The class is “environmental analysis and management.” The topic we are one: advancements made in enviro issues and life improvement because of it. He used Pinker’s graphs of low maternal/infant mortality, higher life expectancy etc.. to prove his point and it was just cringe.

Pinker wrote an entire book trying to prove that societal progress is both possible and has been extraordinarily successful. You'd think this would mean he was in support of, yknow, *progressives*. But no, he spents a lot of time lambasting anyone who is trying to improve society further. The premise seems to be "look how much we've improved! so shut up and stop trying to make things better".

Well firstly there's the evolutionary psychology, which isn't related but is definitely a brand of idiocy (if evolution worked the way evolutionary psychology requires it to work, a plenty of vertebrates would have fully functional extra eyes here and there, beyond the usual 2. A half baked argument of how some psychological quirk (which is equally well explained with culture) would make cavemen date better, is more Lamarkist than it is Darwinian). Secondarily, he's basically a spokeperson for complacency, publishing books about how everything is just getting better and better and attributing it all to the political system (neoliberalism, mostly). This isn't exactly new; most infamous example would be Joseph Stalin and his "life has become better, life has become happier" quote from a speech misattributing all the improvements due to technological progress, to the communism. Similarly, the purpose Pinker's books serve, is to build a worse future for most (and in long enough term, for all) via complacency.