The case for global optimism with Steven Pinker

GZERO World with Ian Bremmer

GZERO Media

International Relations, Government, Foreign Policy, Gzero World, News Commentary, Trump, News, Global Economy, Geopolitics, Politics, Ian Bremmer

4.6 • 684 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

War in Ukraine. Global poverty on the rise. Hunger, too. Not to mention a persistent pandemic. It doesn't feel like a particularly good time to be alive. And yet, Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker argues that things are getting better today than ever across the world, based on the metrics that matter. Like laundry. In 1920, the average American spent 11.5 hours a week doing laundry (and that average American was almost always a woman, dudes just wore dirty clothes). By 2014, the number had dropped to 1.5 hours a week, thanks to what renowned public health scholar Hans Rosling called "greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution”: the washing machine. By freeing people of washing laundry by hand, this new technology allowed parents to devote more time to educating their children, and it allowed women to cultivate a life beyond the washboard. The automation of laundry is just one of many metrics that Pinker, uses to measure human progress. But how does his optimistic view of the state of the world stack up against the brutality of the modern world? Ian Bremmers asks this "relentlessly optimistic macro thinker" to share his view of the world on the GZERO World podcast.

Transcript

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0:00.0	As long as bad things haven't vanished from the face of the earth, which they never will,
0:04.1	you can get the impression that things are unchanged or even are worse than ever, even when they're improving.
0:09.3	But if you compare the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars in the 60s and the 70s and even the 80s,
0:15.4	we're actually much better off today.
0:19.5	Hello and welcome to the GZero World podcast.
0:22.9	This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television.
0:26.9	I'm Ian Bremer.
0:27.8	And today, we are talking about laundry.
0:31.0	And by laundry, I mean human progress.
0:33.7	In 1920, the average American spent 11.5 hours a week doing laundry,
0:39.3	and that average American was almost always a woman.
0:41.3	Dudes just kept wearing their dirty clothes.
0:43.3	By 2014, the number had dropped to 1.5 hours a week,
0:48.3	thanks to the invention of the washing machine.
0:52.3	By freeing people of laundry, and I mean doing laundry,
0:55.0	because freeing people of laundry is something we don't approve of here.
0:58.0	This new technology allowed parents to devote more time to educating their clean children,
1:04.0	and it allowed women to cultivate a life beyond the washboard.
1:08.0	Laundry is just one of many metrics, thankfully, that my guest today,
1:12.8	Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker, uses to measure human progress. But are the various metrics
1:18.5	of success that Pinker employs enough to offset war in Europe, famine in Africa, global
1:24.5	pandemics, fake news, AI Armageddon. And that's just your average Tuesday.
	...

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