Wake up to Pinker's wonderful world

"The world has never been better and very few of us know it." That was the hook for a talk given by the 'celebrity' cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker in Bogotá recently. It's also the thrust of his latest book, Enlightenment Now.

No one can really argue with the various statistics that he rhymes off as to why the human race has never had it so good. 

We're living longer, peace rather than war is the norm, global poverty levels have dramatically fallen while the world's calorie intake has increased. What's more, it's not that it's just that oft-vilified top one per cent reaping the benefits. Everyone is.

Steven Pinker in Bogotá: 'Never mind the future, things are bright now.'

So, compared to the not-too-distant past, current challenges notwithstanding and acknowledged (climate change, populism and suchlike), it's all positive, it's progress.

Malignant media

To be honest, it surprises me somewhat that very few people, according to Pinker anyway, know this. These health & safety and material advancements are obvious, aren't they?

Of course, from a news media perspective, one could be forgiven for thinking the opposite was true. Pinker, with good reason, does lay an amount of the blame at the media's door for all the negativity swirling around the planet.

"That we are statistically on Easy Street these days matters little at the individual level."

Indeed, I recall my late sister and her husband taking a decision a few years back not to read, watch or listen to the news because it just depressed them. We can easily lose sight of the good when we're consuming a large, unhealthy dose of the bad.

So we're agreed, at a macro level, there's never been a better time to be alive.

Yet, that's the crux of it for me — the macro level. From the individual viewpoint, this zoomed-out approach very often doesn't hit home, quite literally. While we're more connected than ever and can converse and share experiences with people on the other side of the planet in an instant, virtually albeit, we still have to live out our lives, tackle the trials and tribulations that we personally face, on a daily basis.

The fact that we are statistically on Easy Street compared to our ancestors matters little in the here and now. It's all relative.

What's it all about?

As that other celebrity Canadian speaker and psychologist, Jordan Peterson, puts it, "Life is suffering."

For the majority of our species born just 100 years ago or so — or even more recently — the initial challenge was simply to stay alive. If they dodged an infant death, managed to find some sort of income or whatever was needed to get sufficient food and shelter, the next goal was to reproduce. After that, exiting stage left was usually the least-worst option. In such a scenario, it was all purely about survival.

These days, for those of us lucky enough to beat the exceptionally long odds of actually being born, the chances of us then living to an age of 60 plus are very high, as the statistically astute Pinker is well aware. Therefore, basic life and death issues don't tend to constantly come into play.

"In the secular world, finding meaning becomes our 'cross to bear'."

For many, these are replaced by questions of "What's it all about?" and the like. Deeper concerns about meaning, or what some might term spirituality, are what fill this space.

Added to this is the fact that we're now smarter. Not only have global literacy levels increased but so have our IQs, as highlighted by Pinker.

Thus, it can be argued, in our search for more concrete truths about existence as a greater number of us leave behind old 'comforting' beliefs in this secular liberal democratic world to which both Pinker and I espouse, the meaning of life becomes our 'cross to bear' so to put it. We're here, going through the motions, 'working for the system' or what have you, for what?

You would be right in thinking that I'm writing this from the point of view of a single, childless man who isn't exactly 'loving' his principal job right now. I'm not alone. And it would appear we're on the rise, thanks in no small part to a lack of wars to check our numbers.

It's not just men who are at risk from this, although we are more likely to end things prematurely compared to women. 

Listening to Pinker in relation to technological advancements and artificial intelligence, I couldn't help but think of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a new well-paid job and moves with the family to an ultra-modern house, replete with all sorts of gadgets to do the housework. With very little to do, wife Marge takes to the wine. There's always alcohol to fill the void, isn't there?

Believe in better

Of course, this isn't to say that technology and the accompanied 'softer living' are killing us, um, softly (although, in some spheres, this might very well be the case). That same human ingenuity that has made our lives easier can also come good to ensure we remain strong and feel fulfilled.

That being said, that our lives in this world have never been better could be put into the 'lies, damned lies and statistics' category. 

One way to view it is like a football team that has had the lion's share of possession, the most shots on target, the most corners, etc. and goes on to win the game as expected. However, for the players, it seems like a defeat. It should have been much better. They think more about what they did poorly rather than what they did well.

That's human nature really. It's what keeps us striving for better and it is where we can find meaning. This is where Pinker and I agree, the ability of mankind (can I use that word in these politically correct days?), collectively, to keep on improving. The problem is that some don't feel part of the game at all. Or at least they feel like they only have a very minor, insignificant part in it.

So yes, the world has never been better for the masses when we crunch all the numbers. Yet, we can't experience the lives of those in the past to appreciate just how good we have it now. 

Also, the stats usually count for very little. Pinker can publish all the graphs he wants to show how such a wonderful world it currently is. It's how we perceive things to be going, though, this is what generally matters most.
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Colombia's path to peace?

We’re not big fans of hyperbole here and, thankfully, most Colombians appear to be that way too. 

Hence the somewhat indifferent reaction from many locals to the official revelation of what has been one of the worst-kept secrets in recent Colombian politics: President Juan Manuel Santos’s government has had preliminary discussions with the country’s long-standing left-wing guerrillas, Farc.*

El Presidente: Can he really make peace with the Farc?

Depending on whom you speak to, this indifference to the news verges on the slightly optimistic to the pessimistic. One thing’s for sure, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anybody overjoyed that ‘proper, full-scale’ peace talks are in the offing. 

It’s all down to reconciliation weariness really – Colombia has been here before on many occasions. The fact that the Farc is still involved in bombings and kidnappings tells you just how successful those previous attempts at fostering peace went down.

So what, if anything, has changed this time around? Well, of course, there’s a different administration in place intent on ‘learning from the errors of the past’. It’s the very least President Santos and his team could try. He certainly is saying the right things in this regard. 

He made it clear in his state broadcast that the country’s military would remain in 'every centimetre of national territory'. That was an obvious reference to the failed strategy of former President Andrés Pastrana who, in 1999, demilitarised a vast zone in the south of the country to facilitate peace talks with the rebels. 

While negotiations did take place, this buffer zone allowed the Farc to rebuild, recruit and reinforce itself in relative comfort. The legacy of this is still being felt today as it is in this area that the group remains at its strongest.

Now, while Farc may still have strength in its unofficial safe zones, generally speaking it would appear to be at the weakest point in its history. 

It has suffered key military setbacks against the state’s armed forces in the last few years with the recent upsurge in its attacks seen by some as the desperate last kicks of a cornered beast. Sitting down with the government could be its best option right now. Time will tell how sincere the group is about the whole process.

'The Path to Peace': Far from straightforward.

However, as in any peace talks, one must ask the question, can an essential balance be found that would be key to any potential lasting settlement? 

From this remove, it would appear that the government – and, by extension, the vast majority of the country’s inhabitants – has far more to gain. Obviously, if Farc agrees to lay down its weapons and cease attacks that’s good news for all who want peace. 

For Santos, if things go that well so soon, it should do his faltering approval rating no end of good, helping him in his quest for re-election in 2014. 

Peace negotiations have been part of his manifesto – quite apart from his predecessor, the hard-line right-winger Álvaro Uribe who has been very vociferous in his opposition to talking with ‘terrorists’, attacking the current administration’s policy at every opportunity.

A military-defunct Farc is clearly the very least the Colombian government and the majority of the country’s electorate will look for in any agreement. 

In such a scenario, the Farc, in some form, would surely look for political legitimacy and perhaps immunity from prosecution for some or all of its top members. This is looking at it from a political-conflict point of view.

Yet, the days of this struggle being purely about political ideology – if they ever were – are long gone. There is a far more powerful agent at play and it is this that is at the crux of the issue here: the control of the drugs trade. 

For Farc to go legit and allow unrestricted official access to its white-gold territories will be the equivalent of signing its own death warrant – mainstream political presence or not. 

While we might know what comes out of the depths of Colombia’s jungles, what actually happens inside them and exactly where remains about as mysterious as the inner workings of a rugby scrum. And for those working in the illegal drugs trade, that’s the way they want it to remain.

The 'white gold' in its ore form, the coca leaf.

It has been mentioned on these pages before that the current strategy by most elected governments, Colombia included, in tackling the narcotics underworld is not working (see ‘Dealing with the Dealers’: http://bit.ly/NXGLEl). 

Calls for a new front in this war, however, are gathering pace, not least in Latin America (Santos himself has spoken of the need for a new approach), a land that knows more about this issue than most. 

Take the illegal drugs trade out of subversives’ hands and their power and wealth are greatly reduced. In fact, for most underworld operators, their raison d’etre practically disappears.

So while there will be much focus on the political manoeuvring in the upcoming dialogue between the Colombian government and Farc (with the ELN, the country’s second-largest rebel group, indicating it also wants to be part of this process) the weight afforded to the drugs issue will be interesting to see.**

You can only ignore the white powdered elephant in the room for so long before it starts blowing in your face.

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* Farc stands for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in English.
** ELN stands for Ejército de Liberación Nacional or National Liberation Army in English.

For another article on a related theme, see: ‘Dangerous Colombia Part II’ http://bit.ly/OyCBRS