Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Pinker rejects theories that terrorism has brought Western civilization to the brink of collapse or has created a violence-ravaged society. He notes that, statistically, the chances of a US or Western European citizen dying in a terrorist attack are miniscule, smaller than any other category of lethal violence or accidents. Even considering recent Islamic extremist terrorism, death rates in Europe are lower than in the 1970s and 1980s, when groups such as the Basque Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) perpetrated more regular acts of violence.

Pinker calls terrorism a “byproduct of the vast reach of the media” (195) because attacks strive to attract maximum media attention and thereby instill fear. This, along with availability bias (explained in previous chapters), results in people overestimating the risk that terrorism poses to their safety. In addition, people commonly react more emotionally to malevolent violence than to accidental death. Pinker agrees with Yuval Harari that “what terrorists seek to accomplish is not damage but theater” (196) and argues that nations should be wary of being baited into another kind of theater, such as ineffective and wasteful wars, as a response to terrorism. Instead, they should focus on building better values and preventing radicalization, securing dangerous weapons of mass destruction. The media can then report on terrorism without accidentally incentivizing attention by naming or showing perpetrators. Pinker emphasizes that terrorist activities eventually wane before the terrorists achieve their overall goals and that modern groups like ISIS will likely meet a similar end.

Over the millennia, people have had to tolerate either the violence of “anarchy” (the more dangerous form of authoritarian rule) or “tyranny.” Fortunately, democracies offer a safer option than either of these because they can have “just enough force to prevent people from preying on each other without preying on the people itself” (199). As such, Pinker calls democratic governments a “major contributor to human flourishing” (199). Because of the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of European colonization, in recent decades democracy has taken root in Eastern European countries, many African and Asian countries, and Caribbean nations. Pinker refers to a graph that illustrates how the world has become progressively more democratic since 1800. Focusing on the recent past, he reveals that in the late 1980s the world had 52 democracies, but today it has about 103—meaning that more than half the world’s population now lives in democracies. Pinker argues that even in undemocratic countries like China and Russia, governments are less repressive than previous regimes. He uses the quantitative approach to reveal the enormous increase in democratic governments in the last two centuries. By including a graph that shows the tiny population that lived in democracies in the 1800s, compared to the sizable amount today, Pinker emphasizes how democracy is steadily spreading throughout the world.

Pinker claims that while democracies are significantly better than autocracies, they don’t conform to idealistic notions of what a democracy should be. For example, many citizens are uninformed about basic history, law, and policy, which fuels illogical voting choices or voter apathy. Living in large, anonymous populations means that voters feel they have no effect on election outcomes and may choose to not participate. Karl Popper argues that democracy helps people “dismiss bad leadership without bloodshed” (205), through a social contract in which people agree to not commit violence against the government, and the government agrees to allow freedoms—such as protest, petitions, strikes, and free speech—that could lead to ending their administrations. Pinker cites women’s suffrage as an example of this kind of social contract in action: Women couldn’t vote to gain the vote but successfully agitated for it.

People’s ideas are influential too, as democracy requires rejecting notions of divine kings, colonial rulers, revolutionary guards, etc. Pinker claims that democracy is less likely in countries with undereducated populations, places far from Western influence, and countries that produced violent revolutions like Cuba, China, and Vietnam. Pinker contradicts himself somewhat here, as he claims that central Asian countries are less democratic because of the lack of Western influence but also references Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—countries with significant histories of Western intervention—as being particularly undemocratic. He doesn’t explore Western influence in the form of military intervention or how this could play a role in forming more anarchic or authoritarian governments.

Democracies tend to have more respect for human rights than autocracies, though exceptions exist. While human rights watchers and “cultural pessimists” often argue that abuses are increasing, Pinker argues that the definition of abuse has broadened and that abuses are declining. He examines the decline of executions to illustrate the “curtailment of government power” (208) in recent centuries. For example, England once defined more than two hundred crimes punishable by death, but by the mid-1800s it dropped this number to four, and today it doesn’t use the death penalty. Only 90 countries continue to have death penalties, and the number decreases yearly. The only countries that regularly execute people are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the US, prompting Pinker to call the US a “laggard” on this issue among democratic, prosperous nations. Pinker attributes US attachment to the death penalty to how it has introduced laws historically. In Europe, postwar scholars played a central role in drafting swathes of human rights laws that banned executions, whereas in the US the population maintained a more direct influence on legislation. However, while many US states still use execution to punish and deter crime, the US execution rate has dramatically declined since the 1700s.

Pinker’s view of declining executions as a form of progress demonstrates his commitment to Enlightenment’s humanism. Execution was once a common punishment for even relatively trivial crimes, and Pinker credits Enlightenment thinking for spreading the humanistic ideas that prompted its decline. He emphasizes the humanistic reasons that execution has become increasingly rare: Many citizens, doctors, and law professionals consider it barbaric; it’s more frequently inflicted on ethnic minorities; and tragically, some innocent people have been mistakenly executed. The author concludes the chapter by noting that the Enlightenment’s value of human life successfully prompted “scientific, institutional, legal, and social forces all pushing to strip the government of its power to kill” (212), another form of democratic societal progress.