The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
People are inherently violent. Hitting, kicking, and biting are natural activities for toddlers. Psychological surveys show that the overwhelming majority of people fantasize about killing someone they don’t like. Our brains seem wired for violent behavior. In fact, brain surgeons can make anybody angry by stimulating a certain part of the brain.However, willingness to commit violence isn’t the same as actually being violent. Anyone who indiscriminately lashes out at members of their own species will likely get hurt or killed in return. This is why evolution selects for organisms that only use violence in situations where the benefits outweigh the costs. For example, a group of chimpanzees will rarely engage in violence when they meet an evenly matched group, but when they outnumber another group of chimpanzees, they will massacre them.In his book Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes says there are three reasons to use violence: competition, fear, and honor. Using violence as part of competition for resources is part of evolution’s survival of the fittest principle. Fear is a consequence of competition. If you’re afraid someone will use violence to take your resources, you may launch a preemptive strike to keep what’s yours, but they may be thinking the same thing about you. The best way to avoid getting into a fight is to make your opponent think he’d lose more by attacking you than he would gain. This is why honor is important. If someone insults you and you don’t retaliate, they will perceive you as weak and feel free to attack you at will. This is why arguments are more likely to turn violent if there’s an audience.Hobbes’ solution to this dilemma is the Leviathan, a government authority which has a monopoly on the use of force. The Leviathan metes out punishments to aggressors, eliminating any gain for attacking and dispensing with the need to retaliate or launch preemptive attacks. By examining data from modern day non-state societies (hunter gatherers, hunter-horticulturalists, and other tribal groups) as well as the remains of our ancient ancestors, on average 14 percent die from violent deaths compared with less than 1 percent for state societies. Even comparing peoples who lived in the same time and place, pre-Columbian America, we find 13.4 percent of hunter-gathers died a violent death compared with only 2.7 percent of people living in state societies (Incans, Aztecs, and Mayans). Even the most peaceful hunter-gatherers such as the Semai and the !Kung have high homicide rates when compared with state societies. In fact, when the !Kung’s territory was brought under control by the Botswana government, their homicide rate went down by a third, proving the Leviathan theory that people living under the control of a government are less violent than people living in anarchy.Not only are state societies less violent than non-state societies, violence also decreases over time as governments gain more power. The homicide rate in western Europe during the 1200s was as high as 100 per 100,000 people per year compared to less than 1 per 100,000 today. This decline is due to centralized monarchies taking more and more power from the feuding fiefdoms that Europe was composed of during the middle ages. This consolidation of power is partly a natural process since warlords who defeat their rivals gain more and more power. However, innovations in military technology such as gunpowder and standing armies require a larger revenue base than a ragtag group of peasants can afford, so the formation of larger governments is required.As monarchies gained more power, they had an interest to keep the peace since feuds between knights resulted in the deaths of peasants which meant loss of revenue for the king. Finding favor with the king became more important than being a good fighter and thus self-control became more highly valued. Also, technological innovations like horseshoes and yokes led to surpluses which meant there was less to fight over. The creation of a common currency made trade more profitable than plunder. In mercantile societies, empathy becomes more important since you have to see things from your trading partner’s point of view, and once you start feeling empathy for others, you’re less likely to kill them. Another technological innovation that led to more empathy was the printing press. Once books became more available, literacy rates rose. Reading a novel causes someone to see things from another person’s point of view which leads to increased empathy. Also, satires cause one to question social conventions such as slavery that have been taken for granted. The move away from rural communities and into cities also helped new ideas spread quickly from person to person. Advances in technology that made travel available to more people also helped decrease prejudice.Violence decreased dramatically during the Age of Reason. Part of this is due to the triumph of science and reason over superstition. In ancient times, every culture we know of committed human sacrifice to appease their gods. This fell out of favor by the middle ages, however practices such as public executions, torturing animals for entertainment, inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades, slavery, and Catholic/Protestant wars (including the Cathar genocide) of the middle ages were suddenly seen as barbaric and unnatural. Religious wars tend to last longer than secular wars (think of the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War). This is because differences in religious opinion are non-negotiable. Non-religious wars are just as violent, but they tend to end quicker because negotiating is an option.Instead of prolonging a condemned criminal’s suffering for as long as possible, countries now killed criminals quickly and more humanely with the guillotine or hanging with a trap door so the person’s neck would break immediately (previously, when people were hung it was so they would slowly suffocate to death.) People began to realize torture led to false confessions, so the practice was abandoned. Today, the United States is the only Western democracy that still practices the death penalty, and even there, less people are put to death now than in the past.In fact, the United States is the only Western democracy with high levels of violence today. Even not counting gun related deaths, America has a higher homicide rate than Europe. However, it’s not America as a whole that’s violent. The northern states and Utah actually have low homicide rates comparable to those in Europe. The southern and western states have much higher rates of violence because these areas of the country value honor and taking the law into your own hands more than the northern states which are content to let the government settle disputes and punish wrong doers.We are currently living in an era known as the Long Peace which started after World War II and continues to today. The present era is by far the least violent in human history. Of course, by sheer numbers, more people have died violent deaths in recent centuries than in the past due to our incredibly high population, but if we instead look at the percentage of people who have died violent deaths, the decline is dramatic. Some of the reasons for this were identified by Immanuel Kant: democracy, trade, and membership in intergovernmental organizations all promote peace. Inventions such as television, computers, satellites, jet travel, and the expansion of higher education make it more possible than ever for people to empathize with people on the opposite side of the world. Indeed, violence has declined in every way we can measure it: war, homicide, rape, battering, assault, lynchings, race riots, terrorism, gay bashing, infanticide, spanking children, bullying, cruelty to animals, hunting, fishing, and people today even eat less meat.I found it interesting that postpartum depression is selected for by evolution. It’s a good thing for a woman to give serious thought to killing her baby in situations in which resources are scarce. The effort she puts into raising one child could have a negative impact on other children, including possible future children. It’s better to kill an infant than try to share limited resources amongst too many children. It’s also better to kill infants with disabilities who can’t contribute to the overall well being of a tribe. Every ancient culture we know of practiced infanticide. In fact, the Bible does not consider killing infants less than a month old to be murder. Infanticides have decreased in modern times due to the availability of safe abortions which serve the same purpose, and even abortions are on the decline due to birth control.Not counting infanticide, men are responsible for 92 percent of murders, and they’re most likely to kill when they’re in their twenties. Violence also occurs more often in lower socioeconomic classes due to the fact that the upper and middle classes use the legal system to get justice while the lower class tends to take the law into their own hands (almost 90 percent of homicides are committed for retaliatory reasons, not for personal gain). Partly, this is due to the mutual distrust between police and the lower class. If someone wrongs you and you don’t think the police will do anything, you’re more likely to punish the wrongdoer yourself. Also, if your profession is illegal, such as drug dealing, you can’t ask the state to help resolve business disputes, so you must take the law into your own hands.Interestingly, violent crime is not linked to the economy. High unemployment rates do not cause violence to increase and low unemployment rates do not cause violence to decrease. Another common myth about violence is that it is caused by low self esteem, when in reality, violent offenders consider themselves superior to others.There was an upswing of violence throughout the world starting in the 1960s due to numerous causes, one of which was the invention of new technologies such as television and radio. Mass media shone a spotlight on social injustices which made people distrust the establishment. This led to a rise in street justice. Having self-control, a steady job, and being married - things which decrease violence - became the enemy of the 1960s counter culture movement. The 1960s upswing of violence was reversed in the 1990s when violent crime again decreased. It’s important to keep in mind however, that crime doesn’t just go up and down like a yo-yo. While the violent crime rate in the 1960s through the 1980s was high compared to the 1950s and the 1990s, it’s still incredibly low when compared to earlier centuries.Pinker includes many charts and graphs in this book including one featuring the top 21 most violent events in human history adjusted for population inflation (page 195). Apparently, the most violent event in human history was the An Lushan Revolt in China of the 8th century (this killed one-sixth of the world’s population at the time) followed by the Mongol Conquests of the 13th century. Most people think it’s World War II (number 9 on the list) because they’re looking at total number of deaths rather than percentage of deaths.If violence is indeed on the decline, why doesn’t it seem that way? Partly, journalism is to blame. Journalists know they get more readers/viewers/listeners when they talk about wars and homicides, so they spend more time talking about violence even as violence decreases, giving people a false sense of insecurity. During the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, 3,000 Americans were killed. This seems like a high number, but 40,000 people die in car crashes each year. Terrorism makes the modern day world seem like a violent and scary place, but terrorism is at lower levels now than in the past, the media just spends more time trying to scare people.Most terrorist organizations tend to self destruct. They have a lot of support when they first begin, but once their violent talk turns into violent action, they lose most of their support. Consider how the militia movement of the United States fell apart after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or how support for Al Qaeda in Pakistan dropped from 70 percent to only 4 percent after they assassinated the former prime minister in 2007. Other than 1995 and 2001, more Americans died from lightning strikes than terrorist attacks each year. Terrorist organizations ultimately don’t cause much direct damage and they tend to fizzle out quickly, but they do usually achieve their goal of getting a lot of media attention and causing a lot of fear.Fear of violence can be more deadly than violence itself. For example, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, many people who would have been perfectly safe flying to their destination drove their car instead and ended up dying in a car crash. Fear of kidnapping is another example. Most kidnappings are related to custody battles. Kidnapping by a stranger is incredibly rare. However, fear of kidnapping due to sensationalist media reports has led more parents to drive their kids to school than in past decades. As a result, far more children are run over by parents driving their own children to school than get kidnapped by a stranger.Empathy helps reduce violence, although empathy by itself isn’t enough. Consider that people feel more empathy for cute animals than ugly animals, or more empathy for fictional characters than real people. Empathy also favors kinship, friendship, and people who you think are similar to you.Self control is more important than empathy. Experiments in which children are given the choice between one marshmallow now versus two marshmallows a few minutes later, reveal that the children who were able to resist eating the one marshmallow right away grow up to have higher SAT scores, finish higher levels of schooling, get higher paid jobs, and have a higher tendency to pay off their credit cards in full every month. The impulsive children grew up to be less intelligent and more likely to be violent and commit criminal acts. Self control is like a muscle that grows stronger the more it’s used, but it can also become fatigued due to stress.Morality can be used to reduce violence, but also increase it. Since people on both sides of a conflict overestimate the wrongs done to them and minimize the wrongs they do to others, seeking eye for an eye justice traps people in a neverending cycle of violence. In the middle ages, it was considered moral to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and witches. This is because morality based on purity, community, or an authority figure favors an ingroup over undesirables. When disputes arise, people are more likely to commit violence against someone they see as being outside their group and more likely to reconcile with someone who is part of their group. Most primate species make up after a fight with members of their own tribe, but not members of competing tribes. Ingroup based morality is on the decline and this is one of the reasons violence is on the decline as well. When a person stops thinking in terms of us versus them, forgiveness becomes an option for all disputes.When examining how people vote at the county level rather than state level, we see that coastal areas and areas located along waterways tend to be more liberal. This is because back before jet planes, port towns were the places people would most likely interact with other cultures. Coming into contact with other cultures is what makes people liberal. Just as you are less likely to be prejudiced against homosexuals if you know someone who is gay, you are less likely to be prejudiced against the values of other cultures or religions if you know people with different backgrounds. Liberal morality is based on fairness, autonomy, and avoidance of harm rather than loyalty to an ingroup. Since liberal values always end up becoming the values of society at large, this leads to a reduction in violence. Consider that conservatives of just a few decades ago used to argue in favor of criminalizing homosexuality, keeping woman out of the work place, and continuing racial segregation because of tradition, authority, or religion. Conservatives tend to become more liberal every generation, continuing to expand the ingroup to include more and more people, thus reducing violence.Another psychological factor responsible for the decline of violence is intelligence, particularly abstract reasoning. Intelligence has increased quite dramatically in the last century due to the fact people are completing more levels of education. Countries with higher levels of school enrollment are significantly less likely to have a civil war. Since reason tells us when to apply our empathy, self control, and morality, it’s the most important factor in reducing violence. People with a simplistic black/white view of the world are more likely to be violent than people with a nuanced position.Pinker sprinkles his writing with corny jokes such as referring to a rock musician’s death by “the customary drug overdose” and leaving the [citation needed] footnote in when quoting from Wikipedia. I think this book is longer than it needed to be and I did find it tedious at times. Pinker occasionally indulges in rants against political correctness, telling us it has gone too far. Bizarrely, he tells us to distrust anecdotes when it comes to the perception that violence has increased, but the only evidence he provides for political correctness going too far is anecdotes. Overall, this book is a much needed breath of fresh air in today’s fear soaked world. The basic message: War, murder, rape, and torture have decreased dramatically over human history, and the only reason we don't realize it is because we lack the numerical context. The Better Angels of Our Nature is well worth a careful read. Dr. Pinker lays out the facts in extraordinary detail and depth interspersed with common sense sanity checks that leave no doubt--the world has improved. A lot. We're getting smarter, more civilized, less violent, and more compassionate.I wish I could give Better Angels five stars, but Dr. Pinker's grating rants against religion really detracted from the whole. For all the effort Dr. Pinker put into quantifying every other conceivable variable in the text, he makes no effort to calculate the number of lives religion has improved and saved versus the number who have been killed through its misuse. He does take a few paragraphs to address this issue by defining any benefit derived from religion as part of a larger social movement working in coalition with religion, and therefore not attributable to any positive effects of religion itself. Apparently Desmond Tutu's work against apartheid, Dr. Martin Luther King Junior's contributions to civil rights, and Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent resistance had nothing to do with religious conviction. If you have a grudge against religion, it's very convenient to define religion's positive aspects out of your discussion, but it's not very conducive to logic.Edit: I've just read several negative reviews on this book. Most of them argue that Pinker's understanding of anthropology is flimsy at best and therefore calls into question most of his thesis. Anthropology is not my field, so I can't judge Pinker's accuracy. Another question to drive further reading.
What do You think about The Better Angels Of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2010)?
I enjoyed this (particularly the bit about the bible) but found it a bit depressingly violent.
—Cynthia
Not so great. This book has a lot of good points but the structure of the book is poor.
—kelseychurchill
Read this book, it will change the way you see the world.
—Leannie
