Accentuate the Positive

He mentioned, among other things, a halving since 1990 of the number of children who die before their fifth birthday; a decline in the proportion of the world’s population that lives in extreme poverty, from over one third in 1990 to about one tenth now; and a rise during the past century in the number of countries in which it is legal to be gay, from twenty to more than a hundred. Despite his 146 tabulations of encouraging developments, ranging from a rise in life expectancy to increased numbers of teeth in adult mouths and of orchestras in US cities, she pointed out that the past century also saw the rise of Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism, and the deaths of at least 170 million people at the hands of their own governments. For Pinker, the reason why human life changed for the better in the past two centuries is simple: “The Enlightenment has worked—perhaps the greatest story seldom told.”

Source: www.nybooks.com