0:09 in December of 1940 a 43-year-old
0:11 policeman in London scratched his face
0:14 on a rose bush the small wound quickly
0:17 turned septic his face ballooned with
0:20 abscesses and purse one eye became
0:22 infected and had to be removed and the
0:25 infection spread to his arm and lungs he
0:28 was in a huge amount of pain an
0:31 escalation like this seems like extreme
0:34 bad luck to us today but before
0:36 antibiotics lifethreatening infection
0:40 was so common that life expectancy was
0:43 just 47 years
0:46 old the policeman's doctor decided to
0:49 try a brand new drug penicillin he was
0:52 the first person in the world to receive
0:55 it around 10 years earlier Alexander
0:57 Fleming had returned to his lab from
0:59 holiday and found that one of his Petri
1:02 dishes was contaminated with mold he
1:04 noticed though that the mold had
1:07 inhibited the growth of the bacteria in
1:09 the dish so we took the mold and added
1:12 it to other dishes finding the
1:15 same after 4 days of treatment the
1:18 policeman was making what his doctor
1:20 described as a striking recovery
1:22 temperature returned to normal and he
1:26 was eating well on the fifth day though
1:29 the supply ran out and a month later he died
1:30 died
1:33 di it's been estimated that since
1:36 penicillin has saved the lives of maybe
1:39 200 million people and saved countless
1:42 others from excruciating pain it's
1:45 probably the most important life-saving
1:48 Discovery in human history but it also
1:51 points to a paradox in thinking about
1:54 progress in history Not only was it
1:56 discovered by accident the mold had
1:59 floated up through a window accidentally
2:02 left open onto a petri dish left
2:05 accidentally out on a bench rather than
2:07 in an incubator while the exceptionally
2:10 cool weather for that time of year had
2:11 encouraged its
2:14 growth if the discovery of such a
2:17 life-saving drug is the result of chance
2:19 how can we think about progress at all
2:23 what drives it is it guaranteed or is it a
2:24 a
2:28 myth of course it wasn't just chance
2:31 Fleming was a practice iing scientist
2:34 embedded in a context of Institutions
2:37 aims methods in a particular culture and
2:40 so on and compare this story to what was
2:42 going on at precisely the same time only
2:45 a few hundred miles away in Germany and
2:47 Poland Millions were being
2:49 systematically murdered while the
2:51 Innovations of Science and Technology
2:53 were being put to good use by European
2:56 slaughtering each other on
2:58 battlefields how do we make sense of
3:01 this paradox that the most important
3:05 innovation in history and other medical
3:08 and scientific advances were happening
3:12 at the same time as the most devastating
3:15 catastrophe in [Music]
3:22 history the historian will gerant wrote
3:25 that Civilization is a stream with banks
3:27 the stream is sometimes filled with
3:30 blood from people killing stealing in
3:32 shouting and doing the things that
3:34 historians usually record while on the
3:38 banks unnoticed people build homes make
3:41 love raise children sing songs write
3:44 poetry and even Whittle statues the
3:46 story of civilization is the story of
3:49 what happened on the banks historians
3:51 are pessimists because they ignore the
3:53 banks for the
3:57 river is Durant right do we all ignore
4:00 the good in history are we all
4:03 pessimists how do we even begin to
4:06 understand the good in History how it
4:09 unfolds what drives it what could
4:11 promote it what we could learn from it
4:14 there are countless difficulties here
4:18 the first is what does good even mean
4:22 what's the measure what's the
4:24 criteria some say health others
4:27 happiness others wealth stability
4:30 Community equality a postmodern critic
4:32 that it's impossible to rank these
4:35 values to compare and classify or to
4:38 place any hope in a grand narrative
4:39 what's a long life if it's lived under
4:41 tyranny what's a wealthy life if those
4:43 around you live in
4:47 poverty however if we were to begin with
4:50 a loose matter Criterion that I think
4:52 most would agree on while nevertheless
4:56 disagreeing on precisely what it means
5:01 we'd land on something like Liberty
5:04 Liberty broadly speaking is the freedom
5:08 to think to speak to do to act to be
5:10 oneself to go where one chooses to
5:14 strive in the way one wants to strive to
5:16 have as many as the primary Goods of
5:20 life as possible in order to do so food
5:23 shelter transport even things like good
5:25 relationships friendships opportunities
5:28 and so on most I think would agree that
5:31 generally more of these things is better than
5:32 than
5:35 less broad Liberty in this sense is
5:38 neutral between competing ideological
5:41 beliefs or political systems it begins
5:44 from a simple premise that more
5:47 possibility is better than less the
5:49 society that has better access to
5:52 penicillin is better than the one where
5:55 you're more likely to be sent to a gas
5:58 chamber the historical question then is
6:01 to understand which historical
6:04 conditions institutional political
6:06 cultural philosophical lead to an
6:09 increase in Liberty and which diminish
6:12 it which ideas about Liberty seem to
6:15 work where did they come from who built
6:18 on them improved them what diminished or
6:21 restricted them the historical question
6:24 is to search for the causes of Liberty
6:27 so that they can be identified and built upon
6:28 upon today
6:29 today [Music]
6:33 [Music]
6:35 Hegel argued that history was the
6:38 unfolding of Reason Through Time Martin
6:40 Luther King who read Hegel argued that
6:43 the moral Arc of History bends towards
6:46 Justice Marx building on Hegel that
6:49 economic contradictions resolve through
6:52 history leading to a more equal society
6:54 and more recently once again drawing on
6:57 Hegel some have claimed that liberal
7:00 capitalism is the end of
7:03 History all of these claims are in some
7:06 sense hegelian and the philosopher Terry
7:09 Pinkard has recently argued in a work on
7:13 Hegel that the end at work in history is
7:17 the securing of justice as
7:20 freedom freedom is the relationship
7:24 between desire reasoning acting on your
7:27 desires and recognition and Authority in
7:30 other words our desires don't exist in a
7:33 vacuum we're in constant negotiation
7:36 with others and their desires with
7:38 figures and systems of authority that
7:42 act upon and direct our own desires and
7:46 so on freedom is inter subjective social
7:48 Consciousness culture and institutions
7:52 arise out of the interplay of all our desires
7:53 desires
7:57 socially with this in mind Pinker asks
8:00 does history make sense is there logic
8:03 in the way the interplay of desires
8:06 plays out is history comprehensible or
8:10 is it contingent subject to chance random
8:11 random
8:15 messy but the totality of that interplay
8:17 is meant to be directed towards
8:20 increasing Freedom Hegel was a figure of
8:23 the Enlightenment like K before him he
8:25 believed in a scientific approach to the
8:28 world and that included history he
8:31 argued that science was bringing the
8:34 phenomena of the world around us in
8:37 nature in humans in everything under
8:39 what he called the
8:41 concept what he meant by this was that
8:44 we have ideas of things we have ideas of
8:47 ourselves our desires of others of
8:50 History we categorize things we look at
8:53 the qualities of things the causes of
8:55 things the historian looks at the causes
8:58 of World War II for example and builds
9:03 up an idea of World War II importantly
9:06 it's this ability to go about the messy
9:09 work of building up ideas that makes us
9:12 human and provides the possibility of
9:22 place a mouse has a past but it has no
9:26 real history we have ideas of how we
9:29 acted why we acted what we've changed
9:32 since for example a mouse might have a
9:34 drive to eat which it acts on but a
9:38 human has a concept of eating under
9:41 which reasons for eating what to eat
9:44 when to eat what's healthy how to farm
9:47 where to shop are categorized under the
9:51 idea or concept of
9:54 eating what hago is trying to show is
9:57 how we make sense of the world that from
10:00 our ideas and Concepts we make judgments
10:04 about how to act once we understand this
10:07 we can understand that the idea of salad
10:10 say is a historical one we've brought
10:13 more understanding under the concept of
10:15 salad how it looks its chemical
10:18 composition its effects best ways to
10:21 distribute it and eat it so it's most
10:24 flavorsome and so
10:28 on humans develop conceptions over time
10:31 at times ideas Fall Apart and are
10:33 discarded and at other times they
10:36 develop and are adopted the biblical
10:39 idea that the sun went around the earth
10:41 fell apart as it was observed that the
10:44 opposite was true so the idea that the
10:47 Bible was the guide to wisdom was slowly
10:50 superseded by an emphasis on observation and
10:51 and
10:54 empiricism Pinker writes that the
10:58 components of the idea arise in history
11:01 but as humans reflect on those Concepts
11:03 put them to use and modify them in the
11:06 course of their Collective lives they
11:10 refashion them into overall schemes of
11:13 intelligibility Hegel was expanding on
11:16 Spinoza's point that modern scientific
11:19 and rational inquiry expands outwards
11:22 towards what he called the perspective
11:26 of infinity by looking at the causes and
11:29 the qualities of the things that help us
11:33 expand upon our desires and
11:36 interests Pinker writes that Hegel
11:38 concludes that freedom is the capacity
11:41 to make what truly matters effective in
11:45 one's life and in modern times that more
11:48 or less comes down to acting on our
11:51 reasons rather than on vague feelings or
11:54 guidance from nature the gods or those
11:57 who claim to rule Us by natural
12:00 right but again this is obviously not
12:03 just an individual process our own ideas
12:05 and desires come into conflict with
12:08 others there are agreements and
12:10 disagreements that play out in culture
12:14 in institutions in norms and practices
12:17 in political decisions Etc but the point
12:20 is that over time we tend to try and
12:24 work up ideas of things that work and
12:28 ideas of things that don't Pinker writes
12:31 that history is an arena in which people
12:34 seek and have sought reconciliation that
12:37 is a kind of justification for their
12:40 lives when it comes to the meta
12:43 Criterion of Liberty denouncing fascism
12:45 is thought of as the same as trying to
12:49 eat more salad an individual directed by
12:52 education cultural context social
12:54 information makes a judgment that the
12:57 former had the effect of reducing
12:59 Liberty in the past and the latter has
13:02 the effect of increasing energy and
13:05 lifespan Hegel says that we emerge from
13:07 a realm of Shadows and move towards the
13:17 reasons if this is true then we should
13:20 be able to establish some points of
13:23 historical progress Which shapes of
13:26 Consciousness to use hegel's term which
13:30 ideas practices instit utions in history
13:33 have promoted
13:36 Liberty for Hagel the process developed
13:40 as history unfolded from one being free
13:43 a king or an emperor free to make their
13:46 own decisions about Society while the
13:50 others had to follow to many being free
13:54 I.E an aristocracy to all in principle
13:58 at least being free Hegel argued that
14:02 preek societies were paternalistic and
14:04 authoritarian that they were rule
14:06 followers and that they didn't
14:09 interrogate the reasons for following or
14:12 abandoning certain rules and that the
14:15 Persians Egyptians Indians and Chinese
14:18 civilizations that preceded the Greeks
14:21 didn't approach the world and people as
14:24 ideas to be studied but instead were
14:27 absorbed in the world around them they
14:30 didn't have any reflective critical
14:33 distance without these mechanisms for
14:36 self-criticism there can be no movement in
14:37 in
14:40 history it's important to note his
14:43 interpretation of ancient history has
14:46 been criticized a lot since but for our
14:49 purposes the important point is less
14:53 where it started but the idea of a
14:56 reflective distance on the world being
14:59 important the questioning of why some
15:02 ideas or rules are adopted and why
15:05 others are discarded the Greeks he
15:07 thinks were
15:10 self-conscious they had a particularly
15:14 acute idea of the self and asked
15:16 questions about
15:19 it it's under these conditions that the
15:22 question can be more forcefully asked
15:26 who are the people what does freedom
15:29 mean who rules and so on
15:32 Pinkard writes the Greek Miracle as it
15:35 were was its creation of the poce a new
15:37 form of social and political
15:39 organization in history in which the
15:42 ability to defend the community United
15:45 with an ancient conception of Justice
15:47 into a new kind of unity that broke with
15:49 the past and thereby combined the
15:52 advantages of the emotional closeness
15:54 and solidarity of traditional tribal
15:57 life with the reflective and economic
16:01 advantages of an urban life that these
16:03 circumstances were crucial for the
16:06 developing of an idea of
16:09 freedom for the Greeks what made someone
16:12 free was self-sufficiency that they
16:15 weren't under the sway of others that
16:17 they had the means to make decisions and
16:20 live by their own means own desires that
16:24 in Aristotle's phrase a person was a law unto
16:26 unto
16:29 himself Aristotle continued that it's
16:31 the mark of a free man not to live at
16:34 another's Beck and cool Freedom meant
16:37 not being compelled it meant being
16:39 self-directing and crucially it meant
16:41 not being a
16:45 slave but of course women and slaves
16:49 were excluded the community had ultimate
16:51 authority over the individual and the
16:54 Greek poce and its face-to-face direct
16:57 democracy struggled to grow as Benjamin
16:59 constant wrote the problems of the
17:02 ancient idea of Liberty if this is what
17:04 the Ancients called Liberty they
17:06 admitted as compatible with this
17:09 Collective Freedom the complete
17:11 subjection of the individual to the
17:14 authority of the
17:17 community in some ways Rome expanded on
17:20 the Greek idea of Liberty and managed to
17:23 grow by granting citizenship to many of
17:26 the areas it conquered but eventually of
17:28 course ruling was left to the
17:31 aristocracy the Senate and the
17:35 emperor but Pinkard writes that once the
17:37 Greeks had put freedom on the map as a
17:39 way of thinking about Justice there was
17:42 a push towards justice as equality and
17:45 as the mutual recognition of the freedom
17:48 of all an actualization of the idea of
17:58 person if we acknowledge that poit iCal
18:01 Liberty the right to contribute to and
18:04 to be part of the political process to
18:06 have rights is an important part of
18:09 Liberty then it must be true to say that
18:11 the so-called Dark Ages between the
18:13 collapse of the Roman Empire in the
18:16 fifth century to the Renaissance in the
18:20 15th are a regression broadly speaking
18:22 historians no longer use the term the
18:26 Dark Ages using the Middle Ages instead
18:28 with many pointing to achievements in
18:31 architecture and Agriculture and Mining
18:35 and much more nevertheless monarchism
18:37 absolutism even the Catholicism of the
18:40 period don't fit well under our broad
18:48 means in forms of organization like
18:50 monarchy or the medieval Church the
18:54 right to act move and worship freely to
18:56 contribute towards the decisions that
18:59 affect your life are quite clearly
19:02 restricted in important ways social
19:04 positions are carefully orchestrated
19:08 from above different rights powers and
19:11 privileges are distributed depending on
19:14 one's standing and social position from
19:17 above economic activity religious
19:20 freedom education and so on is or at
19:23 least can always in principle be
19:29 above we should look briefly then at
19:32 four interrelated moments the
19:34 Renaissance the Reformation the
19:37 Scientific Revolution and the
19:40 enlightenment when Constantinople was
19:43 taken by the Ottoman Empire in
19:47 1453 an influx of migrants into Europe
19:49 fleeing led to the discovery of many
19:52 ancient Greek and Roman texts on
19:54 everything from music and art to
19:57 politics and philosophy the resulting Renaissance
19:58 Renaissance
20:00 impossible without the printing press
20:02 invented in
20:05 1463 led to a flourishing of commentary
20:08 on Old ideas and new ideas being
20:10 produced across the
20:12 continent it was essentially an
20:16 explosion of ideas the discovery of
20:20 America by Europeans in 1492 also
20:23 revolutionized attitudes of many across
20:25 the continent it showed that the world
20:29 was much bigger than previously assumed
20:31 that there were more peoples more ideas
20:34 and possibilities than had long been
20:36 assumed it also proved the usefulness of
20:39 Technology the compass and ship building in
20:44 particular the Reformation would not
20:45 have been the same without the
20:47 Renaissance the German priest Martin
20:50 Luther's rejection of the Pope's supreme
20:53 authority set off the Reformation across
20:54 Europe in
20:57 1517 encouraging Christians to read the
20:59 Bible themselves elves despite the
21:02 church forbidding it no single person or
21:05 group should have a monopoly on
21:07 interpreting God's will the new
21:11 Protestants argued protestantism was
21:12 important because it began to
21:15 democratize the interpretation of morals
21:18 and ethics and spirituality similarly
21:21 the Treaty of West failure signed after
21:23 the fighting between Catholics and
21:25 Protestants during the 30 Years War
21:27 contained the seeds of the modern idea
21:30 of the sovereignty of Nations that each
21:33 nation has the right to determine its
21:35 own laws its own course of action that
21:38 each to go back to Aristotle's phrase
21:41 was a law unto
21:44 himself the Scientific Revolution was
21:47 happening at around the same time and by
21:50 1700 the world looked very very
21:52 different to how it did in
21:55 1400 kernus is Discovery that the Earth
21:58 revolved around the Sun rather than the
22:00 other way round expanded the universe in
22:02 people's minds in the same way that the
22:05 discovery of America expanded the Earth
22:09 in European mind kernus made the Earth
22:11 just another Celestial body and this
22:14 naturally refuted biblical texts and
22:17 legitimized the further study of the
22:20 physical universe and the laws of motion
22:22 and matter Galileo and Newton
22:25 revolutionized and formalized the laws
22:27 of motion and physics and many began
22:29 proving that these principles could be
22:31 applied to Innovation through projects
22:33 like Canal building and better
22:36 architecture and Road Improvement and
22:39 navigational instruments Francis Bacon
22:41 argued that an inductive method should
22:44 be used in science the careful
22:46 observation of the
22:49 world all of this led to an interest in
22:51 and the Improvement of instruments like
22:53 the barometer the telescope the
22:56 microscope the compass cartography
22:58 medical instruments the steam engine
23:01 electricity and modern engineering and
23:03 science more broadly leading to
23:06 today Paul Hazard says that the focus on
23:09 reason was Central although many would
23:11 dispute this and he writes that the
23:13 enlightenment's essence was to examine
23:15 and its first charge was to take on the
23:18 mysterious The Unexplained the Obscure
23:20 in order to project its light out into
23:23 the world the world was full of Errors
23:26 created by the deceitful powers of the
23:29 Soul V saved by authorities beyond
23:31 control spread by preference for
23:34 credulity and laziness accumulated and
23:36 strengthened through the force of
23:39 time the point is that the enlightenment
23:42 aimed to uncover to shine a light on to
23:45 broaden out our understanding of
23:47 ourselves and the universe although as
23:50 we saw in the last video it had a dark
23:53 side too but pink card says that the
23:56 major turning point in world history has
23:58 to do with the advantages gained by
24:00 modern Europeans who have come to
24:03 comprehend the Eternal justice of their
24:05 world as consisting in a kind of
24:14 all the enlightenment according to many
24:17 may have been contradictory inadequate
24:21 misguided the idea of equal freedom for
24:24 all conveniently not being applied to
24:27 colonies slaves women the proletariat
24:30 but the question is despite it taking a
24:33 painfully slow amount of time was it the
24:36 nent animating principles of freedom
24:39 justice equality Etc that slowly
24:42 unfolded complexified became more
24:45 forceful more convincing more nuanced
24:47 from the ancient Greeks through to
24:50 Christianity and the reformation and the
24:52 Scientific Revolution the Enlightenment
24:56 and onto things like Marxism manism
24:58 decolonization human rights and debates
25:01 about freedom and Justice today is there
25:05 a through Line Is It ideas that matter
25:08 is it economics is it Innovation or is
25:18 [Music]
25:20 else I think it's worth pausing here to
25:23 reflect on a problem though this is a
25:26 common eurocentric story and as we
25:29 discussed in the dark side of History
25:32 the expansion of Liberties for some has
25:35 led often to the domination and the
25:38 reduction of Liberties for
25:41 others I'm not suggesting a simple
25:44 triumphalist narrative and there is much
25:47 to include that traditionally isn't the
25:49 Islamic Golden Age the prosperity of the
25:51 mugal Empire before the East India
25:54 Company moved in science leading to
25:56 pollution as much as new tools just to
26:02 furthermore it's much easier to measure
26:04 something as distinct as death or
26:07 violence than it is to measure Liberty
26:10 what someone sees as Liberty varies so
26:13 much across the world as we move into
26:16 the modern era everywhere the different
26:18 methods Technologies political Solutions
26:20 languages we have developed for choosing
26:23 freely to do things has expanded
26:26 exponentially so let's return to our
26:29 initial question question briefly what is
26:35 Liberty the philosopher Thomas Hobs
26:38 described some places as having more or
26:41 less Liberty Frederick Hayek said that
26:43 the poor in a competitive Society are
26:45 much more free than a person commanding
26:47 much greater material comfort in a
26:49 different type of society John
26:52 Somerville said that during the Cold War
26:54 in a communist World there was much more
26:56 freedom from the power of private money
26:58 and periodic
27:01 unemployment a brief look at the history
27:03 of the concept shows the difficulty in
27:06 even agreeing what Liberty means whether
27:09 it can be measured like height or weight
27:13 say in his book a measure of Freedom
27:15 philosopher Ian Carter writes that
27:18 freedom is the absence of preventing
27:21 conditions on agents possible actions
27:24 those preventing conditions can be many
27:27 we might be physically prevented coerced
27:30 or threatened unable because of a lack
27:33 of Education or resources or being born
27:36 in the wrong place but a broad point for
27:39 me is that a measure of freedom is the
27:42 availability of choice you might not be
27:44 free to climb a mountain if you are
27:48 incapable but a better Society I'd argue
27:51 is the one that if that is your choice
27:53 out of many many choices you'll have
27:56 easier access to the resources and
28:00 education and time and energy to do so
28:03 the same measure can be applied to jobs
28:06 health Innovation cooking art religion
28:09 travel politics a good measure of
28:12 freedom is one that should be applicable
28:15 to anything a society then that has
28:18 broad access to scientific research is
28:21 an improvement on one that doesn't one
28:23 that has the widest availability of food
28:26 ingredients is an improvement on the one
28:28 that doesn't the easiest access to
28:30 healthcare we could go [Music]
28:40 on moving into the 19th century the new
28:43 scientific Enlightenment liberal
28:45 rights-based order was becoming dominant
28:48 throughout Europe but especially towards
28:50 the end of the century contradictions
28:54 began to appear was it really capitalism
28:56 as a system that was responsible for
28:59 progress of any kind could capitalism be
29:02 made ethical could rational State
29:04 organization better direct the
29:07 Innovations of Science and Industry
29:09 could Empires be [Music]
29:11 [Music]
29:14 overthrown the problem then and now is
29:17 the difficulty in agreeing on the causes
29:20 of Liberty if we say science or at least
29:23 some of it medicine tools architecture
29:25 has been fundamental in improving the
29:28 lives of the most people people then the
29:31 focus should be to discover protect and
29:33 emphasize the conditions that lead to
29:37 the rise and proliferation of science to
29:40 oversimplify but it's not too much of an
29:42 oversimplification you can look to
29:44 history to see the causes of the
29:47 Scientific Revolution the causes of
29:49 medical revolutions to which countries
29:52 have the best healthc care outcomes
29:54 historians of the Scientific Revolution
29:57 for example emphasize the activity of
30:01 ofies outside of mainstream universities
30:03 on collaboration on the emphasis on
30:06 empiricism on the scientific method on
30:08 developing new ways of reporting
30:11 experiments so that a reader far away
30:14 could witness the experiment the start
30:16 of peer review the printing press the
30:19 cross dissemination of information I'm
30:22 using a broad example but making a
30:26 historical point we use history we know
30:29 these things work in the past and we
30:32 further them into the future in through
30:37 public discourse in the classroom in the
30:39 lab another example of this problem
30:41 comes from the study of the decline of
30:44 violence it's mostly agreed now that
30:47 there was a decline in homicide and
30:49 violent crime from the end of the Middle
30:53 Ages through roughly speaking to today
30:57 with quite a few blips in between some
30:59 like like historian Peter speenberg
31:01 argued that the cause was the
31:04 monopolization of state power as
31:06 monarchs across Europe became more
31:10 secure and Consolidated their Authority
31:12 the Royal Court became a politer and
31:16 more civilized place as Lord sat to
31:19 Josel for favor and the Monarch was able
31:21 to capitalize on their power by being
31:25 more intolerant of volatility others
31:26 have pointed to the rise of Commerce and
31:29 the need for more civil interaction
31:32 between people to make one's way in
31:36 life but on the other hand the historian
31:38 Mark MAA has argued that this state
31:41 monopolization of power led to the death
31:43 toll of the two world wars in the
31:46 Holocaust and the nuclear bombs in the
31:49 20th century contradicting this story of civil
31:51 civil
31:54 progress The Point again is that the
31:57 causes of any type of progress are
32:00 always difficult to identify just
32:02 because a monarch imposed order where
32:04 Elite violence would have previously
32:07 gone unpunished say that doesn't
32:10 necessarily mean the premise absolute
32:13 monarchy causes less violence is
32:16 universally true like a physical
32:18 statement or a mathematic formula and so
32:21 we should support absolute monarchy
32:26 Forever This is a laughable error in
32:28 attribution Steven Pinker who relies
32:30 heavily on these sorts of arguments in
32:33 his better angels of our nature why
32:37 violence has declined falls into this
32:40 trap historian Gregory hon notes that
32:42 while Pinker is correct to quote
32:44 underline the vertiginous drop in
32:46 violence since the end of the Middle
32:49 Ages he's also prone to Wild
32:52 exaggeration hyperbole junk statistics
32:54 and reference to fiction as if it were
32:57 fact and that he has exaggerated of
32:59 often outrageously the contrast between
33:02 then and now and take a look at this
33:04 particularly damning critique in the
33:07 introduction to a special issue of
33:09 history and Theory looking at pinker's
33:12 work the overall verdict is that
33:15 pinker's thesis for all the stimulus it
33:17 may have given to discussions around
33:20 violence is seriously if not fatally
33:22 flawed the problems that come up time
33:25 and time again are the failure to
33:27 genuinely engage with his hisorical
33:30 methodologies the unquestioning use of
33:33 jubia sources the tendency to exaggerate
33:35 the violence of the past in order to
33:36 contrast it with the supposed
33:38 peacefulness of the modern era the
33:40 creation of a number of Straw Men which
33:44 Pinker then goes on to debunk and its
33:46 extraordinarily Western Centric not to
33:49 say wigg is view of the
33:52 world and so they point to a broader
33:55 problem any attempt to make sense of
33:58 History requires understanding multiple
34:01 disciplines has unavoidable ideological
34:04 biases simplifies things out to the
34:07 extreme and quickly gets very very
34:10 complicated you just have so many
34:11 variables in
34:14 play but doesn't mean we should just
34:17 give up to discern a drop in violence
34:20 and to roughly Identify some causes to
34:22 know what encourages scientific
34:24 discoveries to discern the conditions
34:27 that have led to increases in democracy
34:29 y to know what protects against
34:32 totalitarianism to be able to understand
34:35 however imperfectly many other questions
34:38 like these is pretty good progress
34:42 enough but history is obviously not a
34:45 story of easy to understand simple
34:49 progress we try things get things wrong
34:51 give power to the wrong people go down
34:54 wrong turnings we're prone to accidents
34:58 and the misuse of ideas we forget or
35:00 lose things new problems develop
35:03 freedoms for some lead to catastrophes
35:07 for others or for ourselves in the
35:10 future this is why Hegel said that the
35:14 owl of manura flies at dusk only in
35:18 retrospect as we try and make some sense
35:33 in 1854 The Physician Jon Snow mapped
35:36 the houses hit by a Cera outbreak in
35:38 London he discovered that the cas is
35:42 centered around one water pump Snow's
35:45 Discovery was a huge breakthrough in the
35:47 prevention of communicable diseases
35:50 proving that chera was not Airborne as
35:53 people thought but was caught from
35:55 contaminated water it led to an
35:58 unprecedented moved towards a focus on
36:01 sanitation sewage Works clean water and
36:05 toilets and in doing so saved countless
36:09 lives snow was looking at the causes of
36:11 something in the past to make
36:13 conclusions about how to prevent it in
36:16 the future it was this tradition that
36:19 Alexander Fleming was working into and
36:22 one that led to a vast range of advances in
36:23 in
36:26 health history is in some ways a
36:29 scientific discipline it's different to
36:32 say physics but it's still the study of
36:36 objects Diaries letters newspapers memos
36:39 images and so on to try and create an
36:42 accurate picture of the past it can then
36:48 be close to object if and it can still
36:50 be an attempt to try and find
36:54 generalizable patterns from a set of
36:57 observations it's much more open open of
36:59 course to interpretation than many other
37:01 disciplines to find the causes of
37:04 poverty the causes of affluence the
37:07 causes of Happiness there's a lot of subjective
37:09 subjective
37:11 interpretation and it's much more
37:14 difficult to apply because we're not
37:19 germs or rocks we respond as humans but
37:21 historians have avoided making strong
37:24 claims about the use of history for
37:27 things like policy for politics for
37:30 thinking about the future and I think
37:33 that's a mistake we should still use
37:36 history to try and understand the likely
37:39 outcomes of scenarios and conditions and
37:42 to be able to try and predict what works
37:46 and what doesn't by looking at the past
37:48 and applying it to the present with a
37:51 mind to the
37:54 Future in the aftermath of the Holocaust
37:57 many argued it was grotesque to talk
38:00 about progress about hago about the
38:03 cunning of reason the horrors weren't to
38:07 be made sense of the unpredictable evil
38:10 of it disproved any inevitable progress
38:14 it disproved an intered benevolent God
38:17 disproved the natural goodness of
38:20 mankind disproved a lot of things it
38:24 left a hole in our human
38:27 nature but if hego was in in any way
38:30 right about what progress means the idea
38:33 of the cunning of reason is not that the
38:36 Holocaust was some cunning way of
38:39 enticing and making progress but a
38:42 horrific veering off from reason that
38:46 demands instead a reasonable response
38:48 how might we avoid something like it happening
38:50 happening
38:53 again and since then there's been a lot
38:56 of good research on why genocides happen
38:58 I've explored some of it in this video
39:01 and it's research that helps us to see
39:03 the causes of genocide so that we can
39:07 try to institutionalize and protect or
39:09 culturalized or educate so that we can
39:13 avoid in the future to try and create
39:15 inoculations against genocide in the
39:19 same way we avoid chera
39:22 say as our ability to influence the
39:25 world around us as a species grows as we
39:29 become more advanced as we grow our body
39:32 of knowledge the trip wires that we lay
39:35 become all the more threatening the
39:37 stakes are higher as we become more
39:40 powerful we become more dangerous to one
39:44 another with AI the anthropos nuclear
39:47 weapons the large levers of state power
39:50 of big Capital we live in a crucial
39:54 moment and we must find ways to protect
39:56 against our worst impulses and
39:59 incentivize our best or we could quite
40:03 easily trip up and wipe ourselves out I
40:05 think the threats facing us are not
40:08 hyperbole if you look at history they're very
40:09 very
40:12 real but if we look to how people in the
40:15 past have capitalized on the possibility
40:19 for Liberty we have to I think be
40:23 cautiously but actively optimistic and I
40:25 think when we look at the dark side and
40:28 the pro press in history the word that
40:31 comes to mind is bitter [Music]
40:37 [Music]
40:39 sweet thank you to all of these
40:41 incredible patreon supporters these
40:43 videos take a long time to research
40:44 write and make I do a lot of reading
40:46 they're always sourced and there's a
40:48 bibliography in the description below
40:50 I've written something short on why I
40:52 think this kind of well researched long
40:54 form content is worth supporting it's
40:56 through the link below too if you agree
40:58 then you can support then and I by
41:00 pledging anything from a single dollar
41:02 per month and get your name in credits
41:04 access to scripts early and become a
41:06 member of the Discord server if you
41:08 can't do that I know everyone says this
41:10 but please do subscribe hit the Bell
41:12 like leave a comment these things help
41:15 with the algorithm so so much I'm also
41:17 trying out a newsletter I'm going to
41:20 distill and Summarize each video into a
41:23 quick easily digestible email for those
41:25 who don't have time or want to recap
41:28 along with some related insights sign up
41:30 below as always more than anything thank
41:32 you so much for watching I'll see you next