Steven PinkerContinues to See the Glass Half Full
Steven Pinker的乐观心态
By SARAH BAKEWELL MARCH 2, 2018
Optimism is not generally thought cool, and it is often thought foolish. The optimistic philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote in 1828, “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.”In the previous century, Voltaire’s “Candide” had attacked what its author called “optimism”: the Leibnizian idea that all must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. After suffering through one disaster after another, Candide decides that optimism is merely “a mania for insisting that all is well when things are going badly.”
乐观主义通常认为是不酷的，反而常常认为是愚蠢的。1828年，乐观主义哲学家John Stuart Mill （约翰·穆勒）写道：“我观察到，被一大群人视为圣人的，不是当别人绝望时保持希望的人，而是在别人希望时失望的人。”在上个世纪，伏尔泰的“坎迪德（老实人）”这本书中，作者攻击了称之为“乐观主义”的东西，即莱布尼兹的观点认为在所有可能的世界中，一切都必须是最好的。在经历了一场又一次的灾难之后，坎迪德认为乐观主义仅仅是一种狂热的坚持，“当事情变得很糟糕时，一切都很好。”
Yet one might argue (and Steven Pinker does) that thephilosophy Voltaire satirizes here is not optimism at all. If you think thisworld is already as good as it gets, then you just have to accept it. A trueoptimist would say that, although human life will never be perfect, crucialaspects of it can improve if we work at it, for example by refining buildingstandards and seismological predictions so that fewer people die inearthquakes. It’s not “best,” but it is surely better.
然而，有人可能会（Steven Pinker确实这样做了）认为Voltaire这里批评的哲学并不是乐观主义。如果你认为这个世界已经很好了，那么你就接受它好了。一个真正的乐观主义者会说，尽管人类的生活永远不会是完美的，但如果我们为之努力的话，主要方面还是可以得以改善的，例如，完善建筑标准和地震预测，这样地震中死亡的人就会减少。这不是“最好的”，但肯定比之前要好。
This optimist’s revenge on “Candide” is one of thepassing pleasures in “Enlightenment Now,” Pinker’s follow-up to his 2011 book“The Better Angels of Our Nature.” The earlier work assembled banks of data insupport of his argument that human life is becoming, not worse as many seem tofeel, but globally safer, healthier, longer, less violent, more prosperous,better educated, more tolerant and more fulfilling. His new bookmakes the same case with updated statistics, and addstwo extra elements. First, it takes into account the recent rise ofauthoritarian populism, especially in the form of Donald Trump — a developmentthat has led some to feel more despairing than ever. Second, it raises thepolemicallevel with a rousing defense of the four bigideas named in the subtitle: progress, reason, science and humanism — the lastbeing defined not mainly in terms of non-theism (though Pinker argues for that,too), but as “the goal of maximizing human flourishing — life, health,happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience.” Who could beagainst any of that? Yet humanism has been seen in some
quarters as unfashionable, or unachievable, or both. Pinker wants us to take another look.
在“Enlightenment Now“这本书里，乐观主义者对“康迪德”的攻击是一种过时的乐趣，后来在2011年，Pinker出版了《The Better Angels
of Our Nature》。前面一部作品收集了大量的数据来支持他的论点，人类的生活不像很多人认为的那么糟，而是在全球范围内，变得更安全，健康，长久，暴力减少，生活更繁荣，拥有更好的教育，更宽容且更有满足感。他的新书用最新的统计数据做了同样的论据，并额外增加了两个部分。第一个是，考虑到最近权威民粹主义的兴起，尤其是唐纳德·特朗普为代表的——这一发展导致一些人感到比以往更加沮丧。第二个是，这本书副标题中“进步、理性、科学和人文主义”，对这四个观点非常振奋人心地辩解，增强了讨论的程度。最后一个观点人文主义，它并不完全是无神论的意思（尽管Pinker对无神论也提出了质疑），但却是人类繁荣昌盛的目最大化目标——生命、健康、幸福、自由、知识、爱和丰富的阅历。“谁能反对这些？然而，有一些人看来，人文主义是不流行的，或是无法实现的，或者都有。Pinker让我们再进一步看看。
Much of the book is taken up with evidence-basedphilosophizing, with charts showing a worldwide increase in life expectancy, adecline in life-shattering diseases, ever better education and access toinformation, greater recognition of female equality and L.G.B.T. rights, and soon — even down to data showing that Americans today are 37 times less likely tobe killed by lightning than in 1900, thanks to better weather forecasting,electrical engineering and safety awareness. Improvements in health have betteredthe human condition enormously, and Pinker tells us that his favorite sentencein the whole English language comes from Wikipedia: “Smallpox
was an infectious disease caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major
and Variola minor.” The word “was” is what he likes.
这本书的大部分内容哲学都是基于论据的，图表显示了世界范围内的寿命的增加、灾难性疾病的下降、比以往更好的教育和能更好地获取信息、对女性平等和L.G.B.T.权利的更好的认识等等。数据显示，由于天气预报、电气工程和安全意识，今天的美国人被闪电击毙的可能性要比1900的人少37倍。在健康方面，人类的健康状况得到了极大地改善，Pinker告诉我们，他最喜欢的一句话全是来自维基百科的：“天花是由两种病毒变种引起的一种传染病，主要是Variola major and Variola minor。”“他喜欢用was来表达。
He later adds that he could have ended every chapter bysaying, “But all this progress is threatened if Donald Trump gets his way.”Trumpism risks knocking the world backward in almost every department of life,especially by trying to undo the international structures that have madeprogress possible:peace and trade agreements, health
care, climate change accords and the general understanding that nuclear weapons
should never be used. All this is now in question. Pinker isparticularlysharp on the dangers of ignoring oroverridingthe systems that make nuclear warunlikely.
他后来补充说，他本可以每结束一章写到：“但如果Donald Trump（唐纳德·特朗普）得逞，所有这些进步都会受到威胁。”特朗普主义几乎会让生活中所有的领域让世界倒退，尤其是试图破坏已经取得进展的国际结构：和平与贸易协定、医疗保健、气候变化协定和达成共识的禁用核武器。所有这些现在都成了问题。Pinker对忽视或者推翻体系的危险尤为尖锐，这些体系是为了不让核战争成为可能。
Having said this, he argues thatcatastrophismis itself a risk — that is, the pessimistic tendency to fix on the worstimaginable outcome, and to panic. Authoritarian populism itself has fed on thefeeling that everything is going wrong: that crime and terrorism have runamok, that immigration is disastrous and that theworld has lost its ethical direction in some terrible way. Meanwhile, fear anddespair play havocwith the opposition too. Ingeneral, people are more likely to workconstructivelyif they think problems are solvable, or that progress has already been made andcan be extended. As Pinker says, considering the fact that we have not yetblown the world up in a nuclear war, our best approach is “to figure out whathas gone right, so we can do more of whatever it is.” Optimism does not meanlying back and relaxing. He cites the economist Paul Romer, who distinguishesthe “complacent optimism” of a child waiting forpresents with the “conditional optimism” of a child who wants a treehouse, andgets hold of the wood and nails to make one. Someone who thinks a treehouse isimpossible, or assumes someone will instantly come and knock it down, isunlikely ever to start hammering.
他说，灾难论本身就是一种风险，也就是说，悲观主义老是倾向于盯住最糟糕的可想象结果，并引起恐慌。独裁民粹主义本身就助长了这种一切都错了的感觉：认为犯罪分子和恐怖主义是杀气腾腾的，移民是灾难性的，世界已经以某种可怕的方式失去了道德的方向。同时，恐惧和绝望也对反对人士造成严重破坏。总的来说，如果人们认为问题是可解决的，或者已经取得进展并可以进一步发展的话，人们更有可能进行建设性的工作。正如Pinker所说，考虑到我们还没有在核战争中把世界炸毁，我们最好的办法是“找出什么是正确的，这样我们就可以做更多的事情。”乐观并不意味着平躺和放松。他引用了经济学家Paul Romer的观点，把一个等待礼物的孩子的“自满式乐观”与一个想要树屋的孩子的“条件式乐观”区别开来，“条件式乐观”的孩子会用木头和钉子来制造树屋。认为树屋是不可能实现的，或者假想有人迅速来弄倒它的这些人，都是不太可能开始敲击制造的人。
This book will attract some hammering itself: It contains something to upset almost everyone. When not attacking the populist right,Pinker lays into leftist intellectuals. He is especially scathing about newspaper editorialists who, in 2016, fell over themselves in their haste to proclaim the death of Enlightenment values and the advent of “post-truth.” His (rather too broadly painted) targets include humanities professors, postmodernists, the politically correct and anyone who has something nice to say about Friedrich
Nietzsche. “Progressive” thinkers seem to consider progress a bad thing,he claims; they reject as crass or naïve “the notion that we should apply our collective reason to enhance flourishing and reduce suffering.”
这本书将吸引一些正在“用锤子敲击”努力的人：它包含了一些几乎让所有人都感到不安的内容。在不侵犯民权的情况下，Pinker狠狠地批评了左翼知识分子。他特别严厉地批评了报纸编辑，在2016的时候，他们积极地匆忙地宣布了启蒙价值观的死亡和“后真相”的出现。他的批评目标（相当广泛）包括人文主义教授、后现代主义者、政治上正确的人，还有任何说Friedrich Nietzsche（尼采）好话的人。Pinker声称，所谓的“进步的”的思想家他们觉得进步是一件坏事，他们拒绝“我们应该结合理性来促进繁荣、减少痛苦”的观念，认为是“粗鲁或天真”的。
In fact, there may already be signs of a change in mood,with chirps of optimism being heard from varied directions. The musician DavidByrne has just launched a web project entitled “Reasons to Be Cheerful,”celebrating positive initiativesin the realms ofculture, science, transportation, civic engagementand so on. Quartz, a business journalism site, ended 2017 with a list of 99cheerful links to the year’s good news:snow leopardsbeing taken off the endangered species list; a province in Pakistan planting abillion trees over the last two years as a response to the 2015 floods; adramatic fall in sufferers from thehideous Guinea worm(from 3.5 million in 1986 to just 30 in 2017); and a slow but steady increasein women holdingparliamentaryseats worldwide,from 12 percent in 1997 to 23 percent now.
事实上，已经可能有迹象显示了情绪的变化，在各个领域都可以听到乐观的鸣响声音。音乐家David Byrne（大卫·拜恩）刚推出了一个名为“理应快乐”的网络项目，庆祝在文化、科学、交通、公民参与等领域积极的举措。Quartz，一家商业新闻网站，在2017年度的好消息中列出了99个令人愉快的新闻：雪豹从濒危物种名单中去除；巴基斯坦的一个省对2015发生的洪水，在过去的两年里种植了十亿棵树；来自可怕的几内亚蠕虫伤害（从1986到350万只到2017只有30只）；同时世界范围内占据议会席位的女性缓慢而稳步地增长，从1997年的12%增加到现在的23%。
Bertrand Russell once pointed out that maintaining asense of hope can be hard work. In the closing pages ofhis autobiography, with its account of his many activist years, he wrote: “Topreserve hope in our world makes calls upon our intelligence and our energy. Inthose who despair it is frequently the energy that is lacking.” Steven Pinker’sbook is full of vigor andvim, and it sets outto inspire a similar energy in its readers.
Bertrand Russell曾指出，保持希望是很困难的。在他自传的结尾部分，在他叙述自己作为积极分子的那些年，他写道：“为了寄予世界希望，需要唤起我们的智慧和活力。”在那些绝望的人中，往往是缺乏活力的。“Steven Pinker的书充满了活力，它给读者激发了同样的活力。
He cites one study of “negativity bias”that says a critic who pans a book “is perceived as more
competent than a critic who praises it.” I will just have to take thatrisk: “Enlightenment Now” strikes me as an excellent book, lucidly written,timely, rich in data and eloquent in its championing of a rational humanismthat is — it turns out — really quite cool.
他引用了一篇关于“负面偏好”的研究，里面写到书评家对书籍批评比对赞扬更视为有能力。”我不得不冒这样的风险：“Enlightenment Now”给我的印象是一本优秀的书，写得很清晰易懂，同时又数据详尽，在这本书阐述的理性人道主义方面辨析有理有据，——它看起来真的很酷。