Drinking Skeptically: is The World Getting Better? AKA Are You Pink or Gray?
Details
For our next meeting we will be discussing the hot topic of progress: Is the world getting better or worse? To explore this, we will get our cues from two thinkers who have debated this question very publicly:
- Steven Pinker, Harvard Psychologist, argues that Enlightenment ideas--reason, science, humanism--have produced dramatic and measurable material and moral progress for humanity.
- John Gray, philosopher formerly of the London School of Economics, is a well-known critic of the Enlightenment who claims that "progress" is a myth inherited from religion. Humans, he says, are fundamentally the same as they have always been; nothing important really changes much.
What do you think? Do you see the world through Pink(er)-colored glasses or is your world Gray?
To get into the debate, check out these two short pieces:
Gray's opening salvo:
John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war
And then Pinker's response:
Guess what? More people are living in peace now. Just look at the numbers
If you want to go deeper, you can also explore each author's book-length treatments.
Pinker
Enlightenment Now
The Better Angels of our Nature
Gray
Straw Dogs
False Dawn