Steven Pinker’s claim that human beings are now better off than at any time since the beginning of recorded history has provoked fierce resistance. Critics often regard it as complacent, technocratic, or morally obtuse in the face of ongoing suffering. Yet when the claim is properly understood—not as a denial of present evils, but as a comparative, historical judgment—it is not only defensible but compelling. On virtually every objective measure of human well-being, the contemporary world represents an unprecedented improvement over the conditions under which most human beings have lived for millennia.
1. The Baseline of History: A Brutal Past
To assess whether we are “better off,” we must begin with an honest appraisal of historical norms. For the vast majority of recorded history, human life was marked by extreme vulnerability. Infant mortality commonly exceeded 30–40 percent. Average life expectancy hovered around 30 years, not because people died of “old age” early, but because death from infection, childbirth, famine, violence, or accident was routine. Chronic pain went largely untreated. A toothache, a broken limb, or an infected wound could easily be fatal.
Material deprivation was the default condition. Even in relatively advanced civilizations, the majority lived near subsistence. Crop failure meant starvation; drought meant mass death. Economic growth, as we now understand it, scarcely existed. Generational improvement was not expected; stagnation was normal.
By any sober standard, this is a grim baseline—and it persisted not for centuries, but for thousands of years.
2. Health, Longevity, and Survival
Against this background, the modern transformation of human health is nothing short of astonishing. Global life expectancy has more than doubled since 1800. Infant and maternal mortality—once accepted as tragic inevitabilities—have collapsed across most of the world. Diseases that killed indiscriminately for centuries (smallpox, polio, cholera, tuberculosis) have been eradicated or brought under control through vaccination, sanitation, and antibiotics.
Crucially, these gains are not confined to wealthy elites. The most dramatic improvements in survival have occurred among the global poor. A child born today in sub-Saharan Africa is far more likely to survive infancy than a child born into European nobility in the 18th century. This is not a moral judgment; it is a statistical fact.
If “being better off” includes the basic ability to live, avoid suffering, and reach adulthood, then modern humanity surpasses all previous eras by an overwhelming margin.
3. Violence and the Value of Life
One of Pinker’s most controversial claims concerns the decline of violence. While modern conflicts are rightly horrifying, they are exceptional rather than typical when viewed across deep time. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that rates of violent death in prehistoric and early historic societies were vastly higher than today. Tribal warfare, blood feuds, slavery, torture, and public executions were normal features of social life.
Even into the early modern period, homicide rates in European cities were many times higher than those of today. States routinely employed terror as an instrument of governance. War between great powers was frequent and devastating.
The modern world has not eliminated violence—but it has rendered it morally intolerable and statistically rarer. The very fact that contemporary wars are seen as global crises, rather than routine affairs of state, is itself evidence of moral progress.
4. Knowledge, Literacy, and Cognitive Freedom
Another dimension of being “better off” concerns the life of the mind. For most of history, literacy was restricted to tiny elites. Knowledge was local, fragile, and easily lost. Superstition dominated explanation; dissent invited persecution.
Today, basic literacy is the global norm. Scientific knowledge accumulates rather than vanishes. Information is accessible on a scale unimaginable even a century ago. Individuals are vastly freer to form beliefs, challenge authority, and revise their views in light of evidence.
This matters not merely instrumentally, but intrinsically. A world in which people can understand their circumstances, reason about causes, and imagine alternatives is a better world than one in which fate and fear dominate human consciousness.
5. Moral Progress Without Moral Perfection
Critics often object that pointing to progress ignores ongoing injustice: poverty, inequality, climate risk, authoritarianism, and war. But this objection mistakes the nature of the claim. To say that humanity is better off than ever before is not to say that it is good enough, or that improvement is inevitable, or that vigilance is unnecessary.
Indeed, the very capacity to identify injustice presupposes moral progress. Slavery, once defended as natural, is now universally condemned. Women’s legal and political rights, once unthinkable, are widely recognized. Cruelty toward children, animals, and minorities is increasingly regarded as morally unacceptable. These changes did not arise spontaneously; they reflect centuries of argument, institutional reform, and cultural learning.
Progress is fragile—but fragility does not negate its reality.
6. The Enlightenment Legacy
At the core of Pinker’s argument is a defense of Enlightenment values: reason, science, humanism, and institutional reform. These are not abstract ideals; they are practical tools that have demonstrably improved human lives. When societies apply evidence-based medicine, impartial law, and accountable governance, suffering decreases. When they abandon these principles, suffering returns.
The lesson of history is not that progress is guaranteed, but that it is possible—and that it depends on the continued use of reason and empirical feedback rather than nostalgia, fatalism, or ideological purity.
Conclusion: A Clear-Eyed Optimism
Measured against the full sweep of recorded history, the case that human beings are better off today than ever before is overwhelmingly strong. We live longer, healthier, safer, more informed, and more autonomous lives than our ancestors could plausibly imagine. This is not a matter of opinion, but of cumulative evidence.
Acknowledging this fact does not trivialize suffering; it honors the hard-won achievements that reduced it. Nor does it license complacency. On the contrary, understanding how progress occurred is essential to preserving and extending it.
Steven Pinker’s thesis, properly understood, is not a hymn of self-congratulation. It is a reminder that human affairs are not condemned to perpetual misery—and that reasoned optimism is not naïveté, but historical realism.
Unfortunately we haven’t worked how to change that. But to those so inclined, reading this book should have you nodding along, comforted at least that you are not alone in your concern that the role of expertise is in peril.
The Logical Place 
