Life expectancy began to rise dramatically. Then luckily, in the 19th century, we saw ‘the great escape’. In centuries past, human life expectancy was only around 35. Humans want to avoid death and stay alive as long as possible. “If you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be – you didn’t know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family, a poor family, what country you’d be born in, whether you were going to be a man or a woman – if you had to choose blindly what moment you’d want to be born, you’d choose now.” – Barack Obama Life Expectancy At some stage in history, a person worked on solving these problems and drove our society forward. We assume these things are birthrights, forgetting that they’re human accomplishments. We have pills that demolish painful infections, planes to take us to the other side of the world, cheap energy to pop the lights on, and you have all of the world’s knowledge inside your pocket. You drop your waste in the toilet, and with a click of a button, it vanishes. The local supermarket is overflowing with food. Progress has a very funny way of erasing its tracks as we move forward as a species. Humans have achieved a whole bunch of cool shit over the ages. These values were instrumental in moving society forward, and Pinker worries that they are under threat. In Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker explains the impact of Enlightenment values – reason, science, and humanism – on the world.
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