There's far more romanticizing the past than there is of romanticizing the present. So naturally it presents a better focus for critical examination. If you a

There's far more romanticizing the past than there is of romanticizing the present. So naturally it presents a better focus for critical examination. If you ask the average person, the majority (in my experience) are far more likely to think that the world has more poor people than ever or that people have fewer rights, that opportunities are less, that corporations have more power, that kids were safer, etc. Pinker and the rest do a valuable service to point out that these lazy assumptions are questionable to say the least and they do so using quantifiable indicators and statistics. This is important in my opinion because this narrative of a world getting worse and worse seems to be promoted by the extremists at both left and the right. I had to force myself to read past the words "neoliberal globalists" in Hickel's rebuttal. Like the phrase "neomarxist progressives", you know already that the content will be about politics instead of any sort of historiography, statistics, facts, etc. Generally articles containing phrases like this are about appealing to an existing political base - and not about honest debate. Some other comment got downvoted for claiming this article is "pure politics" but I agree with this assessment. The article's link to Pinker's rebuttal of Hickel (strictly speaking the rebuttal isn't Pinker's although the meat of it includes lengthy quotes from Pinker) is actually worth a read - https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-really-getting-poorer-a-response-to-that-claim-by-steve-pinker/ https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/is-the-w... - as the quoted email from Pinker clearly provides supporting citations. Admittedly, I think he could have avoided pointing out Hickel's professed political leanings as the facts themselves are convincing enough.