Hay Festival Classics relaunches a series of unforgettable events from different Hay Festivals, featuring some of the most outstanding figures from the world of literature and ideas. With a fresh viewpoint and subtitles in Spanish, we present conversations that will never lose their power. Is modernity a failure? Or is our failure a lack of capacity to appreciate the progress and ideals that make the modern world possible? If we follow the news, the world around us appears to be sunk in chaos, hate and irrationality. Steven Pinker argues that this is an illusion, a symptom of historical amnesia and statistical fallacies. Now our lives are longer, healthier, more secure, happier, more peaceful and prosperous than ever before, and not only in the developed world, but everywhere. This process is not an accident: it is the result of a coherent and inspirational system of values that we enjoy without even noticing it: Enlightenment values. This is the central argument of Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now. The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, about which the writer talks in this brilliant lecture given at the 2019 Hay Festival Wales.
