Once again Steven Pinker apparently comes to the rescue. Pinker, a Harvard University psychology professor, has written a new book, entitled Enlightenment Now, which goes against the prevailing gloom and doom sentiment that everything is getting worse. He is an optimist, a data-driven rationalist. In the new book he provides mountains of facts showing how life in the United States has improved since the 1950s, in thirteen specific areas, covering everything from economics and health to the environment and equality.

This is not the first time Pinker has gone against the prevailing negative orthodoxy. In his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Pinker conclusively demonstrated how violence around the world has declined over the last millennium. As a rationalist Pinker is basically saying that if we all paid attention to the data (the facts), we would all be optimists. Unfortunately for widespread optimism, we are not living in a new Age of Reason. Despite science and the widespread availability of data, we are instead living in an Age of Irrationality, due to many factors. In the United States there has been and continues to be a very strong anti-intellectual streak permeating throughout our culture (“we don’t need no ejucation…”). Consequently most people don’t base their views on facts; instead they use beliefs, opinions, biases, gossip, rumors and fake news as sources for their perceptions. Additionally, Americans are woefully ignorant of our own history, so we can’t make accurate historical comparisons, which would lead us to the conclusion that life is indeed better now than in the past. And, humans have always focused more on the negative than the positive, which means that the news media greatly emphasizes the negative and diminishes the positive. Finally, it is in the interest of passionate extremists at both ends of the political spectrum to convince people that things are getting worse- and that the radical solutions proposed by either extreme are the only way to turn things around!

The Internet and social media have unwittingly added to the irrationality. Now each of us can voice our opinions to the entire world, no matter how ignorant we are. Since objective knowledge is no longer valued, anyone’s subjective opinion is as good as anyone else’s. The vastly increased volume of widespread subjective opinion further devalues objectivity and leads to a fundamental question: do facts even exist? And if facts don’t exist then there is no objective truth, and lying is legitimized as just more subjective opinion. A recent study of Twitter communications revealed that lies are retweeted six times faster than true (fact based) communications, indicating that lies are more valued than the truth.

All of this creates pessimism. Despite the economic recovery since 2009, polls consistently indicate that all Americans, regardless of their age, gender, race, social class or political affiliation, are pessimistic about the future. This pessimism is not good for democracy, because the more pessimistic people are the less likely they are to believe in democracy, to vote, and to participate in community activities. Furthermore, pessimism is likely to make people even more vulnerable to the pervasive climate of negative subjectivity, creating a downward spiraling feedback loop.

So while I applaud the efforts of Steven Pinker, long data-filled books written by academics are not going to help most Americans regain their natural optimism about the future. The cacophony of negativity is too loud and too pervasive. What we need is a President with an unswervingly optimistic yet rational vision who uses the bully pulpit to remind Americans that this is the land of opportunity, that the present is better than the past, and that the future will be even better. We have had such Presidents at crucial times in our history, such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. We desperately need one again.