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

For all the bleeding headlines, for all the crises, collapses, scandals, plagues, epidemics, and existential threats, these are accomplishments to savor. The Enlightenment is working: for two and a half centuries, people have used knowledge to enhance human flourishing. Scientists have exposed the workings of matter, life, and mind. Inventors have harnessed the laws of nature to defy entropy, and entrepreneurs have made their innovations affordable. Lawmakers have made people better off by discouraging acts that are individually beneficial but collectively harmful. Diplomats have done the same with nations. Scholars have perpetuated the treasury of knowledge and augmented the power of reason. Artists have expanded the circle of sympathy. Activists have pressured the powerful to overturn repressive measures, and their fellow citizens to change repressive norms. All these efforts have been channeled into institutions that have allowed us to circumvent the flaws of human nature and empower our better angels.

At the same time . . .

Seven hundred million people in the world today live in extreme poverty. In the regions where they are concentrated, life expectancy is less than 60, and almost a quarter of the people are undernourished. Almost a million children die of pneumonia every year, half a million from diarrhea or malaria, and hundreds of thousands from measles and AIDS. A dozen wars are raging in the world, including one in which more than 250,000 people have died, and in 2015 at least ten thousand people were slaughtered in genocides. More than two billion people, almost a third of humanity, are oppressed in autocratic states. Almost a fifth of the world’s people lack a basic education; almost a sixth are illiterate. Every year five million people are killed in accidents, and more than 400,000 are murdered. Almost 300 million people in the world are clinically depressed, of whom almost 800,000 will die by suicide this year.

The rich countries of the developed world are by no means immune. The lower middle classes have seen their incomes rise by less than 10 percent in two decades. A fifth of the American population still believes that women should return to traditional roles, and a tenth is opposed to interracial dating. The country suffers from more than three thousand hate crimes a year, and more than fifteen thousand homicides. Americans lose two hours a day to housework, and about a quarter of them feel they are always rushed. More than two-thirds of Americans deny that they are very happy, around the same proportion as seventy years ago, and both women and the largest demographic age group have become unhappier over time. Every year around 40,000 Americans become so desperately unhappy that they take their own lives.

And of course the problems that span the entire planet are formidable. Before the century is out, it will have to accommodate another two billion people. A hundred million hectares of tropical forest were cut down in the previous decade. Marine fishes have declined by almost 40 percent, and thousands of species are threatened with extinction. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and particulate matter continue to be spewed into the atmosphere, together with 38 billion tons of CO2 every year, which, if left unchecked, threaten to raise global temperatures by two to four degrees Celsius. And the world has more than 10,000 nuclear weapons distributed among nine countries.

The facts in the last three paragraphs, of course, are the same as the ones in the first eight; I’ve simply read the numbers from the bad rather than the good end of the scales or subtracted the hopeful percentages from 100. My point in presenting the state of the world in these two ways is not to show that I can focus on the space in the glass as well as on the beverage. It’s to reiterate that progress is not utopia, and that there is room—indeed, an imperative—for us to strive to continue that progress. If we can sustain the trends in the first eight paragraphs by deploying knowledge to enhance flourishing, the numbers in the last three paragraphs should shrink. Whether they will ever get to zero is a problem we can worry about when we get closer. Even if some do, we will surely discover more harms to rectify and new ways to enrich human experience. The Enlightenment is an ongoing process of discovery and betterment.

How reasonable is the hope for continuing progress? That’s the question I’ll consider in this last chapter in the Progress section, before switching in the remainder of the book to the ideals that are necessary to realize the hope.