Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature

[Luftmensch]

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I haven't had the chance to read this book yet, I had only heard about it yesterday, when I listened to the author's Seminar About Long-term Thinking while working on the boat, so at this point everything I have to say about the book is based on listening to the author's summary.

I'm really fascinated by Pinker's findings. I've often heard claims that we live in the most violent period in history; I've always been a bit skeptical of this idea, but in practice I take it for granted. But according to his study, not only are nearly all forms of brutality in decline, but indeed overall violence worldwide itself is in decline, not only on a per capita basis, but in many cases the actual numbers of violent deaths are less today than at any point in history.

The data itself is really fascinating, but I think the conclusions that Pinker draws are even more valuable.

One, that as Thomas Hobbes wrote, “In the state of nature the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” It turns out that this is entirely true: Fossil records suggest that among prehistoric peoples about 15% suffered some form of brutality or violent death, compared with modern civilized peoples who have a less than half of a tenth of a percent chance of suffering brutality. This goes contrary to lofty notions that hunter-gatherer societies who live on the land are somehow more peaceful than civilization: Even in modern anarchic societies, the rate of war deaths is more than three times as high as it was in Germany during the 20th century.

Two, that the trend towards peace appears to correlate best to advancements in literacy and media technology. The printing press saw the enlightenment and a sharp decline in violence throughout Europe following the 15th century. Furthermore, there's a positive correlation between literacy and peace.

Three, and this I think is the most interesting, many of the worst atrocities in modern times are done for ideological reasons, and often with anti-urban sentiments. Hitler promised to return the German's to the countryside, as did Pol Pot and Mao Zedong. Lenin and Stalin's Communist ideology justified the mass slaughter of racial minorities and political dissidents for the promise of a stable state. Even the American Civil War was fought over ideology. According to Pinker, no major conflict between major powers has ever been over limited resources.

I'm looking forward to reading this book. In the mean time, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I think the topic itself lends itself to discussion without necessarily needing to read the book, although I'm sure it helps.

[Scipio]

This piece here is an all right rebuttal I think. The fact that it's former Chomsky partner Herman that writes it is odd. It's a funny old world that humanists have. Do you think they ever get tired of talking to the same people? I would.

[Gormongous]

Two, that the trend towards peace appears to correlate best to advancements in literacy and media technology. The printing press saw the enlightenment and a sharp decline in violence throughout Europe following the 15th century. Furthermore, there's a positive correlation between literacy and peace.

Everything I'm reading about it seems pretty interesting, but this statement stuck out to me. Sure, the printing press heralded the Enlightenment eventually, but only by way of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which sparked the bloodiest wars fought on the European peninsula until Napoleon, if not the First World War. Twenty-five to forty percent of the populace in Germany was exterminated by the Thirty Years' War, and the resulting Peace of Westphalia, while stabilizing and normalizing relations among the great powers, set the stage for some titanic confrontations between Spain, France, and England in the colonies as well as at home. In fact, the aftermath of the wars of religion are generally agreed to have precipitated the exportation of violence abroad by the European nation-states precisely because of their destructiveness.

So really, you could just as easily say that it was the unprecedented bloodletting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that brought about the peaceful mindset of the Enlightenment, which rejected much of Christian dogma out of sheer disgust. In that respect, the invention of the printing press did ultimately lead to peace, but by the rockiest road imaginable. Literacy can be just as much a weapon as any other technology, in the right hands.

[quidnunc]

He's more circumspect, investigating many different plausible causes and the problems they run into. He points out the problems with that theory although he does seem to think there's something to it as a part of a much more general civilizing process.

[Luftmensch]

He's more circumspect, investigating many different plausible causes and the problems they run into. He points out the problems with that theory although he does seem to think there's something to it as a part of a much more general civilizing process.

That's true, Pinker is certainly hesitant to pick any single cause of the trend, and he does emphasize that the trend hasn't been constant and is certainly subject to potentially reverse. I just paraphrased some of his more plausible theories and conclusions for the sake of discussion.

[quidnunc]

This piece here is an all right rebuttal I think. The fact that it's former Chomsky partner Herman that writes it is odd. It's a funny old world that humanists have. Do you think they ever get tired of talking to the same people? I would.

The on topic commentary about the thesis of the book isn't that interesting. Most of the article is overly concerned with Pinker's characterizations that don't match up with his ideology of the US and multinational corporations as an evil empire. To the point where he's discussing corporate acts as if they are forms of state sponsored violence. I think there is a point to be made about how government capture and the rule of law are used to serve particular interests but Pinker's book is a general theory about violence, not justice.

[anthonyRichard]

Coincidentally, I watched his 'Google Authors' talk on youtube a few days ago and his argument seems pretty solid.

It's true that more people die in total in modern times due to violence than in previous centuries, but when we think of violence in the world it seems like the real underlying question is 'how likely am I, or anyone I know to die of violence?', and proportion of violent death to total population seems to be the most salient way of addressing that.