Is the world actually getting better? | UpFront
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- In this week's UpFront, we challenge author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker on his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, in which he argues that data shows the world is becoming a better place.
And in the Arena, we ask journalist Afua Hirsch and Claire Fox, author and director of the UK-based think-tank the Academy of Ideas, about racism in the United Kingdom, and the kind of conversations needed to address it.
Headliner: War, poverty and inequality: is there any good news?
Harvard professor and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker's new book Enlightenment Now has sparked a debate on how we see the world.
While wars and poverty continue to affect millions around the world, Pinker argues that both are in decline and challenges readers to see "how amazing our world has become."
"Any aspect of human well-being that you measure has shown an increase," he says. "We live longer, more of us go to school, life is safer, fewer of us die in wars."
According to Pinker, humanity's progress can be attributed to reason and science, ideas he says were expressed in 18th century Europe, during a period widely referred to as the Enlightenment.
Pinker relies heavily on data to support his argument that prosperity is rising in the world. When challenged on the types of data chosen, particularly his use of the $1.90 extreme poverty line set by the World Bank, Pinker denies that other measures reveal more poverty.
"No matter what cutoff you set, the direction is downward," he says. "Billions of people have been added to the world as a whole. What's relevant is the proportion."
Pinker's views on climate change, expressed in his book, have also drawn criticism. "It's not irrevocable," he says. "The trend is in the wrong direction, but that doesn't mean that nothing could work."
Watch part two of UpFront's interview with Steven Pinker here.
Arena: Is the UK still racist?
According to journalist Afua Hirsch, "discussing race in contemporary Britain is still a radical act." In her latest book, Brit(ish), Hirsch argues that the UK has failed to reckon with its colonial past and that conversations about race, ethnicity and diversity have been silenced.
"I'm not saying that we haven't made progress," says Hirsch, "but I think what's happened is that because racism has become less visible, and it's become more subtle and coded, we've become very complacent."
While Fox agrees that racism exists in the UK, she takes issue with some of the terms used in the conversation.
"This is an aspect of identity politics that I feel very uncomfortable with," she says. "Rather than taking people for what they say and for the ideas they hold, we start to see people based on their ethnicity, or indeed on their gender or any number of things."
But discussing race in the UK is necessary, according to Hirsch, because what exists now is a "victor's version of history".
"We talk about West India merchants in our literature and period dramas. We never call them slave owners," she says. "We've found so many ways of coating this past so that it's more palatable".
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I appreciate how Mehdi pushed and probed the positions of all interviewees in this clip. I don't need consistency from an interview journalist-I want to see the guests' positions challenged, which is exactly what we have here. Good job!
All except Mehdi cutting him off, improper framing the interview questions. Yeah, he's great.
@@randallf.4646 I cut people off irl when they aren’t saying anything of substance, that’s what the interviewer is doing here.
Bravo, Mr.Pinker. His incessant need to talk over you was only to silence the truth - a scoundrel.
Why is mehdi not questioning islam, qatar and saudis like this LOL. Hard questions and attacking the guest but better then most soft journalists.
Just remember that with every challenge Mehdi swings at his guests it casts the shadow of a winged horse flying to heaven, if you get the reference
Underrated comment :)
Not a religious person myself, just wonder if tobo would have the same sort of joke for an interviewer with any sort of fundemantalist believe in the scripture of any other religions.
Ben, sure, but why is that in any way relevant?
The host keeps interrupting...
Agreed, he was very unprofessional and intentionally stoking an argument, without hearing out the full answer on any of these topics. It's his job to be critical but It feels like he had to fit two interviews into a time slot reserved for one.
Anthony Chan that is his job u idiot
Dud Adam, so you are saying his job is to interrupt his guest.
The host asked some great questions that I want to ask too, but before Steven Pinker can present his thought fully, the host just interrupted again and again.
This is interview, not speech. Some people just talk a lot and talk very slowly... Mehdi mostly cut after the guest made his point.
You can ask tough questions, be critical, and minimize your interruptions and be a good interviewer AT THE SAME TIME. Saying that it is a interview is not an excuse.
I think it's okay to disagree and ask hard questions but why keep interrupting? It's just really annoying.
A less intelligent person needs to speak over a smarter one. Pinker made his point, but he could have done a much better job if the interviewer were not that bad.
Agreed, this video is painful.
Funny how it can be perceived differently I saw it from the opposite point of view.
To me it was an interviewer who came prepared and made short work of Pinker
Pinker is a complete clown.
The dumber Pinker is talking nonsense & utilising awfully bad science. As Monbiot put it: Pinker's poor scholarship & motivated reasoning insults the Enlightenment principles he claims to defend".
Wow Pinker completely owned medhi here...... Mehdi went emotional and Pinker went with the data.
Selective Statistics without understanding. Very poor philosophy of Pinker. As Monbiot put it: "Pinker's poor scholarship & motivated reasoning to insult Enlightenment principles he claims to defend".
sometimes its good to give people's hope and also give them positive opinions about current wave of life, but it doesn't mean that we merely give the positive picture and skip the other half. We should always have an ideal picture so that improvement also be made on that way. That's what i think.
well said Mehedi Hasan ... Bravo .. Bravo .. Bravo .. May Allah help you .. I am from Bangladesh
Funny how religion runs in families, like blue eyes. Further evidence of it's falsehood.
I wish this interview was longer. There were so many interesting points that Pinker wasn't able to finish because the interviewer kept cutting him off and wandering from question to question.
aversity in this day and age leads to awakening, by searching new solutions with our new abilities as individuals. in the past this was much harder. im a firm believer the world is getting better, even with the situations we are dealing with now
What an aggressive way to approach to an interview for om Mehdi. And all easily disputed by Pinker, supported by data.
Way to go, Professor Pinker!
Constantly interrupting your interviewee is not equal to challenging his views. Pinker owned him, in spite of all this pseudo-journalist’s efforts to make him look bad.
I am a massive Pinker fan. He's just such a logical and great thinker, and can articulate it in the most clear and eloquent way. What a great speaker! And thus, it's such a shame that the presenter feels the need to interrupt, typically with ignorant falsehoods.
David Schilter a reporter working for a news channel owned by a religious group is arguing and interrupting a scientist who would have thought ?😂😂
The most populous countries are going good in many aspects. So overall he is correct.
I think Mehdi Hassan's most plausible claim was about the arbitrary number that Pinker used in his book to claim that global poverty has fallen. I obviously have to do more research but it does seem like it would be extremely difficult to put an exact dollar amount on poverty.
So many interruptions, why even have the guy on if you're not going to let him talk?
Mehdi Hassan also believes that Muhammad rode to the moon on a winged horse.
Watching neoliberal politicals get completely destroyed is something you'll never see on the US corporate media.
Thanks!
The liberal fallacy of "Progress" - in living standards, economic development, even moral, etc. - is inextricably linked with environmental degradation. You can't be a serious thinker and claim "oh look, we're all becoming middle-class. It's great!" and also be simultaneously optimistic that, as a species, we will avert climate catastrophe.
Half of your thinking is based on precepts that are actively undermining your second point. (Perhaps we could amass better lives if our societies advanced a certain way, and without structural suicide, but _not_ on the path we're on.)
Pinker has a long history of championing Western Civilisation, and not at all seeing the barbarism and calamity that "project" produces (if indeed you can imagine it as a unified thing).
He might call that confirmation bias in others.
Luke O'Brien dumb
people only think about addressing climate change when they have food, water, shelter etc. maslow's hierarchy.
He did a serious research project.
It could be disputed about the future, the past must have been much worse.
I like both of their stances…. Like the Pinkerton Book…. Like Mehdi’s approach.
As annoying as Mehdi can be, I actually think he makes a good adversarial interviewer. Wish he’d steelman his guest’s arguments a bit better before challenging them but I do think his style helps to make the guest’s arguments stronger in the long term.
All in all,we can say that the world has made one step forward rather having two steps backwards,for many people's life in the world has improved at all levels.But wars and imperialism have sorely overshadowed the progress made.
Agree with other comments about this interviewer. Clearly he had an agenda that was not conducive to a reasoned discourse on the issue. I had to stop watching after about five minutes.
In this interview he made claims and was for once asked to defend them against what his critics say, who incidentally actually study the fields he's making claims about. He came off looking like a clumsy fool. For example, enlightenment thinkers knew slavery was wrong. For God's sake, the American revolution was fought over taxation and control over the economic sphere which is why it begins with the destruction of The East India Company's property. Taxation without representation was considered a vile assault on the personal dignity of the individual by, um, well, slaveholders. To pretend that the first words uttered about the desire for self determination happened during the 17th and 18th century is insane. They just called it a natural right (except for the colonized and enslaved obviously) which magically makes it new I guess, who cares how many Greek philosophers I could quote who wrote about the exact same idea. It's among the most ridiculous arguments I have ever heard, and it's only made by white academics whose goal, not coincidentally enough, is to downplay the enlightenment's role in establishing the intellectual framework for empire and exploitation.
One of the actual first time arguments made during the enlightenment was black people have the minds of children and need to be minded by their intellectual betters for their own good, used to justify and reinforce the slave trade and then slavery itself. That's actually an opinion you don't find in antiquity. Antiquity intellectuals at least had the moral clarity to justify slavery as the right of the conqueror over the conquered. They didn't have to invent nonsense in a pathetic attempt to justify their own hypocrisy.
Go watch Sam Harris and him in discussion if debate not's your thing. Sam always politely waits until Steven finishes in his mouth before asking his next softball question. There are plenty of other softball interviews with Pinker among his smug rich white guy intellectual network who are of course the audience for his book in the first place. Just realize when history assesses the crimes of the current moment, Pinker, if he's remembered at all, will solely be referenced to note just how obsequious intellectuals were, and how pathetically they downplay the savagery of today's imperial powers.
@@johnhorton5627 If you had bothered to read the book, you would have seen that Pinker does actually say that some of the ideas of the enlightenment had already been formulated earlier (such as by the greeks), but that they didn't have the same widespread impact as they ended up having in the enlightenment.
Also, he also mentions that several enlightenment figures were clearly racist and sexist, etc., so not all of their ideas were good, and some ideas were clearly bad, so he argues that we should use the good ideas and leave the bad ideas (such as racism and sexism) behind us.
This guy is going for the enlightened gentleman of the 1750’s and founding father look
So many angry Pinkerbots in the comments section mad that their messiah got called out.
Lol Ikr? Mehdi completely debunks Pinker's assertion that poverty is decreasing. You can tell easily because none of them in the comments respond with arguments.
i don't think he does disprove the assertion that poverty is decreasing. what pinker is saying is that it doesn't matter what low number you pick as your measurement for poverty ($1.90, $2.50, $5 a day) the proportion still goes down. did i miss something?
bmbc1310 why is everyone a “cultist” when they defend someone’s position you don’t agree with?
Some say... Your critics say... A lot of scholars say... There are scholars who say... Some critics say... There are numerous scholars who say... Is this what you call completely debunking?
jared If you missed it, so did I.
Good on Steven for effectively handling one of the worst interviewers I've ever seen. What an unprofessional and self-righteous individual.
yeah,just ask people in Iraq,syria,afghanistan&alot more countries.
Mehdi is cutting him off a bit too much especially since Pinker isn't a public official, but this is what a real journalist is supposed to do which is holding people accountable to their claims, and putting the burden of proof on them when faced with valid criticism.
It's a wonder that Mehdi won't dare be that objective about Islam
especially about the "there were no justifications for slavery before the enlightenment" comment in the beginning
Pinker did really well. Good stuff
I don't want to be too critical about this but do AlJazeera hosts write many books? 😅
Either way good debate. Alot of good points made.
Pinker has no Social science logical understanding & is utilising awfully bad science. As Monbiot put it: "Pinker's poor scholarship & motivated reasoning insults the Enlightenment principles he claims to defend".
Came after watching unlearning economics.
More writers on Aljazeera plz
I see war not a peace
Steven Pinkers tie looks really awesome. Anyone know what that style is called or where to buy it?
My problem with Mehdi's grilling is most of the time he doesn't give enough room for his guest to speak. He has good challenging questions, I don't expect anything less from him, but we can't get good replies because of this, and this is dishonest. If time is a constraint, don't try to address everything. Pick one major problem, use two examples, and go nuts. But let the guest speak!
On the point of infectious disease, the likelihood for a spike in the numbers is expected as we enter to post-antibiotic era
He is saying Infectious diseases are going down . However fail to mention non communicable diseases like DM and HTN are rising.
Mehdi is more interested in showing how he is outmanoeuvre his guests than anything else!
I disagree with Pinker here. Even if on some metrics the wellbeing is gradually getting better many these improvements have been fuelled by a carbon economy which has already caused widespread environmental damage and will do so for centuries to come. Also even if on some metrics wellbeing is GRADUALLY getting better over centuries this is something to lament not to praise. There could have and should have been far more rapid improvements in these metrics if enlightenment endorsed colonialism and capitalism hadn't held back our capacity to co-operate with each other for collective improvements.
2020 anyone?
Gotcha journalism.
Mehdi Hasan seems to be completely unwilling to listen to his guest. I'm not opposed to a dualistic approach to journalism, where the subject is treated as an adversary, but structurally misrepresenting a guest's position will not contribute to a better understanding of ideas.
I'm just here because the video thumbnail looked like Thomas Gottschalk :DD
Interesting to see Mehdi make the exact opposite argument to the one he made against a boring climate denier he had on Head To Head. Mehdi is a kite blown about by his own self righteousness.
I dont like the way Mr. Mehdi Hassan constantly interrupts Mr. Pinker. Re-changing the way of discourse via questioning used to be a good technique.
I really wish more interviewers were like this *cough cough* get your act together Dave Rubin. Joe Rogan maybe can be accused of that (lack of questioning of the interviewee's views) to some extent but definitely to a far lesser extent than Dave Rubin.
so sick of this hostile and formulaic interview style. It worked decades ago when it was knew but now it is just bad technique and not actually productive, especially when interviewing a non-hostile interviewee. Painful to watch. This is not journalism!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, no. This is proper journalism. He's asking him to justify all the problems with the book and he's holding him to account on claims he's made in a field he's not even an expert in. Claims which are being disputed by actual experts.
I like Pinker's books about linguistics but this is a complete shambles.
Look at it this way. When we go to university we have to defend our doctoral theses. He's asking him to justify his and frankly he's doing it very badly.
@@rawalshadab3812 Yeah but the comment you responded to had a lot of exclamation points which means they were really passionate and therefore right.
Its sure as anything better than the interviewer just mindlessly agreeing with almost everything like Dave Rubin usually does.
@@nostalgia_1439 Don't forget Joe Rogan, he's probably the "best" at mindless agreement
@@wwendelaar I think relatively speaking you're probably right, but still probably somewhat better at interviewing than Dave Rubin in this sense, I think we essentially agree but I was comparing him to Dave Rubin, who essentially any interviewer is much better at interviewing and questioning than.
Mr. Mehdi Hasan delivered a brutal spanking to Steven Pinker!
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHA, wow that was the funniest joke I've heard all day
Really? Please post a link to that video
Al Jaz Your host thinks men rides horses with wing.
It is funny, kind of like believing there's an omnipotent being who created the universe and who looks like a man.
Why is Mehdi Hassan still in Al-Jazeera? He has the appearance of being just a journalist who asks hard questions, but he plainly denies Pinker's points based on single pieces of discourse, quoting this or that dissonant voice while Pinker talks about averages and how consensus is stablished. And what's more, Hassan puts in Pinker's mouth things he hasn't said like when he suggests Pinker is telling people they shouldn't complain because things have improved. In summary, I think Hassan has very little modesty in a "how could I possibly be wrong?" attitude.
The whole point of the Enlightment it was to realize that things are not always as they appear or feel. Like in that joke:
-You can't blame our ancestors for believing the sun went around the earth, because it certainly looks like it.
-I agree, but how would have had to look like for the people to believe it was the other way around?
I agree, the dark younger woman also acts as such during the rascism talk. pretty synical and resentful as well as unwilling stance. sounds like they want a purge amongst current societies to have some sort of redemption.
Interesting. Your position on Hassan is exactly how I view Pinker. He attempts to use stats and mathematical equations as though they are transcendentally applicable and doesn't update his own stats according to the rising cost of inflation, for example or the increase in population. He makes claims concerning a quantitative positive shift in the standard of living of people between a few centuries ago and today, yet doesn't take into account the actual rise in population itself.
I would recommend that he and anyone else who takes him seriously read Hegel and perhaps, in order to add context, read Kant on the enlightenment. The enlightenment didn't forgo the leap of faith required to exist which is often made fun of by dogmatic scientists like Pinker. It presented the ability to justify faith through reason itself. And people like Pinker are the types of dogmatists that Hegel would have made fun of as a sort of neo-Stoic. The notion that global human freedom as a concept has become closer to realized within the material world as ever before, without any actual corresponding evidence itself.
Pinker operates within the framework of mathematical fanaticism and not within the realm of actual experience. Even if there existed a 'positive' quantitative shift in the lives of people in general, this doesn't say anything about quality.
Ok, so I can consume cheeseburgers and work in a warehouse longer....whooptifuckindooooo.
are we arguing between a 'guy that published a book' and a 'guy who reports for al jazeera' on whose facts are more right??? Please... sometimes the other person has the strawberry on their cake and not yours.
Once again Mehdi Hassan hates the West in which he lives. Here’s a newsflash for the journalist Mehdi and the Qatari based network for which he works-We don’t live 150 years ago. Were people perfect back then? Are people perfect now? Will people be perfect in 150 years if we’re still around as a race? The point being is we’ve progressed and made a lot of inroads as far as worldwide poverty, electricity access, education etc., even exceeding U.N. goals. And by the way Al Jazeera, Mehdi and Qatar, the standard of living in the Middle East and particularly Arab countries that are oil and natural gas producers has risen dramatically in 100 years, through no real doing of their own except sitting on resources and allowing western technology, industrialization and work ethic as well as finances to extract and access it. And the thanks the west gets is Islamofascism spread by these dirtbag regimes like Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc., ideologies who should not see the light of day beyond the bassackwards Middle East.
so what do you propose we say instead? He is saying we are doing things right and things are improving. Ofc it can be better - heck the ideal world would be one where the income distrib starts at a min wage of like 80k a year - but we need to increase the size of the pie alot bigger to get there
Mehdi should stick to flying horses
Whenever I look into Pinker's material I have trouble finding cases of genuine intellectual curiosity. He needs to rid himself of his ego. Pinker is an advocate for complacently
its not fox news channel here Steven you need to be ready and prepared .
lol
hahaha Mehdi accusing Pinker of using stawmen, that's rich. Every single counter argument presented by Mehdi was in fact a strawman.
The world is already fallen apart.cant u c👀👈
Kevon Thomas my name is kevon delon Thomas wat country are u from
This is such bad "journalism". Only goal is to bamboozle the guest with interrupting, and trying to make him fail instead of understanding and than to state calmly possible disagrements. Mehdi is such a ignorant, rhetorically gifted bigot. But i am sure he and his fans think of him as a hard hitting, critical journalist who puts people "on the spot".
nailed it
i agree 100% interviewer is annoying not an expert on anything but has an opinion on everything lol lefty idiot
Yeah he’s just picking at the guy basically and trying to find a reason to argue with. Idk if i like it or not. I guess im neutral but leaning towards dislike... idk im not really that interested
Marco W that is the best journalism. Pinker is not accurate, leaning too far to right
mehdi hasan is a chump, no doubt about it. He just can't accept the facts, as it doesn't fit his worldview. Pinker, polite, patient and intelligent, none of these words can be used to describe hasan.
How much billionaires give to charity
Pinker says everything couldn't be better here in the present yet he continues to get his style cues from 1966 Bob Dylan.
Claire Fox makes Steven Pinker seem sensible by comparison.
Pinker's fantasy excellently pulled apart. But I will say that Mehdi should have allowed more room for SP to finish his thoughts and should not have rushed him like that.
Mendhi is great
He is an Ignorant Idiot, ask a question, then changes the topic when the interviewer tries to answer him.
Seems like your can't handle the truth!!!
Interesting thread of comments that decry the interviewer's style ("oh he interrupts too much), but don't actually confront the questions that Mehdi asked, which are specific and come from direct claims made by Pinker, and the fact that Pinker can't actually substantiate his arguments.
Getting better for him, and his tribe.
What else matters?
Where did AI and Musk part go?
Nonsense
Is the world actually getting better? The answer is in the conclusion on Sociological and the Theological reflection of today. Science is the tool to get in better; if it is to read in the name of the creator. First Revelation - Surah Al-`Alaq (The Clot)
Pinker caught being a stinker
Mehdi Hassan just own this guy by facts.
Hassan with his usual agenda...
Pinker got decimated lol
Mehdi's incessant interrupting is quite annoying. Hinting at cherry-picking figures by professor Pinker remains weak to base an argument upon.
Also poverty for 99 percent of the world hasnt improved. China was the number one who benefited from globalization and pulled over 700 million out of poverty according to world bank without China almost certainly poverty rates would look worse lol so pinker has yo look deeper as a whole though im proud china has fixed many issues. Ots amazing but most countries have declined . Here in spain almost certainly i see more people struggling throughout life
Mehdi Hasan is my favourite bad faith ignoramus.
LOL
Until the nuke is on the air
So the world is getting better as long as you keep forgetting every reason that proves otherwise!!!!
F*CK LOGIC!
good job mehdi..
Poor Steven, this guy interrupts him a lot, so annoying 😩. I’m agree with Steven. If the production don’t agree with the author and the book why to invite him? Just to attack him trying to disqualify his work in the name of rating points an creat controversy? Seem so for me. Wonder why Steven care to go there, but admire him for doing it, he is brave.
This show is about CHALLENGING opinion, paper, book etc. If you don't want interuption just go read the book or search for speech...
Lambda Driver He looks more defensive then Debating
Hassan destroyed Pinker and you know it because all the Pinker fans in the comments are complaining that Hassan is "too aggressive" or that he "interrupts too much"
If Hassan had his facts wrong, or made a logical fallacy or something, you would see them jump on that. They have to criticize his style because they can't criticize the substance.
Fair enough, let's deal with the substance.
What Mehdi fails to grasp is simply this: *proportion is more important than absolute numbers*. His failure to grasp this point is most clearly shown starting from 6:22. Pinker said that the amount of people that have been added to the population living beneath the poverty line is irrelevant when it comes to showing whether overall poverty is increasing or decreasing. Mehdi says this is not true because, if you redefine the poverty line to those living with less than 5 dollars a day, you suddenly have a billion more extremely poor people. Pinker then asks "In terms of proportion?" and Mehdi responds "No, no. The sheer number of people..."
Which is to say, he didn't understand...
(As a bonus, you can also see him missing the point of proportionality immediately afterwards. Pinker mentions the "most widely accepted definitions of poverty" and Mehdi basically says "Yeah yeah, widely accepted, but what about this other expert?")
TL;DR: critics of Pinker take issue with his thesis because they think he is saying "things are good". He isn't. He knows that statement is meaningless. Good compared to what? He is simply saying "things are better now than they were before." That's it. Should that lead us into complacency? No.
Ladies & Gentlemen, the disgraced Steven Pinker in full effect!
Mehdi is like a fact guided laser missile completely destroyed this Pinker Dude
I smell paid academician...
everybody who is in accademia is paid, so it's probably time to do your laundry.
proportions are cool and all, but the rich have children too and multiply, same with the poor. Rich get richer and it stays in the family.
What a clown Mehdi Hassan is. He brought Pinker on the show to interview him, but then shouts over him whenever he speaks.
wow is that embarrassing... I guess Harvard is giving tenure away easy these days.
He failed to prove his stance,which he has mentioned in his book.
yeah, hard to prove anything when your interviewer likes to monologue
You know it's very funny how a scientific prof is using cherry picked data from the WB and the likes to write such a book, economically his wrong... Very wrong. But regarding war and safety,I think the world is more safer a bit. History speaks
badmus idris safer , are u blind by reading false history
Western history is 80% lies
he is lying pinker ,the world is not a better
Stephen Pinker obliterated.
Look at Qatar exploiting cheap labor, enjoying the world economy and all the progress the journalist is denying.. In an exclusively western setting. This is ridiculous. Qatar doesnt care for anything but its wealth and its race. If anyone is racist, they are..
The failure of current poor countries cant be blamed on western progress directly..
All i hear is the pity of a loser.
Poor countries are enjoying progress. And the industrial revolution is in benifit to anyone who is able to use it correctly. The west exported its progress globally and now when the others have a voice, they are abusing it by blaming anything but themselves. Shame
hey mate easy for you to say that from your relative privilege - some of our countries were left with civil wars and racial tension from divide and rule. Yes we are to blame on our corrupt politicians but we cant do better yet there are 1000s of year old entrenched social systems such as hinduism/buddism competing with the gov - there are local chieftans and patronage politics instead of clash of ideologies. We are screwed yes but we ll fix it - we just need time we have only been independent for like 50-80 years.
"Privilege" implies that someone's is considered better and therefore is getting more.
The truth is that its them reaping what they sowed... Hard work and a rich history of progress.. You cant give birth to 10 children then demand they have all same thing as someone that is accused of being " privileged".
The problem is really that its harder to export culture than technology, but eventually the former catches up ..
I have seen both poverty and comfort and am speaking from a balanced point of view.
And have lived among arabs all my life, the reporter is just being an entitled loud bully.
A remarkably bad interviewer. Anybody who thinks that this was a successful "grilling" of anybody has a very poor understanding of logic and rhetoric. Attacking the idea of progress as dogmatic liberal ideology is also quite silly if you comprehend even a little bit about world history over the last few centuries. The only reasonable criticism of Pinker here is that he is a bit too optimistic, but pessimism is an even more useless position - I don't see the alternative.
Hassan is an intellectual midget. In the constellation of decent, bright people at Al Jaz he sticks out - in ALL his work - as being disingenuous and extremely dull. Can he even read? Do better Al Jaz, as you USUALLY do. D.A., NYC
The interviewer is unbearable.
Without God we are worse than animals.
you might be
hatred? i'm not calling ppl animals am i ?
*With a toxic ideology like Islam we are worse than animals. And animals aren't bad by the way, they act purely on instinct. And we are animals too, but we can reason to a higher degree.
Tell that to ISIS