelings and the promotion of them is powerful and persuasive. Any time spent listening to phone in radio, reading the bile on Twitter or below the line comments show that feelings rule the day and they are held vehemently. In this environment it is perfectly fitting that populism is again on the rise.
The pessimism of knowledge and the optimism of will are all too clearly reflected in the world and to quote Bertrand Russell, “much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power”. However one thinks of causation and blame, the results of every previous moment are manifest in the present moment. If that is unpalatable then some introspection is probably called for to prevent the spiral downward becoming unrecoverable.
Subjective experience and belief foster strong feelings about things we know little or nothing of and undermine the hard earned benefits accrued. Subjective feelings about how poorly one is faring in the world map onto victim narrative sold as equal to data. We feel our own experiences not the global experience of humankind and as we become ever more self absorbed we are blinkered to anything but the reality we have curated for ourselves.
As with past civilisations, our time may come to an end at the zenith of human achievement. The wonders of our advancement will be left to rust and decay unused and pointless as the uninhabited world continues to spin until consumed by the Sun. All that remains will be returned to the recycling bin of the universe to make new things with no one around to notice.
We could of course stagger on for some time yet though towards what exactly seems uncertain as our petty individual concerns outweigh any greater consideration. With my need for reading glasses, the days of 20:20 vision are slipping gradually into the past and I run the risk many face of having only 20:20 hindsight.
I have only started on Steven Pinker’s corrective to modern pessimism and hope it reads as the ‘Ode to Joy’ needed. However, art critic John Berger did once say “we only see what we look at and to look is an act of choice.”
I am still hopeful.
Happy 2020.
