LISTEN. Tonight in Enlightenment we continue to explore Steven Pinker's "conditional optimism" with respect to inequality, the environment, and the prospects of peace in our time. He borrows the phrase from an economist who distinguishes conditional from complacent optimism. The latter is "the feeling of a child waiting for presents on Christmas morning," the former that of the child who wants a treehouse and is prepared to help build it. If we want a more equitable society, a habitable abode for life (ours and others'), and a significant reduction of global inter-state violence, we've got ameliorative construction work to do. Call it conditional optimism if you will, I still prefer to think of this attitude as pragmatically melioristic. We must strive for better, but shipwreck is always among life's permanent possibilities.
With regard to inequality, Hillary was right: we're not Denmark, Americans will not support so egalitarian a commitment to the redistribution of wealth. Not yet. But we have to remedy those structural inequities of our system that translate into disproportionate political influence. We have to get the dark money out of politics. We have to stop pandering to the private interests who cynically manipulate public institutions (like our very university) with Trojan Horse entities ostensibly devoted to "political economy" and the like but covertly committed to undermining public support for those institutions.
Minimally, we have to repair a system that does not guarantee the most fundamental criterion of democratic politics: the integrity of the franchise. We must insist on the security of voting rights. We must dismantle the protections that allow money to purchase power. We'll probably not be doing that with the present profile of our highest court. Until we do, it won't do to declare complacently that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Nor should we blithely accept an entropic rationale for poverty. We must carve out a sphere of normalcy that simply does not tolerate the specter of a permanent underclass, and of homelessness on a vast scale.
With regard to climate change, we know what we have to do: break our fossil fuel addiction, transition to cleaner and (despite Pinker's impatience with the word) more sustainable sources of energy.
And with regard to peace, we have to build on the progress Pinker rightly notes. We've not had a third world war, nor are the casualties of specific present-day conflicts so appallingly high as in WWI & II. But our nation and a few others are still much too quick to the trigger, too inured to the notion that armed aggression is a satisfactory solution to intransigent problems in international affairs. It's past time to sublimate our worst instincts and summon our best. It's time to dream the dream of a pacific earth, and dream it in daylight. Who knows what the 24th century may bring? Let's go. Boldly.
- What do you think of William James's idea, in The Moral Equivalent of War, that the "martial virtues" humans have historically associated with war ("intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command") can and should be redirected to more constructive purposes? --I think it's a great idea we've never adequately explored. Once the global pandemic is well and truly behind us, I say let's reinvigorate the Peace Corps and every other agency we can dream up, to re-channel those martial impulses.
- Will humans ever overcome war, and inaugurate *Kant's perpetual peace? Will they ever create or join a United Federation, devoted to galactic peace?
Federation members exchange knowledge and resources to facilitate peaceful cooperation,
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