What could be more fundamental to our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether the strivings of the human race over long stretches of time have left us better or worse off? How, in particular, are we to make sense of modernity—of the erosion of family, tribe, tradition, and religion by the forces of individualism, cosmopolitanism, reason, and science?
Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
cosmopolitan, family, human-race, individualism, modernity, purpose, reason, science, tradition, tribe