Steven Pinker on How to See Clearly
By: Michael Beiter
I regularly meet with pessimists, and I've also been one myself. It's easy to fall into this trap if you pay attention to the significant media and popular opinions about the world.
When I was pessimistic, I slowly descended into nihilism: the belief that nothing matters, which was a low point in my life.
I am an optimist now, and I try to practice positive thinking and perceptions daily. It's not the most effortless practice, but it's a hell of a lot better than where I was when I looked at everything negatively.
One book that I pull off my shelf over and over again is Steven Pinker's 'Enlightenment Now.'
I grabbed it again this week after watching Goodfellas and American History X - two films with intense violence and moral issues that left me unsettled.
Every time I read Pinker, I feel better. I learned about Humanism from him and got their emblem tattooed on my right wrist, so I see it daily.
Enlightenment Now is partly a defense of Humanism: an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress human beings' potential value and goodness, emphasize everyday human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.
So when the news has me down or some movies jack with my thinking, I return to this book.
I know this is a long post, but here is an excerpt from his writing that concludes counting is the best way to look at the state of things realistically.
Concerning our work, counting is how we navigate the corrupted food markets we live with.
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"It's easy to see how the Availability heuristic, stoked by the news policy, "If it bleeds, it leads," could induce a sense of gloom about the state of the world. Media scholars who tally news stories of different kinds or present editors with a menu of possible stories and see which they pick and display them have confirmed that the gatekeepers prefer negative to positive coverage, holding the events constant. That provides an easy formula for pessimists on the editorial page: make a list of all the worst things happening anywhere on the planet that week, and you have an impressive-sounding case that civilization has never faced greater peril.
The consequences of negative news are themselves negative. Far from being better informed, heavy news-watchers can become miscalibrated. They worry more about crime, even when rates are falling, sometimes they part company with reality altogether: a 2016 poll found that a large majority of Americans follow news about ISIS closely, and 77 percent agreed that "Islamic militants operating in Syria and Iraq pose a serious threat to the existence or survival of the United States," a belief that is nothing short of delusional.
Consumers of negative news, not surprisingly, become glum: a recent literature review cited "misperception or risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, desensitization, and in some cases, … complete avoidance of the news." And they become fatalistic, saying things like, "Why should I vote? It's not gonna help," or "I could donate money, but there's just going to be another kid who's starving next week."
Seeing how journalistic habits and cognitive biases bring out the worst in each other, how can we soundly appraise the state of the world? The answer is to count.
A quantitative mindset, despite its nerdy aura, is, in fact, the morally enlightened one because it treats every human life as having equal value rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic. And it holds out hope that we might identify the causes of suffering and thereby know which measures are most likely to reduce it."
So counting is Pinker's suggestion on how to deal with the negative news media, and it's how I suggest you deal with the confusing, manipulated food world.
Be nerdy, count it all, and you will find pessimism about the world laughable in light of the statistics, and you will maintain a fit, healthy body despite the foods surrounding you engineered to overeat.
