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Now on BBC News Stephen Sackur
is here with HARDtalk. | 0:00:00 | 0:00:03 | |
Welcome to HARDtalk.
I'm Stephen Sackur. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:14 | |
This HARDtalk programme,
like so many others in the churn | 0:00:14 | 0:00:17 | |
of 24/7 news tends to focus
on people and places facing | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
problems and challenges.
More often than not we hold | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
the powerful to account for things
that went wrong, not right. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
Are we missing the bigger picture
about the world we live in? | 0:00:28 | 0:00:37 | |
My guest psychologist and writer
Steven Pinker | 0:00:37 | 0:00:41 | |
Thinks so. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:42 | |
His new book, Enlightenment Now,
is a paean to human progress | 0:00:42 | 0:00:45 | |
driven by reason and science.
How convincing are his | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
reasons to be cheerful?
THEME MUSIC PLAYS. | 0:00:48 | 0:01:09 | |
Steven Pinker welcome to HARDtalk.
Thank you. This idea of the | 0:01:17 | 0:01:27 | |
enlightenment is very dear to your
heart. Can you briefly, if you will, | 0:01:27 | 0:01:35 | |
catch for me what you mean by
enlightenment enlightenment the. The | 0:01:35 | 0:01:41 | |
first of the intellectual movement
of the second half of the 18th | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
century that put a premium of reason
as opposed to authority, tradition, | 0:01:44 | 0:01:52 | |
doctors, on science, on the attempt
to explain the world by testing | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
hypotheses and on humanism, the
individual humans as the ultimate | 0:01:56 | 0:02:04 | |
good as opposed to the triumph of a
nation and faith. Is it your | 0:02:04 | 0:02:11 | |
proposition that it captures
universal values? European and | 0:02:11 | 0:02:17 | |
American. Although every idea has to
come from somewhere, so it is | 0:02:17 | 0:02:28 | |
European in that sense, but it is
based on reason and universal human | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
interests. Everyone wants a long
life, to be healthy, almost everyone | 0:02:31 | 0:02:39 | |
wants knowledge and education.
People would prefer to live in | 0:02:39 | 0:02:44 | |
safety rather than danger, all
things being equal. Science and | 0:02:44 | 0:02:50 | |
reason have underpinned so much of
human thought and scientific and | 0:02:50 | 0:02:59 | |
technological developments in recent
centuries but is it you're feeling | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
that this enlightenment is under
threat? It absolutely is and has | 0:03:03 | 0:03:10 | |
been since it was formulated. The
counter Enlightenment of the 90s | 0:03:10 | 0:03:14 | |
century Roseberry quickly. -- 19th
century rose very quickly. The idea | 0:03:14 | 0:03:23 | |
that the individual is merely a cell
in the super organism, consisting of | 0:03:23 | 0:03:31 | |
race and groups. And also
authoritarian populism with Trump in | 0:03:31 | 0:03:38 | |
the US, and populous movement in
Eastern Europe. You are suggesting | 0:03:38 | 0:03:45 | |
that Donald Trump in the US, as far
as you are concerned, and utterly | 0:03:45 | 0:03:52 | |
illogical and counter-productive
political movement. Indeed. Talking | 0:03:52 | 0:03:58 | |
about the intellectual roots of
trumpeter sounds like an oxymoron | 0:03:58 | 0:04:05 | |
but he was advised by people like
Stephen Bannon and Steve Miller and | 0:04:05 | 0:04:10 | |
Michael Anton who consider
themselves intellectuals and are | 0:04:10 | 0:04:14 | |
influenced by a counter
enlightenment tradition and you can | 0:04:14 | 0:04:18 | |
see some of the themes of Trumpism
Trumpism wet the soul is embodied in | 0:04:18 | 0:04:31 | |
a strong leader. These are things
that run through Trumpism. It seems | 0:04:31 | 0:04:38 | |
to me his politics is driven by
emotions, by an appeal to a person's | 0:04:38 | 0:04:44 | |
cup in sticks rather than their
rational brain. -- instincts. The | 0:04:44 | 0:04:53 | |
skill of Donald Trump is that,
unlike many of his political rivals, | 0:04:53 | 0:04:58 | |
he found and continues to find a way
to connect with a significant part | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
of the American population. Indeed
and emotional impulses such as | 0:05:01 | 0:05:08 | |
tribalism, authoritarianism, besting
power in a charismatic leader, | 0:05:08 | 0:05:13 | |
reasoning by an act don't rather
than by fax and data -- anecdote, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:23 | |
the story of the American who is
mowed down by an illegal immigrant | 0:05:23 | 0:05:30 | |
breaking traffic law, is an appeal
to our not so rational side... If | 0:05:30 | 0:05:37 | |
Trump is an aberration, he is not a
bleep, he is part of a long line of | 0:05:37 | 0:05:44 | |
politicians that you would say the
last few centuries have been a | 0:05:44 | 0:05:50 | |
triumph of science and reason, many
would say that last few centuries | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
have absolutely shown is that the
human species is often driven by gut | 0:05:54 | 0:05:59 | |
instinct and emotion and by feelings
that are not anything to do with | 0:05:59 | 0:06:05 | |
science or reason. Indeed. One of
the misconceptions about | 0:06:05 | 0:06:10 | |
enlightenment thinkers is that we
assume we are all rational. Like Mr | 0:06:10 | 0:06:16 | |
Spock from Star Trek. But David
Hume, Spinoza, there were avid | 0:06:16 | 0:06:25 | |
students of human nature and they
proposed norms and institutions that | 0:06:25 | 0:06:31 | |
would work around for our Dhaka
impulses so those impulses are over | 0:06:31 | 0:06:37 | |
with us. -- dark. You are saying
that we need to understand that as | 0:06:37 | 0:06:48 | |
human beings have never had it so
good and that in terms of statistics | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
on world hunger, on poverty, on loss
of life to warfare, that things are | 0:06:52 | 0:07:00 | |
rather wonderful on our planet today
and that is not the way many people | 0:07:00 | 0:07:06 | |
in both the developed and developing
world actually sit and experience of | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
the world? That is right. As long as
tragedy and problems have not been | 0:07:09 | 0:07:19 | |
reduced to zero, there will always
be enough of them to feel the news | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
and since we are driven by anecdotes
and narratives rather than data, | 0:07:23 | 0:07:30 | |
unless we see the data, we can miss
the fantastic progress. Not | 0:07:30 | 0:07:35 | |
uniformly... We cannot dismiss half
of all Syrians, 12 million people, | 0:07:35 | 0:07:42 | |
being displaced on their homes, many
hundreds of thousands killed. We | 0:07:42 | 0:07:47 | |
cannot dismiss that as an
unimportant bleep in the data. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:54 | |
Absolutely not but because of our
rising moral standards, we care more | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
about people than out ancestors did
so things can look worse than... How | 0:07:57 | 0:08:07 | |
can you measure compassion? I do not
have data on compassion but, if you | 0:08:07 | 0:08:15 | |
look at the way events are described
and categorise, people forget that | 0:08:15 | 0:08:22 | |
there were greater number of
displacement during the partition of | 0:08:22 | 0:08:28 | |
India, the Korean War had far more
casualties than the war in Syria. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:35 | |
This is not to minimise the horrific
suffering of the people in Syria but | 0:08:35 | 0:08:40 | |
the imperative to recognise the
people in earlier eras and to | 0:08:40 | 0:08:48 | |
realise that not stuck with the
amount of suffering. Just as earlier | 0:08:48 | 0:08:57 | |
generations reduced the number so do
we. The realisation that these are | 0:08:57 | 0:09:03 | |
not utopian aspirations, that
displaced people and walls and | 0:09:03 | 0:09:09 | |
refugees can be reduced. Come back
to the point that most people on | 0:09:09 | 0:09:15 | |
this earth do not think the way that
you do, partly because they are not | 0:09:15 | 0:09:20 | |
trained in the way that you have,
but you are driven by bigger data, | 0:09:20 | 0:09:26 | |
meta data and you crunch the numbers
and you take a very high overview of | 0:09:26 | 0:09:31 | |
the way the world works. Most folks
do not do that. They relate to their | 0:09:31 | 0:09:37 | |
own experience and their own
perception. How much value is there | 0:09:37 | 0:09:42 | |
only telling us we should be more
cheerful and positive and optimistic | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
when it does not match reality for
most of us? That is why we have | 0:09:46 | 0:09:53 | |
education, persuasion, discourse,
debate. In order to counter our | 0:09:53 | 0:10:00 | |
intuitions and impulses which are
often misleading. A lot about | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
intuitions are systematically
biased. Something that can be | 0:10:05 | 0:10:10 | |
amplified... But you have abayas
also. We all do. You are the product | 0:10:10 | 0:10:18 | |
of your nurture just as high. When
people today expressed doubt about | 0:10:18 | 0:10:31 | |
expertise and they sometimes say,
you know what, you can prove almost | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
anything with statistics, they have
a point, don't they? You cannot | 0:10:34 | 0:10:40 | |
prove everything with statistics,
not if you are honest ... But you | 0:10:40 | 0:10:49 | |
make choices about the data you put
into your numbercrunching computers, | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
you decide what particular facet of
the human condition to profile, it | 0:10:53 | 0:10:59 | |
is all subjective. Then you
challenge me and observers get to | 0:10:59 | 0:11:05 | |
hear the various sides and see who
has the most persuasive case. The | 0:11:05 | 0:11:10 | |
fact that science has progressed
shows that, despite human | 0:11:10 | 0:11:15 | |
disagreement and the fact that we
are blinded by our buyer says, over | 0:11:15 | 0:11:20 | |
the long run, with free speech, open
debate, the ability to challenge | 0:11:20 | 0:11:25 | |
people and the onus to provide data
to support your ideas, over the | 0:11:25 | 0:11:30 | |
longer run, we can approach and
understanding of truth. No question | 0:11:30 | 0:11:36 | |
that everybody would agree that the
data on global hunger and poverty | 0:11:36 | 0:11:43 | |
suggests that most people in the
world, in that material sense, | 0:11:43 | 0:11:48 | |
things are better at today for most
people but, if you take the most | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
advanced society, the US, your radio
progress and runs into real trouble | 0:11:52 | 0:12:00 | |
because the generations the middle
class has seen the living standards | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
stagnate and in some years declined.
When you look at the polls, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:09 | |
Americans and said, the years that
they have felt the country is on the | 0:12:09 | 0:12:14 | |
wrong track. Your theory of the
eternal march to progress has been | 0:12:14 | 0:12:20 | |
thwarted. Forget about the eternal
march to progress. Problems are | 0:12:20 | 0:12:27 | |
inevitable. We sold them as they
arise. On average we make progress. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:35 | |
The US is a peculiar case because
although people think of it as the | 0:12:35 | 0:12:42 | |
prototypical advanced democracy, it
is a laggard among Western | 0:12:42 | 0:12:47 | |
democracies... You cannot have an
outlay of which is the most | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
important economy in the world. It
sets a standard and it is in many | 0:12:52 | 0:12:57 | |
ways a country the rest of the world
looks to stop if the message from | 0:12:57 | 0:13:01 | |
the United States is that the
values, the science, the humanism | 0:13:01 | 0:13:06 | |
can take you so but then things
start to go wrong, that is a message | 0:13:06 | 0:13:12 | |
important to the entire world. It is
an unfortunate message and in many | 0:13:12 | 0:13:17 | |
ways it is a backward country
compared to it's West Stand peers. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:21 | |
It has high incidences of crime,
lower lifespans, more abortions, | 0:13:21 | 0:13:30 | |
high drug use. Any measure of social
pathology. It is ahead of most | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
countries of the world. But behind
other... White? The US is an | 0:13:34 | 0:13:46 | |
ambivalent enlightenment country
because its constitution was perhaps | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
the most famous product of the
Enlightenment. Jefferson, Adams, | 0:13:49 | 0:13:55 | |
were men of the Enlightenment but in
many ways the country itself has | 0:13:55 | 0:14:00 | |
been divided. There is an
enlightenment country but also a | 0:14:00 | 0:14:04 | |
more traditional culture of honour,
more heavily represented in the | 0:14:04 | 0:14:09 | |
south than the West, the ethics that
instead you have this interest | 0:14:09 | 0:14:15 | |
institutions, that meet out justice
and secure social welfare, it is up | 0:14:15 | 0:14:21 | |
to the individual defending himself
and his family by the justifiable | 0:14:21 | 0:14:26 | |
use of violence if necessary and a
lot of American politics has always | 0:14:26 | 0:14:31 | |
struggle between the culture of
honour and the culture of the | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
Enlightenment. And so it is a
peculiar example of a Western | 0:14:35 | 0:14:40 | |
democracy. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:41 | |
The time when those values, weather
it be from Russia, China all | 0:15:34 | 0:15:38 | |
elsewhere, are being challenged in a
concerted and important and | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
considerable way. They are being
challenged, that's why I would not | 0:15:42 | 0:15:48 | |
allude to an inexorable march of
progress. The end of history was a | 0:15:48 | 0:15:54 | |
brilliant bit of marketing. It's now
a millstone that hangs around | 0:15:54 | 0:15:59 | |
Francis Fukuyama's neck. In defence
of Fukuyama, the number of | 0:15:59 | 0:16:04 | |
democracies has increased since the
end of democracy was published. In | 0:16:04 | 0:16:10 | |
the last 12 years more countries
have seen a regression in diplomatic | 0:16:10 | 0:16:15 | |
values. It's one of the more
pessimistic measures of democracy. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:23 | |
It's also an activist organisation
and they are always biased towards | 0:16:23 | 0:16:28 | |
our crime crisis. Other indicators
of democracies. There's certainly | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
been a deceleration. But freedom
house has somewhat an alarmist | 0:16:32 | 0:16:37 | |
picture and when you think about it,
in our youth we both had 31 | 0:16:37 | 0:16:42 | |
democracies in the early 1970s, half
of Europe was behind the Iron | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
Curtain. There was barely a
democracy in Latin America. Taiwan | 0:16:46 | 0:16:50 | |
and the Philippines, Indonesia,
Greece was a military dictatorship, | 0:16:50 | 0:16:59 | |
Spain and Portugal were under the
control of fascism. It's true that | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
there has been a push bike in
countries like Russia, Turkey and | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
Venezuela. But still the overall
trend continuing through the end of | 0:17:07 | 0:17:14 | |
history has been towards
democratisation. In your world view, | 0:17:14 | 0:17:17 | |
is religion nothing more than an
aberration when it enters the realm | 0:17:17 | 0:17:22 | |
of public policy and governance? It
is certainly... Theistic belief, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:29 | |
belief in a God who can work
miracles, that's something that | 0:17:29 | 0:17:36 | |
should be kept out of politics, yes.
In the United States we have the | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
separation of church and state, and
I think this is an excellent | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
principle, yes, we should not base
policy on miracles. Do you think you | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
have too rosy a view of human
nature? I'm well-equipped to deny | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
that charge. Probably the strongest
case is that human nature is saddled | 0:17:52 | 0:18:03 | |
with flaws such as dominance,
egocentrism, revenge, magical | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
thinking and so on. I'm the last
person that can be accused of having | 0:18:07 | 0:18:14 | |
too rosy a view of human nature. I
think human nature is a complex | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
system and together with our
policies, there are, and I stole the | 0:18:18 | 0:18:23 | |
phrase from Abraham Lincoln, but
better angels of our nature, sides | 0:18:23 | 0:18:27 | |
of human nature such as reason,
empathy, self-control, moral norms | 0:18:27 | 0:18:32 | |
that are in constant tension with
our darker sides and it's up to our | 0:18:32 | 0:18:37 | |
institutions and our norms to
empower our better angels, the parts | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
of human nature that over the long
run can read to institutions that | 0:18:40 | 0:18:46 | |
tame our inner demons. Your academic
discipline is psychology rather than | 0:18:46 | 0:18:53 | |
history for example. I want to quote
to you something that perhaps puts | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
an historical sense of perspective
onto your thinking about the | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
Enlightenment, it comes from a
commentator in the UK responding to | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
your book, Jenni Russell, she says
every civilisation has believed in | 0:19:03 | 0:19:08 | |
its in vulnerability until it falls,
from the Greeks, the Romans, the | 0:19:08 | 0:19:13 | |
Mongols, the Ming Dynasty, it
couldn't recognise the threats to it | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
before it is too late and your blind
spot is believing the appeal of | 0:19:16 | 0:19:22 | |
liberal democracies and the light
and values that underpin them are so | 0:19:22 | 0:19:26 | |
powerful that they need only to be
spelt out to be accepted. -- in | 0:19:26 | 0:19:31 | |
light and. No. I would identify the
blind spot among people who confuse | 0:19:31 | 0:19:38 | |
the existence of progress with some
forced inevitability or | 0:19:38 | 0:19:44 | |
indestructibility ash Enlightenment.
People are so unused to even | 0:19:44 | 0:19:49 | |
conceiving of progress that they
can't distinguish a factual claim | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
like things are better than they
were several decades ago, or several | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
centuries ago, with these mystical
notions of vulnerability or | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
inexorable march is. They're not the
same thing. You can acknowledge we | 0:20:01 | 0:20:06 | |
live longer without saying that we
live in a utopia all we are going to | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
live forever. What about science,
you are a scientist they sought, but | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
if one looks your claims for
technology and science and the | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
degree to which they continue to
deliver us to a better place, one | 0:20:18 | 0:20:23 | |
can quite quickly counter with
obviously climate change being a | 0:20:23 | 0:20:27 | |
massive global problem which science
for the moment seems incapable of | 0:20:27 | 0:20:31 | |
coming up with a clear solution, one
could look at the degradation of our | 0:20:31 | 0:20:36 | |
environments, particularly the
oceans and microplastics right now. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
One could say your faith in science
looks misplaced. All of the facts | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
you mention of course our scientific
discoveries, and so without | 0:20:43 | 0:20:48 | |
science... Their discoveries of the
harm science is doing. That's what | 0:20:48 | 0:20:52 | |
technology has done. The way to deal
with them is to understand what | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
caused them and what camera burst
them. That's where you have to marry | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
human ingenuity in science and human
motivation and science -- what can | 0:21:00 | 0:21:06 | |
reverse them. We don't have the
motivation to undertake the massive | 0:21:06 | 0:21:10 | |
cooperative effort to solve these
problems. We do, not enough, but we | 0:21:10 | 0:21:17 | |
do. The Paris climate accord and
certainly shows the world, again | 0:21:17 | 0:21:23 | |
with one conspicuous exception, can
come to an agreement. The exception | 0:21:23 | 0:21:28 | |
is pretty darned important. Although
remember that the pushing back on | 0:21:28 | 0:21:33 | |
our president, and we can't withdraw
from the accord for another three | 0:21:33 | 0:21:39 | |
years anyway, by which time it is
possible President Trump will be a | 0:21:39 | 0:21:44 | |
lame duck and his successor will
reinstate the American | 0:21:44 | 0:21:49 | |
participation, but individual
states, individual corporations, the | 0:21:49 | 0:21:51 | |
rest of the world and the rest of
the world of course can push back | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
against the United States when it
violates the Paris Agreement by | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
putting tariffs on American goods
based on their carbon emissions. So | 0:21:59 | 0:22:03 | |
the act of one president
unnecessarily undo the progress, | 0:22:03 | 0:22:08 | |
although they might. When you talk
like that I'm just reminded that the | 0:22:08 | 0:22:13 | |
historian Mall Ferguson said at
times he is reminded of Doctor | 0:22:13 | 0:22:18 | |
Pangalos when he listens to use.
Doctor Pangalos, that's a mistake, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
Pangalos is a pessimist, he said we
live in one, the best of all | 0:22:22 | 0:22:29 | |
possible worlds. -- listens to you.
You're much more optimistic than | 0:22:29 | 0:22:35 | |
Doctor Pangalos? Pangalos was a a
defender of the belief that God was | 0:22:35 | 0:22:41 | |
incapable of making the world any
better than the way we find it | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
today. Just go back to climate
change, we are not on track to | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
solving the problem of climate
change, there's no doubt. I'm not an | 0:22:48 | 0:22:52 | |
optimist in the sense that
everything will all workout. We're | 0:22:52 | 0:22:56 | |
almost out of time but in essence
you always are. Here's my invitation | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
to you at the end of this programme,
some people today look at where we | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
are with climate change, for
example, or indeed with nuclear | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
proliferation, and in particular the
nuclear stand-off right now with | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
Donald Trump's United States
administration and North Korea, and | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
they think to themselves, we've
probably never been closer to seeing | 0:23:17 | 0:23:22 | |
existential threats to humanity come
to reality, but your worldview would | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
suggest we have it within us always
to avert those accidental threats? I | 0:23:26 | 0:23:34 | |
think there is an imperative to see
our way through to avoiding the ex- | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
essential threats, to treating these
as problems to be solved, not to | 0:23:38 | 0:23:43 | |
declare that we're doomed so we may
as well enjoy life while we can, but | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
to put the pressure where it has to
be placed for the changes of | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
policies, changes of administration,
so we mitigate the severest threats. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:57 | |
And your life, your experience
suggests to you that there is every | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
good reason to continue to believe
that human beings will get to where | 0:24:00 | 0:24:07 | |
they need to be? Not that there is
every reason but there is a reason, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
not that it's inevitable, who knows
what the probabilities are, but it | 0:24:11 | 0:24:14 | |
is possible and therefore there is
the imperative to take the steps | 0:24:14 | 0:24:17 | |
that have the greatest chance of
solving the problems. We have to end | 0:24:17 | 0:24:22 | |
there but Steven Pinker, thank you
very much for joining me on | 0:24:22 | 0:24:25 | |
HARDtalk. Thanks for having me.
Thank you very much. | 0:24:25 | 0:24:29 |