Did anyone read this piece in The Guardian last week?
http://tinyurl.com/kx6stcnThis is a side of Pinker I do not like.
Arguing about war is a bit of a red herring. My first reaction was to ask:
What about psychological violence?
The number of suicides around the world is increasing, predominantly and ironically in the most peaceful and medically/technologically advanced countries. Even if war is all but eradicated, boredom and a general sense of the emptiness of existence will take its place and cause a great amount of suffering. Indeed, boredom seems rather underrated as a form of suffering in my opinion.
I also sense a kind of gamesmanship and point scoring coming from Pinker, whose rather banal point is that violence has been decreasing. Yes, perhaps, but for a statistically meaningless amount of time for just a few generations of humans, a species he clearly favors. What about all the millions of years of evolution on this planet during which myriad life forms devoured each other? What about the vast, mostly irredeemable changes to the climate and biosphere that humans have caused during this same span of time? Some good a lack of war will do us when more deadly natural disasters take its place! And too bad non-human animals don't have quite the same "stuff of thought" to more clearly express their terror and pain at being systematically obliterated, either for food or just because they were in the way, by the hairless ape overlords!
As Schopenhauer remarked, any kind of optimism, including Pinker's, always comes across as a bitter mockery of the very real sufferings of innumerable creatures, both human and not. One has the urge to be Pinker's Virgil and show him around the various circles of hell on earth so that he can see the hollowness of his claims.
How patronizing it would be to some poor man in pain to see an Ivy League pinhead like Pinker explain to him that he may take his suffering in stride, for according to the data, humans outwardly appear to be less violent! No spreadsheet or chart showing a meaningless trend ever cured cancer or will ever cure it.
Speaking of which, the budget for cancer research has been recently slashed by the federal government, the members of which were elected by people who "vote in democracies," a group Pinker uses to "measure progress." How very strange! What's also strange is the juxtaposition that comes right after that in his list:
"enjoying the necessities of modern life."Chew on that phrase for a minute. What exactly is he trying to say? Who the hell "enjoys" the necessities of life - which presumably include things like defecating, contracting illnesses, becoming an invalid in old age, and finally dying - let alone modern life - which presumably include things like being forced to work under a system of wage slavery, owning various items like cars that help destroy the environment and other species, and living in a completely asinine, morally vacuous culture as well as under a government controlled by sociopathic plutocrats?
Oh yes, Pinker, I do so much "enjoy" these necessities and I'm sure everyone else does too....
