12/31/2023 0 Comments Conquer arnold flagOne is the moral fact that it’s awkward, to say the least, to insist that some lives are more valuable than others, particularly when you’re face-to-face with those others. The United States, in particular, was consecrated by a social contract rather than as an ethnostate, and it seems to command a lot of patriotism.Īnd while there surely is a centripetal force of tribalism, there are two forces pushing outward against it. So we may never see the day when people’s primary loyalty will be to all of Homo sapiens, let alone all sentient beings. But it’s not clear that the nation-state, which is a historical construction, is the most natural resting place for Singer’s expanding circle. Steven Pinker: I agree that the moral imperative to treat all lives as equally valuable has to pull outward against our natural tendency to favor kin, clan, and tribe. What would you say are the limits of human solidarity? Quillette: In Enlightenment Now, you discuss the importance of “norms and institutions that channel parochial interests into universal benefits.” Jonathan Haidt says the nation is the largest unit that activates the tribal mind, whereas Peter Singer says we are on an “escalator of reason” that allows our circle of moral concern to keep expanding. I spoke to Pinker for Quillette and our lengthy discussion covers international politics, artificial intelligence, religion and secularism, the October 7th atrocities in Israel, the power of beliefs, meritocracy, college admissions, identity politics, Effective Altruism, the state of democracy around the world, and many other topics. A recurrent theme of his books and research is that a richer understanding of human nature can help us live better lives. He has written a shelf of books, including How the Mind Works (1997), Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (2018), and most recently, Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (2021). He draws upon his investigations of the human mind to help readers and audiences better understand the world those minds have built. He has written on subjects as diverse as language and cognition, violence and war, and the study of human progress. Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist and professor at Harvard, a prolific bestselling author, and one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals.
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