Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This approach is indefensible given the actual state of the world, and these activists are either confused about the facts, or cynically manipulating their followers for personal power. Except that, as any student of history knows, the current state of the world is what it is thanks almost entirely to people just like that (although historians generally view them in a better light than you do because of what they'v…
My technophile bias is showing, but I'm not convinced that any, all, and every past and present student of history thinks that progress is due to violent/radical revolutionaries, and that they are/were the good guys (gals) - even if revolutions were necessary for change. However, it's seems very evident that to extract even some minuscule progress from a conservative power structure a very strong anti-conservative fo…
While my training as a professional historian was cut short, I know enough to say that historians are very much trained not to judge or categorize people into good or bad. That has nothing to do with the fact that most social change has been achieved through political struggle.
> Again, however, that doesn't mean that the best course of action is a violent tabula rasa, even if things are currently shit.
I try not to prescribe a course of action based on the past. I note that Pinker's assessment is judgmental, i.e., he considers the main trend to be positive, yet at the same time he's judgmental against activists. My point is that you can't hold both views at once.