79 pages • 2 hours read
Steven PinkerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Also called ecomodernism, this niche of environmentalism dismisses romantic notions of nature as well as fatalistic views that perceive humans as an inherently parasitic force on the earth. Instead, eco-pragmatism emphasizes that issues such as wildlife extinction, pollution, and climate change are solvable problems that we can tackle with the right legislation and new technology. Pinker endorses eco-pragmatism as a more effective alternative to “traditional” environmentalism, which he considers overly shaming and alarmist.
Pinker uses the term “declinism” to refer to pessimistic views that society is in decline and that people’s freedoms and living conditions will continue to worsen. His work is an argument against declinism because he uses statistical evidence to show that the most important measures of quality of life are improving rather than declining. Throughout the book, Pinker refers to various declinist thinkers and ideas—and uses qualitative evidence to debunk their arguments.
Pinker accuses some intellectuals of “Progressophobia,” a pessimistic worldview which insists that societies aren’t progressing. He argues that people make progressophobic arguments to sound clever but that such arguments are based on availability bias rather than on rational analysis of data.
By Steven Pinker
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Business & Economics
View Collection
Canadian Literature
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Climate Change Reads
View Collection
Common Reads: Freshman Year Reading
View Collection
Community
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Education
View Collection
Equality
View Collection
Globalization
View Collection
Health & Medicine
View Collection
Nation & Nationalism
View Collection
Philosophy, Logic, & Ethics
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Popular Study Guides
View Collection
Psychology
View Collection
Science & Nature
View Collection
Sociology
View Collection
Truth & Lies
View Collection