The Better Angels of Our Nature is excellent. Three reasons why:
1) Pinker's ability to combine his broad argument about the ongoing pacification of the species with telling details is admirable. For an example of the latter, consider Figure 7-14 on p. 411, showing the overall decline in homicides of intimate partners in the US from 1976 to 2005, along with a much sharper decline in male than female victims, and P's concise and reasonable explanation of the graph on pp. 411-412;
2) P's defiance of the norm that one argues by poor-mouthing the situation of one's own side is refreshing. It's nice to read a book that decisively rejects the "Things should be at least 50-50 our way, and we've got much less than 50 so give us more!" style in favor of "Peace and reason are winning, and that's wonderful!";
3) Related to #2: P's confidence reinforces the case for the humanitarian values he espouses: Why torture or execute if the bad guys are pathetic figures on the wrong side of history? Why not be tolerant, mellow, and reasonable? Why not, indeed?
Pinker's book is as good as it is partly because it should cause readers of almost all persuasions to disagree with at least parts of it. Three things I disagree with:
1) P suggests that the good Enlightenment of Locke, Hume, the American Revolution, Kant, etc. embodies the true spirit of modernity and that bad phenomena that have occurred over the last few hundred years such as the Terror, Marxism, Communism, and fascism are atavistic in one way or another and contrary to a basically benign ethos of modernity. I disagree. Ideology that is rationalizing as well as demonizing seems to me much more of a distinctive problem of modernity than an aberration from modernity. After reading P, I remain a believer that modernity as it has developed over the past few centuries involves (among other things) a strong ratcheting-up of ideological moralism that fuses the traditional groupishness of human beings with a rationalized "our values are better than yours" stance. That rationalized groupish ideological moralism can be found, it seems to me, in the good groups as well as the bad groups of modernity, in classical liberals as well as fascists, in liberals and conservatives as well as Marxists, ultra-nationalists, and Communists. A view of modernity as Faustian seems to me right; our modern ratcheting up of moralism to include rationalized rather than supernatural ideological value systems brings us a great deal of good in both practical and moral terms--as P very nicely chronicles--but it also risks much.
2) P implies--to me at least--that enlightenment can be universal at some point. I disagree. I believe that even if the whole world becomes Sweden and Sweden itself becomes the most advanced liberal suburbs of Stockholm, there will still be more disciplined and reasonable people and less disciplined and reasonable people in all countries; that members of certain socially salient groups, such as middle class people and working class people, will on the average be closer to or further away from the rule of reason and nonviolence; and that those who are more peaceful and reasonable will owe that desirable state partly to a group-based sense of moral superiority to their less disciplined and reasonable compatriots.
3) P implies--to me at least--that the right substitute for theistic religion is a faith in humanitarian values and human enlightenment over time. I disagree. As a politics, belief in humanitarian values and human progress is an agenda I'm very happy to subscribe to. As a modern religion, though,I would plump instead for a yin-yang faith in opposites and in competing and complementary values in oneself, society, and the cosmos. If a modern religion of progress and humanity is identified with the political left or center-left, it is too sectarian and too prone to its own demonizing moralism. If it is identified with three cars in every garage and everyone a college grad, it is too materialistic and mundane to be satisfactory as a religion, much as it may be an estimable practical politics. If it is identified with the feats of Darwin, James Joyce, Steve Jobs, and other modern gods it is too elitist, too little in touch with the part of the religious impulse that raises up the lowly and humbles the exalted.
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