Do Humankindâs Best Days Lie Ahead?
Pro: Steven Pinker and Matt Ridley
Con: Alain de Botton and Malcolm Gladwell
November 6, 2015
Toronto, Ontario
Rudyard Griffiths: Good evening, everybody. My name is Rudyard Griffiths and Iâm the chair of the Munk Debates. Itâs my privilege to have the opportunity to moderate tonightâs contest.
I want to start this evening by welcoming the television audience across North America tuning into this debate, everywhere from CPAC, Canadaâs public affairs channel, to C-SPAN across the continental United States. A warm hello, also, to our online audience watching this debate right now on www.munkdebates.com. Itâs great to have you as virtual participants in tonightâs proceedings. And, finally, hello to you, the more than 3,000 people who have sold out Roy Thomson Hall for yet another Munk Debate just weeks after our much acclaimed Canadian federal election debate. Itâs terrific to have all of you here tonight.
Tonightâs debate is a bit of a departure for us. Weâre not going to be talking about a specific geopolitical issue or cultural debate. Instead, weâre going to think bigger. Weâre going to reflect on the nature of our society, its most deeply held beliefs, all in the context of the question weâre posing tonight: Is humankind progressing? Do our best days lie ahead?
To reflect on this big question, a debate that has raged in our society and our civilization for more than two centuries, weâve brought four people here to this stage in Toronto â people we think are some of the sharpest minds and brightest thinkers in their respective fields.
But before we get to that, I want to mention that none of these debates would be possible without the generosity, support, and vision of our hosts tonight. Please join me in an appreciation of Peter and Melanie Munk and the Aurea Foundation. Thank you. Bravo.
Letâs get our debaters out here on stage and our debate underway. Our resolution is, âBe it resolved: humankindâs best days lie ahead.â Please welcome, speaking for the âproâ team, Montreal native, pioneering cognitive scientist, and internationally renowned writer and scholar Steven Pinker.
Stevenâs teammate is a member of the British House of Lords. Heâs a storied journalist, a contributor to the Times of London, and the author of a string of big, internationally bestselling books on the intersections of evolution, ideology, history, and progress. We know him as Matt Ridley. Matt, come on out. Great to have you here.
Well, one great team of big-thinking debaters deserves another. Please welcome the celebrated U.K.-based author, broadcaster, and thinker, one of the leading public philosophers of his generation, Alain de Botton.
Alainâs debating partner is someone we love to read regularly in the New Yorker, where heâs a staff writer. Weâve also read a few of his books. I hear there are over ten million in print. Ladies and gentlemen, Canadaâs Malcolm Gladwell.
Letâs quickly run through our pre-debate checklist. First: our lovely countdown clock. This is going to keep our debaters on their toes and our debate on time. To those of you who are new to the Munk Debates, when you see this clock get to zero, please join me in a round of applause for our debaters, which will let them know that their allotted time has been used up.
Next, I want to review the poll results from the start of this evening. All 3,000 of you coming into this auditorium tonight were asked to vote on the resolution, âBe it resolved: humankindâs best days lie ahead.â The results are interesting: 71 percent of you agree, 29 percent disagree. The cup is definitely half full for this group.
But, as we know, these debates change, theyâre fluid. So we asked you: Depending on what you hear tonight, are you willing to change your vote over the next hour and a half? Ninety-one percent of you â yes, that high â would change their vote. Only 10 percent of you were committed optimists. So, we have a real debate on our hands.
Iâm now going to call on our first opening statement of the evening, which will go to the âproâ team, as is custom. Steven Pinker, your eight minutes begin now.
Steven Pinker: Fellow Canadians, citizens of the world, I plan to convince you that the best days of humankind lie ahead. Yes, I said convince.
Declinists speak of a faith or belief in progress, but thereâs nothing faith-based about it. Our understanding of the human condition must not be grounded in myths of a fall from Eden or a rise to Utopia, nor on genes for a sunny or morose temperament, or on which side of the bed you got out of this morning.
And it must not come from the headlines. Journalists report plane crashes, not planes that take off. As long as bad things havenât vanished from the earth altogether, there will always be enough of them to fill the news. And people will believe, as they have for centuries, that the world is falling apart.
The only way to understand the fate of the world is with facts and numbers, to plot the incidence of good and bad things over time â not just for charmed places like Canada but for the world as a whole â to see which way the lines are going, and identify the forces that are pushing them around. Allow me to do this for ten of the good things in life.
First, life itself. A century and a half ago, the human lifespan was thirty years. Today, it is seventy, and it shows no signs of levelling off.
Second, health. Look up smallpox and cattle plague in Wikipedia. The definitions are in the past tense â âsmallpox was a diseaseâ â indicating that two of the greatest sources of misery in human existence have been eradicated forever. The same will soon be true for polio and guinea worm, and we are currently decimating hookworm, malaria, filariasis, measles, rubella, and yaws.
Third, prosperity. Two centuries ago, 85 percent of the worldâs population lived in extreme poverty. Today, thatâs down to 10 percent. And according to the United Nations (UN), by 2030 it could be zero. On every continent people are working fewer hours and can afford more food, clothes, lighting, entertainment, travel, phone calls, dataâŠand beer.
Fourth, peace. The most destructive human activity, war between powerful nations, is obsolescent. Developed countries have not fought a war for seventy years; great powers for sixty years. Civil wars continue to exist, but they are less destructive than interstate wars and there are fewer of them. This pin on my lapel is a souvenir from a trip I took earlier this week to Colombia, which is in the process of ending the last war in the Western Hemisphere.
Globally, the annual death rate from wars has been in bumpy decline, from 300 per 100,000 during World War II, to 22 in the 1950s, 9 in the seventies, 5 in the eighties, 1.5 in the nineties and 0.2 in the aughts. Even the horrific civil war in Syria has only budged the numbers back up to where they were in 2000.
Fifth, safety. Global rates of violent crime are falling, in many places precipitously. The worldâs leading criminologists have calculated that within thirty years we will have cut the global homicide rate in half.
Sixth, freedom. Despite backsliding in this or that country, the global democracy index is at an all-time high. More than 60 percent of the worldâs population now lives in open societies, the highest percentage ever.
Seven, knowledge. In 1820, 17 percent of people had a basic education. Today, 82 percent do, and the percentage is rapidly heading to a hundred.
Eight, human rights. Ongoing global campaigns have targeted child labour, capital punishment, human trafficking, violence against women, female genital mutilation, and the criminalization of homosexuality. Each has made measureable inroads. And, if history is a guide, these barbaric customs will go the way of human sacrifice, cannibalism, infanticide, chattel slavery, heretic burning, torture executions, public hangings, debt bondage, duelling, harems, eunuchs, freak shows, foot binding, laughing at the insane â and the designated hockey goon.
Nine, gender equity. Global data show that woman are getting better educated, marrying later, earning more, and are in more positions of power and influence.
Finally, intelligence. In every country, IQ has been rising by three points a decade.
So what is the declinistsâ response to all of this depressing good news? It is: âJust you wait. Any day now a catastrophe will halt this progress or push it into reverse.â With the possible exception of war, none of these indicators is subject to chaotic bubbles and crashes like the stock market. Each is gradual and cumulative. And, collectively, they build on one another. A richer world can better afford to clean up the environment, police its gangs, and teach and heal its citizens. A better-educated and more female-empowered world will indulge fewer autocrats and start fewer stupid wars. The technological advances that have propelled this progress ...