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You are less likely to die a violent death today than at any other time in human history. In fact, violence has been on a steady decline for centuries now. That’s the arresting claim made by Harvard University cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
Just a couple of centuries ago, violence was pervasive. Slavery was widespread; wife and child beating an acceptable practice; heretics and witches burned at the stake; pogroms and race riots common, and warfare nearly constant. Public hangings, bear-baiting, and even cat burning were popular forms of entertainment. By examining collections of ancient skeletons and scrutinizing current day tribal societies, anthropologists have found that people were nine times more likely to be killed in tribal warfare than to die of war and genocide in even the war-torn 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was 30 times higher than today.
What happened? Human nature did not change, but our institutions did, encouraging people to restrain their natural tendencies toward violence. Over the course of more than 850 pages of data and analysis, Pinker identifies a series of institutional changes that have led to decreasing levels of life-threatening violence. The rise of states 5,000 years ago dramatically reduced tribal conflict. In recent centuries, the spread of courtly manners, literacy, commerce, and democracy have reduced violence even more. Polite behavior requires self-restraint; literacy encourages empathy; commerce switches encounters from zero-sum to positive-sum gains; and democracy restrains the excesses of government.
Pinker dropped by Reason’s Washington, D.C., office to talk with Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey about ideology, empathy, and why you’re much less likely to get knifed in the face these days.
Approximately 9.30 minutes.
Shot and edited by Jim Epstein; additional camera Joshua Swain.
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@DonVoghano Do you know how bad things were in the 1970s? They even invented a new term in the decade: stagflation. Few people supported free markets but it was considered the lesser of two evils. Basically Keynes has fucked us in the arse, these horrid businessmen will have to be given a chance again. I'd say that was the right thing to do. I can't put in 500 words how every crisis since then can trace its roots to government involvement, but it can.
@DonVoghano Freedom did not exist before the Enlightenment. A few religious communes and tribes with highly strict rules do not count as "free", not by any stretch of the imagination! And the Industrial Revolution was essentially Development 1.0. It was revolutionary because it was the first time it happened, but not the last. See the charts I've given you. Whenever countries, from Japan to Chile, have become free they have industrialized and developed.
@DonVoghano So an anarchic society where everybody can apply force? You're beyond naive if you think that will work. If we could magic away the government overnight to bring about this "social democratic" blah, blah system, gang warfare would result and we would all be ruled by the strongest gang after a prolonged stretch of civil war. Hear of Somalia?
@DonVoghano And why no refutation of the colourful charts? Why won't you explain why the developed countries are economically free and there's a trend towards stagnation and broken societies as they become less free economically? Is that just a fluke?
@successfulbuild I know what you mean but we need to fight the spread of this "free market" propaganda. It's our moral imperative if we want to be consistent with what we believe, wouldn't you agree?
@SpellboundSolution Objectivism is just logically flawed. You must rely on reason and data and then somehow you end up with a "free market" agenda and a ridiculous claim that selfishness will result in universal freedom? It's not just counter-intuitive, it's factually absurd once you use REASON and look at DATA. It's just retarded Cold War game theory mentality, it was wrong then, but at least it was justified by the political climate, to believe it today is just lunacy.
@SpellboundSolution Every power center uses an ideological framework to justify itself. The Bolshevics used "communism," the Fasists used national pride and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the Imperialists used "democracy" and "free market" rhetoric. Like the Christian mocking the Muslim you rightly mock one, and then blindly follow another – textbook example of indoctrination.
@SpellboundSolution You are missing the point (by a few miles). In any system those who make the decisions can decide to murder you. The idea is to spread out the decision making as much as possible thereby spreading (not eliminating) this very risk. Of course the Achilles' heel of the system is propaganda which may instill the ideas of the maker to condition mass thought, which is why so much money is poured by elites into the advertisement industry, with great effect.
@DonVoghano You (and the rest of the left) are the one who obsesses over free markets, I believe in free everything. In that regard "free market" is redundant. So long as you don't infringe on the rights of anyone else then you should be allowed to do whatever you want, buying and selling items being an example.
@DonVoghano What was "retarded Col War game theory", "the people who murdered 100,000,000 innocent people have apocalyptic weapons pointed at us from all side, so lol, I duno, freedum rokz lol"?
@DonVoghano Which "imperialists" praise free markets? That's another word leftists have gang raped.
@DonVoghano So through your eyes every system has a "murder me" clause built into it? I'm not such a pessimist. I believe that I don't have to yield to the wolves, I don't believe that murder is a fact of life. I favour a system in which murder and voting for murder are forbidden, no matter how "spread out the risk" is. Constitutional republicanism is such a system. Which part of the US constitution says "murder is okay, so long as there's very low probability you'll be the victim"?
@SpellboundSolution It's not about being pessimistic. It's about facing the fact that your fellow man has the potential to murder you and that this potential throughout history has expressed itself very vividly. Now then obviously you may write in a constitution that it's self evident that everyone is equal and still enslave black people, and you may write that murder is banned and still carry out death sentences like Jack the Ripper on steroids.
@SpellboundSolution Imperialists USE free market RHETORIC as a means to obtain CONSENT from their population so that they may pursue their power expansion. Let me repeat the standard model: A RULING ELITE (wealthy businesses, clergy, military, armed rebel group, crime cartel) fashions an IDEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK (exporting democracy/markets, GOD, national/racial/class pride, revolution) with which it can JUSTIFY ITS RULING POSITION to the domestic population.
"WWIII didn't happen." *Fingers crossed*
Awesome, posted on my birthday.
Pinker is awesome. I respect him quite a bit, and the fact that he bases what he speaks on facts and evidence, over emotions and fallacies, makes him that much more respectable.
Keep on with the awesome work, Pinker. I'm enjoying your book, The Blank Slate.
Reveal Rothschild.
"outsourcing of revenge": where are the angels?
"We take for granted war takes place in poor nasty places in the world". Is that the lense with which was used to analyze the statistics? Heathens don't count?
@davidtshane Time is now to unite.
End Reign of Rothschild.
Death as we know it/war and all death now end through science and with God's Word now used to locate the cause of war and death and aging go to the video cascade of ElijahTruth1 and view the found disease we all contract at birth! Also go to the Prophecy and the signs page and Darwin page and Targum page at Adam and Eve seed gathering Ministry, as well as the Adam the first researcher page, and the About us page, on all pages and links therein are undeniable waking and gathering Proofs. Respect
The latter would make a good subtitle for science in general.
To attribute the decline in violence to the fact that we're not as engaged in all out wars as we were from the beginning to the middle of the 20th century isn't very comforting. Crime in the US hasn't been declining drastically. In most of the US's metropolitan areas,crime has actually increased. The decrease we saw after the early 90s was minimaland now it's been spiking again. It's true that in the past we were more likely to die in wars, but as far as society goes, we're not at all improving.
Now its rich countries bombing or at least threatening everybody, but then again… that is statism.
I would say the internet plays a huge role in violence declining. You used to be able to hide your douchebaguery, now it is laid bare for all to see on twitter.
3:55 — 4:30 Thanks for laying that out in simple terms.
With a Government you have a Court system to resolove disputes, if you did not have that you are much more likley to you and do physical damage to someone you think has wronged you.
never trust a man who barely blinks and the notion that violence is declining is ridiculous especially in America which has invaded half the world and has by far the largest prison population in the world.
Government only protects those that rule it . Court system is just a facade for violence and oppression. The notion that a person can judge someone they never met is truly ridiculous.
LOL violence has Not declined and any So Called Professional can produce their own BOGUS Graphs and stats and get IDIOTS to beLIEve it.
There IS ample evidence that History Always REPEATS itself, this so called expert professional lives in a Delusional World that is Not reality.
Notice how he smiles and even Laughs while Plugging his Sponsor? He has sold his SOUL to promote LIES for MONEY.
The feudal, patriarchal clans that were the basic unit of social organization in ancient and medieval world as well as the modern and contemporary Middle East, were extremely violent, and the unaccountable military dictatorships were run like mafias with warlords beheading one another. In feudal Tibet you had your eyes gouged out and hands cut off as punishments for crimes.
Public executions were common in the pre-modern world. Beheadings, impaling, flaying alive. Even up until late 19th century Prussia beheadings were common. These forms of cruelty slowly disappeared in the West with modernity, the Enlightenment, individualism, secularism, the rule of law, human rights and liberal democracy. Vendetta disappeared with the emergence of the individualistic nuclear family.
It's amazing what a good job the media does of terrorizing us with endless stories about carnage and brutality, but even with seven billion people to choose from, they still have to repeat most stories over again a few times in order to fill the 24-hour news cycle. In most parts of the world, at any given time, absolutely nothing is happening.
Kinda useless interview..
How about NUCLEAR BOMBS??!!!
Maybe that's the reason why we dont want to blow up each other!!?
That's why nuclear countries pick on little countries without nuclear capability, but not on each other.
And i was called a muslim for beliving this. Seems people don't want TO accept the fact we can progres.
In broad historical terms I am not sure that 50 or a 100 years is enough time to claim with certainty that there is a real trend toward less violence. However, there are some good reasons to think it might be real.
ISIS or a version of it coming to your door to behead you soon?
And who is responsible for this bounty?