Through an impressive array of data and visual metrics, Steven Pinker’s most recent book, Enlightenment Now, presents a fiercely optimistic portrait of the achievements of the human race.

Pinker uses stats and charts to show how, as one reviewer put it: “Wars are fewer and less severe, homicides are down, racism is in decline, terrorism is a fading fad, democracy rules, communicable diseases and poverty are on their way out.”

Pinker claims that technocratic progress — based upon the ideals of the Enlightenment (science, reason and liberal humanism) — has made humans happier, healthier and less violent than ever before.

His brand of popular science, rooted in the superiority of mankind, seems to appeal to the masses. An experimental psychologist at Harvard University, Pinker has been included in lists like “100 Global Thinkers” by Foreign Policy and “The Top Most Influential People in the World Today” by Time.

Recent critiques have been made of Pinker’s latest work. However, few have explored Pinker’s implicit defence of empire and colonialism: the violent exploits in the name of Eurocentric understandings of “progress.”

I believe Pinker’s mechanical understanding of environmental problems in the age of climate change and massive species loss to be irresponsible. As a postdoctoral scholar of critical socio-ecological theory, I feel it is important to counter the data offered in Enlightenment Now, which aims to demonstrate how our world is less violent, less environmentally destructive and less poor than ever before.

We need to counter Pinker’s view with a broader understanding of what our relationship to nature and to each other has been within the context of Western “progress.”

Rationalizing colonial violence in the name of “progress”

Pinker implicitly rationalizes historical colonial violence and ecological destruction as invariable consequences of advancements towards greater emancipation as human beings.

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