The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker is a cool thinker and writer. Not everyone loves him but I'm pretty fond of the guy. Academically he is best known for linguistics, but he likes writing general non-fiction and his most recent book is about how surprisingly non-violent modern civilization is. Over time the arc of history has bent hard way from blows and bloodshed.
This isn't a new theme. Anyone who reads much history is struck time and again by how casually, institutionally, sadistically violent life used to be. As bad as today can be, we used to be worse.
The reasons why are debatable, and I probably don't agree fully with Pinker about the whys, or the smoothness of the effect, but it is the history and the phenomenon itself that is so intriguing. We may be going crazy, but we are not becoming more violent. And I think our frustration with remaining brutes is precisely because we expect progress on violence in a way 1000s of previous human generations did not.
We’ve all asked, “What is the world coming to?” But we seldom ask, “How bad was the world in the past?” In this startling new book, the bestselling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. In fact, we may be living in the most peaceable era yet. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: the genocides in the Old Testament and crucifixions in the New; the gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm; the British monarchs who beheaded their relatives and the American founders who dueled with their rivals. Now the decline in these brutal practices can be quantified. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the numbers they did a few decades ago. Rape, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse — all substantially down. How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? Pinker argues that the key to explaining the decline of violence is to understand the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away. Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence. Pinker will force you to rethink your deepest beliefs about progress, modernity, and human nature. This gripping book is sure to be among the most debated of the century so far. —amazon review
You can read the beginning of it online. Might cheer you up, or help restore your optimistic outlook on your fellow beings.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455883115#reader_1455883115
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