Really great full-length article by Paul Harris in the Guardian/Observer last weekend. It talks about The Secret Peace and a few other related books that have recently just come out, like Steven Pinker's book on declining violence.
There was also a very lively debate in the article's comments section, with a lot of the usual detracting arguments I hear, but also a lot of defenders. The most common argument I often hear about the book is, "How can you say things are perfect when such-and-such is so bad?" Of course, this is a misunderstanding of my thesis; I don't deny the awful things happening in the world today. I only make the claim that it was worse in the past, and keeps improving. It was interesting to read in these comments a clear environmental spin (ie. Who cares what progress we make, since it's all going to be wiped out by global warming.) This is a British paper, and the environment is more of an issue there, so perhaps that's responsible for that trend in the comments. To those people I say: Read the chapter in my book about the environment. Oh, and then read the rest of the book, too.
Check out the full article and the comments here.
Wonderful article!
ReplyDelete