The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.

Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, has graced the pages of this blog before. See On Taboo. Now, he provides us with a significant counter-narrative to the views of the cynic in his new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature."

According to the New York Times Review of Books, "The central thesis of 'Better Angels' is that our era is less violent, less cruel and more peaceful than any previous period of human existence. The decline in violence holds for violence in the family, in neighborhoods, between tribes and between states. People living now are less likely to meet a violent death, or to suffer from violence or cruelty at the hands of others, than people living in any previous century."

Pinker supplies a lot of statistical – and some anecdotal – evidence to prove his point. But, for me the more interesting issue is why: why is the arrow of history pointed toward more human decency? Pinker doesn't claim to know for certain, but he has some theories. One is what I call the socialist theory. This theory claims that the development of the state monopoly on violence reduces violence among its own citizens. A state which has a disproportionate ability over its citizens to inflict violence has the power to impose penalties that eliminate the incentives for aggression. We see the rise in violence in places like Somalia where government is virtually non-existent or in marginalized places in this country where law enforcement is ineffectual and the mob or drug lords still act with impunity.

The second theory is what I call the capitalist theory. It says that the ability to trade our surpluses with pretty much anyone in the world for their surpluses creates a positive sum result in which both parties benefit. It's not hard for people to see that this arrangement is preferable to the zero sum outcome of war. As Robert Wright, the original proponent of this theory, put it, "Among the many reasons that I think that we should not bomb the Japanese is that they built my mini-van."

Perhaps, the most intriguing theory is based on the fact that people are simply getting more reasonable. Here's what the New York Times Review said:

Pinker's claim that reason is an important factor in the trends he has described relies in part on the "Flynn effect" — the remarkable finding by the philosopher James Flynn that ever since I.Q. tests were first administered, the scores achieved by those taking the test have been rising. The average I.Q. is, by definition, 100; but to achieve that result, raw test scores have to be standardized. If the average teenager today could go back in time and take an I.Q. test from 1910, he or she would have an I.Q. of 130, which would be better than 98 percent of those taking the test then. Nor is it easy to attribute this rise to improved education, because the aspects of the tests on which scores have risen most do not require a good vocabulary or even mathematical ability, but instead test powers of abstract reasoning.

The jury is still out on the causes of the Flynn effect. But, because evolution can't work that fast, it can't be that we are biologically smarter than our ancestors. Rather, it suggests that the brain is fairly malleable and is influenced by environment. Many suggestions have been made, including proposals that better nutrition or more emphasis on timed test-taking improve scores.

The most convincing argument, however, is that, because we live in a more complex environment which requires more abstract thinking, our minds have trained themselves to think more logically. Here's what Flynn himself had to say, "We weren't more intelligent than they [our ancestors], but we had learnt to apply our intelligence to a new set of problems. We had detached logic from the concrete, we were willing to deal with the hypothetical, and we thought the world was a place to be classified and understood scientifically rather than to be manipulated." Flynn's belief was that, as our minds expand their abilities, we will continue to create more complex environments, which will in turn stretch future minds to even higher functioning and more complex environments. Who knows where this ever expanding circle of intellectual capacity might lead? It makes us envious of the future generations.

According to Pinker, given our increased reasoning powers, we now have the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and understand our own situation in universal terms. Pinker suggests that the increased ability to think outside our own particular box moves us toward moral advances – mostly by the recognition that, from the standpoint of the universe, no one holds any position more privileged or more deserving than anyone else. In other words, we finally get what it means to say that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. So, if we prefer life over death and happiness over suffering, we can't expect anyone to accommodate us unless we're willing to accommodate others. This perception, captured in the golden rule, was once the exclusive insight of religious visionaries. But now through the Flynn affect it is within the intellectual grasp of almost everyone.

Pinker calls this the moral Flynn effect. We're not only getting smarter; we getting better. And, if Flynn is correct, these advances will happen at an ever increasing rate. Hey, the future's so bright I gotta wear shades.