WEBVTT - An A&G Book Review: Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:06.120 Because four hours. Simply enough, this is Armstrong and Getty 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:09.440 extra large. Do we have a name for this thing? 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:14.640 Book review stopped using the word club book review, damn it, 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.480 it's not a club. We're not middle aged ladies with 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:19.880 our pinkies in the air. That's the perfect start right there. 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:22.640 All right, that's what we're talking about, this here book 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.560 that we read. So are we doing this? We are? 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.880 We're doing and some they should have let me know. 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.880 So we uh, we read a book? Who's we? Um 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:37.559 Armstrong and Getty, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty and then 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:42.040 two other people, Craig got Walls, the healthcare guru, public 0:00:42.120 --> 0:00:46.600 intellectual fan favorite, and Tim Sander for vice president for 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:52.000 litigation for the gold Water Foundation, and uh, famousist Tim Lawyer. Um, Tim, 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.520 how are you? I'm great? Craig is here as well. 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:55.840 That's what I want to be when I grew up 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.400 as a public intellectual. I know it's holding me back, 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:03.200 though I'm pretty certain of it. Height. You need to 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.119 cultivate your accent to what you need. You need some 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:08.959 some sort of vaguely European but hard to pin down. 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.360 So we set out to read a book, have and 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.800 a plan to discuss it than The book is Stephen 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:21.240 Pinker's Enlightenment, now suggested by Tim subtitled The Case for 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:25.480 Reasons Science, Humanism and Progress. It's a very large book, oppressive, 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.760 I would say, um. And my question is lots of 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.119 pictures though you know what, Yes, on the plus side, 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.080 big fan of the pictures. Uh. My question is do 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.240 we want to go in depth on the big ideas 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.960 or do we want to go shallow on the many 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.000 different ideas or both are neither. I will vote for 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:52.280 the latter. And here's why I as you will remember, 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:54.720 when I recommended this book, I specifically said that you 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:56.840 could cut off the last two hundred pages and not 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:02.120 read those. How about the first hundred and seventy those 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:04.720 are where the pictures are? And what the reason why 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:08.720 I suggested the book is because I love the this 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:12.640 this depth of detail he gets into about how much 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:16.600 better life is today than it has ever been in 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:19.040 the history of the world. And you know, it's so 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:23.520 easy to get feeling depressed and down and pessimistic about 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:26.840 the future, and page after page of this book makes 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:29.960 clear why we have it better than any human beings 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.919 ever have had it in almost any dimension you care 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:35.280 to mention. And that's why I loved this book so 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.400 much and enjoyed going through that beginning part. I agree 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:39.720 with all this stuff in the end when he gets 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:41.960 into the more philosophical details, but I didn't even think 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:45.280 that was really necessary. Just nothing lifts your spirits more 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:47.520 than some of these statistics in here about how good 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.600 life is today. Yeah, I believe when we were first 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:52.480 when this book first came out, we were texting or 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.480 emailing about it. And it's just it's it is easy 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:58.280 to get caught up in the day today, the world's 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:00.799 going to hell in a handbasket. This book points out 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.760 the progress that his main been made by human beings, 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:07.520 particularly with the help of the Enlightenment, and some of 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:11.160 the statistics about this is when we talk about regularly 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.120 on the Armstrong and Getty Show, is the for most 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:17.200 of human history, you are going to have one or 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.000 more of your kids die. That was just part of life. 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.280 That's just the way it worked. Now it is a 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:26.640 rare occurrence and and seen as just a tragedy beyond 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.200 tragedies to have to endure. Um. I mean, that's a 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.440 major change life expectancy and the ability to get out 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:35.560 of childhood and everything like that, that a loan is 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:38.480 just incredible. And and you know, we often when we 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.600 think about the olden days with with the high child 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.880 mortality rate, people sometimes think, oh, well, they were neared 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:46.800 to it, they were so accustomed to that that they 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.280 weren't as affected as we we are today by the 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:51.200 loss of a child. And we know that that is 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.720 not true. In part if you look at graveyards, If 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:58.000 you look at old graveyards, especially around the Victorian Age, 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.320 and people started to be able to afford tombstones, they 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:06.839 built these elaborate, heart wrenching, beautifully carved headstones for their 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.920 kids because they were just as effected as we are today. 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.560 So it's not like they were calloused or anything. The 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:15.600 loss of a child a hundred or two hundred years 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.120 ago was a as just as heart wrenching as it 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:20.240 is to us today. And we are very fortunate that 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:22.800 we so rarely experience something. Yeah, if you've ever read 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:26.960 any of the Lincoln stuff, you up, yeah, yeah, crippling 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.040 grief both he and his wife, who admittedly was already 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:32.640 a little crazy. But hey, before we get into more specifics, 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.200 the two general things that I found most interesting about 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:41.920 the book or Pinker's discussion of the natural human tendency, 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:47.360 the psychological anthropological tendency to see problems more vividly than 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:51.640 good stuff. And and it's I thought it was interesting, 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:55.200 particularly as observers of the modern world and news and 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:58.479 the rest of it, to say, you know what, you're right, 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:02.120 focusing on the crow happy is a very difficult thing 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.800 to resist. And we can talk about that. But the 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:06.440 other thing, and this is the point of the book, 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.279 so the very idea that you have to in the 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:16.080 Western world defend the enlightenment, defend science, defend logic, defend 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.839 pushing aside superstition um in the face of some of 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:23.520 the modern the forces, particularly on university campuses. I mean, 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.520 it's it's shocking that you even have to do it, 0:05:25.560 --> 0:05:29.880 isn't it. Yeah, I personally I think that it's this 0:05:30.360 --> 0:05:34.680 it's really frightening. The hostility toward what they call the 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:40.240 bourgeois virtues or bourgeois life. And there's this this romanticism 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.760 toward the idea that that life should be more meaningful 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:48.359 or more profound than enjoying a barbecue with your with 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.000 your family. We, in fact, we just had so we 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.440 just went through Veterans Day, right, and every year there's 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.240 somebody out there who says something sarcastic or or dark 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.640 about how you know, people should be. They're out there 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.400 just shopping, getting at the sales at the mall, or 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.160 they're just hanging out and having barbecues instead of thinking 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.320 about what this day really means and all that, which 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.800 has always really driven me crazy, because especially Veterans Day, 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:15.800 what these men fought and died for was for our 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.200 ability to just enjoy a nice holiday with their fami. 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.360 That's exactly what they wanted when they went off to war, 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:24.560 and we do them on honor by just celebrating with 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:27.640 our families. And I think the hostility to the Enlightenment 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:31.279 is largely rooted in this idea that there's something you know, 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:37.440 lax or unimportant, or insignificant or vulgar about the life 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.159 of comfort and happiness with with that we enjoy today 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.440 with our technological advancement. That's a real problem. That's that 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:46.760 generates this sort of attitude that what we should be 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.520 out there crusading for national greatness or something like that 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.400 instead of instead of living lives of peace and happiness. 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:57.239 Joe's comment at the beginning prior to Tim's there about 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.520 the two of overarching themes I think on Joe's earst theme, 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.040 UM are aren't psychological need for the negative? That's the old. 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:06.680 I just think of that of the is the old. 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:08.600 If it bleeds it leads, right, I mean, if it's 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.360 shocking and negative, it's it's something people want to talk about. Um. 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:14.960 The latter point that Tim was just expounding on the 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:18.200 fact that we have to defend the Enlightenment is to 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.240 me that just dovetails so nicely into what postmodernism is 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.640 and this attack on facts in general, and that there 0:07:24.640 --> 0:07:26.840 are no facts and that there is no right answer, 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:30.240 and that everything is is so dour and negative and 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.640 and and saturated in horror basically, and then that that's 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:36.960 a common assault we see now across our whole university 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:39.840 system in in all of the developed nations. Well, I 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:42.760 know Tim absolutely has spent his life researching this sort 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:44.400 of thing, and Jack's been talking on the Armstrong and 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.119 Getty show lately about UM, the whole critical race theory 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.920 and and the intersectional horror that I like to bring 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:57.440 up somebody, anybody, why would any organized group of thinkers 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.040 or political radicals or whatever, why they want to undermine 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.760 the idea that there is objective truth. What's the goal? 0:08:04.200 --> 0:08:06.440 I have an answer to that. I think this is 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:08.520 what I think happened. And this actually can relates to 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.960 the book that I just published, the Life of Jacob Knowski, 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.680 because he was part of this post World War two generation, 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:17.360 because that humble brag. Yeah, so you can buy that 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:19.800 on Amazon dot com. Uh, there was this post World 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.160 War two generation that that sought to prevent anything like 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.040 that from ever happening again. And they thought the answer 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.960 was to find a universal human morality and a universal 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.960 philosophy that would apply across cultures that was focused on 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.160 material progress and that's just the Enlightenment all over again. 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:39.520 But there were other people who took a different view, 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:41.440 and they thought that what had led to World War 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:45.520 Two or to other wars was cultural conflict, and that 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.760 the solution to that was cultural relativism. If we don't 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.200 make pass judgments on other cultures, then we're not going 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:52.880 to go to war with other cultures. And so if 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.760 we just learned to get along and not criticize each other, 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:58.240 then that's fine. Then we we'll all be happy. Except 0:08:58.280 --> 0:08:59.920 the problem with that is that there are things you 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:04.640 ought to criticize people and cultures for, and the that 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.319 that metastasized into a war on objective truth because people 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.640 started thinking, well, objective truth means you're going to tell 0:09:10.679 --> 0:09:13.240 me how to run my life, and that so therefore 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.120 objective truth leads to totalitarian is m, which is crazy. 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:18.280 But I think that's a large part of it. Tim, 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:23.120 Tim ascribes, Uh, I think, honestly, the most optimistic view 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.600 of critical race theory that I've heard, I think that's 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:30.599 I think that's the most optimistic defense. Yeah, I I 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:32.800 Jack or Jell, any either of you guys want to. 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:34.520 I mean, Jack and I've spent a lot of time 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.280 watching these YouTube videos that they are there are hours 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.920 long and nobody should probably ever really spend time doing. 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.200 But uh, you want to take a staff at that, Jack, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:44.520 I just think that would be It's a whole own topic. 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.400 I would end up spending an hour on critical race 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:51.640 theory on But what's behind it? Why? What's the why? 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:55.520 The why? The why? I don't know. The why is 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.120 that if there is no universal truth, including reason and 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.319 science and the other stuff of the Enlightenment, which we 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:04.720 can get into in a while, is those with power 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:07.640 can determine what's the truth, and the only truth is 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.320 what they say is the truth. And that's that's the 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:14.040 mark of maoist regimes and similar stuff all over the world. 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:19.000 Any questioning of the Great Leader's doctrine means instant death. 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.000 And it's especially easy to enforce that if there's nothing 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:26.280 to appeal to. If I'm constantly trying to make the 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:29.760 other feel bad and they accept it, yeah, I have 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.200 a lot a lot easier time ruling, leading, doing what 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.640 I want to do, making my personal desires manifest. This 0:10:36.679 --> 0:10:38.400 book that we read in Enlightenment now, it goes through 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.400 a number of different ways in which humankind is better 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:45.000 now than it was, you know, throughout the history of 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.320 of mankind. And we mentioned, uh, life expectancy and infant 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:52.720 mortality and that sort of thing. But wealth is absolutely amazing. 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.679 It wasn't that many years ago that practically everybody on 0:10:55.720 --> 0:11:01.840 the planet lived in poverty. Fairly recently, now very few 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:05.959 people live in what did the worldwide standard for poverty is? 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:10.040 And um, you know that can't be glossed over at all. 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.680 I mean what a change that is so few in fact, 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:15.560 that they spend a lot of time trying to figure 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:18.360 out how to measure poverty. But right, so, yeah, yeah, 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:19.880 well that's why in the United States we had to 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.120 come up with this whole what do they call it, 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.400 um uh instead of hunger, food insecurity, because you have 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:31.160 to go with some sort of you might experience insecurity 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:33.440 of food in the next year because you can't make 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:35.880 sure hunger because there's not enough of it. But for 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:38.440 the for the vast history of human kind of the 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:40.280 only thing you did every single day was where am 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:42.320 I going to find something to eat? The fact that 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:44.160 you don't have to worry about that anymore is such 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.199 an amazing change. Yeah, that obesity is a made of 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:49.720 a larger health problem in the United States than starvation. 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.120 Surely we're the first civilization ever to have that unwealth 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:54.640 and food. I do want to share this is this 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.600 touches upon two specific statistics in the books that were 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.120 two of my favorites. On food but seen nineteen sixty 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:05.439 one and two thousand nine. Um, we use twelve percent 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:10.920 more land now, but we produce three percent more food. 0:12:11.200 --> 0:12:15.640 And on wealth, if we look back at by two 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.760 thousand eight, all persons on the planet had an average 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:25.360 income equal to that of Western Europe, in nineteen sixty four. 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:26.840 And one of the things I love about this book 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.520 is how he shows He shows these statistics in very 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.120 unusual ways that you would never think of asking to 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.520 begin with. So I love how he shows, for instance, 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:36.640 that we're not just richer than our great grandparents were, 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:40.720 but the poorest people today are richer than the richest 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:46.080 people were only fifty years ago our parents were. Well. 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.080 And one of the most powerful points I think he 0:12:48.160 --> 0:12:50.000 may think he makes, and I wish I had the 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.120 graph in front of me right now. Um, maybe I'll 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.120 flip to it at some point, is that the the 0:12:55.240 --> 0:12:58.920 average income or the you know, the way people live 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:07.199 all over the world has increased enormously from widespread infant mortality, disease, misery, 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.640 all of it, it's increased to this really pretty damn 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.520 good state, even as we've added in last is it 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:18.880 thirty years, five billion people to the globe. So we've 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.360 accomplished the growth and standards of living while growing the 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.320 population and living that way, we we went from roughly 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.319 fifty years ago spending sixty hours a week on housework 0:13:28.400 --> 0:13:31.120 to today we spend on average, the average household spends 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:36.600 fifteen hours a week on housework technology unless light just light. 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:38.720 One of my favorite physics in the Boston is with 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.800 the cost of light over time, where it's it's so 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:45.360 small today to to measure the cost of lighting a 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:49.040 room for an hour that you really can't accurately measure it. 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.200 It's so cheap as compared to how much it costs 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:54.760 for a candle a hundred years ago or something like that. 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:57.200 It's it's amazing. Tim You're in Arizona, where light is 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.680 still cheap. Things are changing dramatically in Californi, and we're 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:04.760 resorting the whale oil as I run gasoline and generators 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:06.839 in my backyard to make sure I can work at night. 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.880 I hate to see and everything it did, So listen 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:16.319 before we get into more specific measures like light and whatever. 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:22.040 The whole idea of the Enlightenment reason and science and 0:14:22.280 --> 0:14:25.720 UH and humanism, which is can we say natural rights 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:30.000 for now? That that idea, UM, that's what and the 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:33.000 idea that we can make progress is the keys to 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.800 understanding the Enlightenment what it was, and just life expectancy. 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:41.200 This is perhaps my favorite UH graph in the book. 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.080 And and he mentioned that you could go way way 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.680 way back to ancient times your stone age, your bronze age, whatever, 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:50.560 and life expectancy was the same, the same, the same, 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:52.760 the same, the same. It was flat for thousands and 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:55.920 thousands of years, and then starting in seventeen sixty it's 0:14:55.960 --> 0:14:58.560 still flat. I mean, it raises a little bit in 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:02.240 the America's in Europe just but when the age of 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.040 science and reason really took hold in the mid eighteen 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:10.600 hundreds and then the late eighteen hundreds, it exploads all 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:16.000 over the world science, reason, objective truth. It raised the 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.680 world life expectancy from about twenty nine years old to 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:25.480 seventy in the space of a hundred and thirty fifty years. 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.360 And all those graphs are as stark as that one. 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:32.240 The wealth, the life expectancy, the education, they're all as 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:36.800 as straight up at some points, mistake. It's no accident 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.640 that capitalism comes around around the same time, right, Wealth 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:42.440 of Antients published in seventeen seventy six. And I think 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:46.400 a lot of the reason for the hostility toward science, humanism, progress, 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:48.080 and objective truth, I think a lot of that is 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:51.240 basically rooted in the hostility to capitalism. Because we're talking 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:54.520 about these great statistics, and I keep thinking about you know, 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.880 as you mentioned, I live in Arizona. About a quarter 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.720 of the state of Arizona is Indian reservations. And if 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.920 you go to these reservations, the statistics there are almost 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.560 the reverse of what we've been talking about. The average 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.560 annual income on the Navajo reservation, which is about the 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:11.920 size of New England, it's two and a half times 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.080 the size of Massachusetts, the average annual income on Navajo 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:18.640 is about seventy dollars per year, and the average average 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:23.440 annual income on Apache south of their uh is about 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:28.000 four thousand dollars a year. Something like ninety or of 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.600 the populations on these reservations are employed by in some 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.880 way or another, the tribal government. And the statistics on 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:39.840 the of of reservation poverty are abominable. Like we're talking 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.600 like a quarter of the residences don't have running water 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:45.960 or electricity or telephone service. And and there are people 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.640 who are living on these in these places who are 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:51.360 just normal people like you and me, who are living 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.360 a life that we cannot possibly imagine, and like that 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.600 really is a demonstration of how this escape from poverty, 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.560 the great escape you were described being, is the consequence 0:17:01.600 --> 0:17:05.080 of social and cultural variables, which are we We've said 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:11.080 our objectivity reasons science, free markets, and exchange and people. 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.080 A lot of people are object to those because they say, well, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:15.399 those are those would be dangerous to our culture, that 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.080 would undermine our the survival of our cultural traditions, and 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.399 whatever you might think of that, It's just not true 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:25.320 if you look at us. Groups like the Italian Americans. 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.560 Italian Americans have been able to keep their culture thriving 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:31.640 and alive in the United States with hardly any serious 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:37.359 threat of diminishment. Why because they've participated in the capitalist 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.760 process that America makes possible. The same with just about 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:43.480 any other ethnic group you choose to name. But insular 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:48.040 groups that wall out those those traditions of of free 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:52.560 markets and individualism and exchange and capitalism, they suffer terribly 0:17:52.640 --> 0:17:55.479 and then point fingers, often at other people as if 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.040 it's their fault. Well, this is a dangerous conversation to 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.639 jump into and will probably end my career. Which is fine, um, 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:06.879 But there are aspects of some culture, the cultures that 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.800 are simply what we used to do or what we 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:14.440 have done. I mean, part of my sacred culture is 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.240 that I smoked too much pot. I mean now, is 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:19.639 that a cultural norm that I should hang onto just 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.480 because in college for a while I smoked too much pot? 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:25.600 Or is that just one of the things I did 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.240 for a while. And how horrible to have a situation 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:31.679 that encourages bad habits like that to become thought of 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.240 as part of your culture. Then that's what romanticism does. 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.520 I think there's Romanticism is the opposite of the Enlightenment. 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:43.480 It's this idea that there's some super emotional force, some 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:47.359 forces of history or supernaturalism or something that collects us 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.320 together as cultures, and is this important bond and is 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:52.640 so beautiful and more important than human needs and human 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:54.359 life and everything, and you know all that all that 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.520 stuff you see in Disney movies that people really just 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:58.760 do have in their brains. And as a result of 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.199 that romanticism, they think of bad ideas as as just 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.280 part of who they are a lot of the time. 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:06.680 And that's really it's it's a travesty to them, and 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:08.760 it's a travesty to their culture, and it holds them 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:11.760 back terrible well when it's at the basis of sending 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.760 wave after wave after wave of soldiers to their deaths 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:19.119 in the name of some imaginary national pride or something 0:19:19.160 --> 0:19:21.399 like that. So and there are you know, all sorts 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:24.840 of examples through history, you know, the slaughtering, torturing people 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:29.520 over you know, variations in Christianity through the Confederacy is 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.119 a great example, right, The Southern Confederacy was built on 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:36.480 this vision of national Southern nationalism that said, oppressing black 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.800 people is just part of our culture. The Southern way 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:43.000 of life consisted of doing these horrible things. That's what 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.359 that was what the pre Civil War Southern intellectual leaders 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.720 tried to say. That's a pretty good example because in 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.000 instead of letting go of the bad part or dumb part, 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:55.639 or unproductive part or a legal part of your culture 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.960 and hanging onto you know, you can keep Nascar and 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:01.000 sweet tea, you just can't place He's can't have slavery. 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.680 Change is very very hard for many people. Uh yeah, yeah, 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:07.680 there was a follow up on that. Ad will pop 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.320 into my head eventually as we're thinking about the book globally, 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:14.240 one more kind of global question. I mean, we're not 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.760 going to recount every graph for the podcast here, but basically, 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:24.640 for every single aspect of tangible, measurable life, with very 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.600 few exceptions, is getting better. We're getting we're getting healthier, 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:29.600 we live longer, we have more food, we have a 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.840 better environment, we have all these things right, And but 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:36.840 is there anything in the book that statistically, just factually 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:38.720 you guys think, Boy, I don't know if that's true. 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:40.200 Is there is Do we want to just sort of 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.439 accept everything in here is accurate, or do we want 0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.480 to say, boy, there's that may not be accurate to me? Well, 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.160 Pinka wrote the book in part because he was kind 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:51.879 of criticized for his previous book where he had said 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:54.639 that there was a reduction in the international violence and 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.359 war and he which one of the fascinating aspects of 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.080 this book is that he attributes that he argues that 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.680 would actually have essentially outlawed war, which is a really 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:08.800 interesting and intriguing suggestion. But he was criticized for saying 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.320 that the world is more peaceful today than it was 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:15.199 in the past, and he quantitatively shows some of that 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:18.040 with his charts on war and his charts on genocide, etcetera. 0:21:18.520 --> 0:21:21.000 I'm just saying, is there anything in the book that 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:23.239 any of you guys saw or thought, I'm just not 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.359 sure that's accurate. I mean, in other words, do we 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.480 want to accept his facts as given as we proceed. 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:32.000 He I, UM, I have seen him speak a couple 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:34.560 of times on this, because he he made the rounds 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.400 to a bunch of different universities and shows and everything 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.320 like that. And uh, and that's where I first became 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:43.880 aware of this book on book TV. But because we've 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:48.400 had a rise in suicides, he he says, no, that's 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:51.879 not true. I don't know where his statistics are different 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:54.320 than the statistics that that that are coming to us 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.520 through you know, major newspapers. Well, and this was gonna 0:21:57.560 --> 0:21:59.880 be one of my major gripes with the book, when 0:21:59.880 --> 0:22:02.960