Book Summary: Enlightenment Now
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker is an optimistic take on the world as it exists today. Through the use of massive amounts of data we can draw the conclusion that our society has made incredible leaps forward in the last 100 years, despite what it may seem if you listen to the news headlines.
Related Book Summaries:
10% Happier – Dan Harris – Book Summary
Sapiens – Yuval Noah Harari – Book Summary
Hardwiring Happiness – Rick Hanson – Book Summary
Quotes:
It’s in the nature of progress that it erases its tracks, and it’s champions fixate on the remaining injustices and forget how far we have come.
Book Summary Notes: Enlightenment Now
- Looking at the data, the world we live in today has record low levels of violence, famine and poverty. Turn on the news at night though and you’d think it was a different story.
- Even the environment, which still needs attention, has levels of pollution down from where they were even a decade ago.
- Life expectancy has continued to increase as we make more and more diseases things of the past.
- All of these advances were brought forward as a result of the 18th century enlightenment period. A time when we stepped away from blaming our misfortunes on God’s or spirits and began using science.
- The four main themes to come from the enlightenment were: reason, science, humanism and progress.
- Reason gave us the concept that some things in the world are constants, gravity for example. Gravity will always act on objects here on earth. It has a set value and behaves in predictable ways.
- An emphasis on science helped people to begin to value knowledge. Early offshoots of science focused on mostly on bridging the divide between religion and humanism. Using cultural principles to show how wrong bloodbaths like the crusades were. Humanism developed morals that let society know what was and was not acceptable.
- The enlightenment significantly increased our life spans. From the start of the 18th century the average life span was just 29 years old. The biggest improvement to this number came as a result of decreases in infant mortality rates over the last centuries.
- In 1820 it is estimated that close to 90% of people lived in extreme poverty.
- Democracy itself is a construct of the enlightenment period. From the 1970’s onwards many nations made a push towards this form of government to replace what they had currently.
