' My new favourite book of all time' Bill Gates Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress & the ideals that make it possible? If you follow the headlines the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos hatred & irrationality Yet Steven Pinker shows that this is an illusion
- a symptom of historical amnesia & statistical fallacies If you follow the trendlines rather than the headlines you discover that our lives have become longer healthier safer happier more peaceful more stimulating & more prosperous
- not just in the West but worldwide Such progress is no accident it's the gift of a coherent & inspiring value system that many of us embrace without even realizing it These are the values of the Enlightenment of reason science humanism & progress The challenges we face today are formidable including inequality climate change Artificial Intelligence & nuclear weapons But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve as we have solved other problems in the past In making the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century Pinker shows how we can use our faculties of reason & sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe We will never have a perfect world but
- defying the chorus of fatalism & reaction
- we can continue to make it a better one