The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Decreases is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker, where he argues that violence in the world has declined both in the long run and in the short term and suggests an explanation why This happened. This book contains a lot of data only documenting the cross-time and geographical violence. This illustrates a picture of a massive decline in violence of all forms, from war, to the improvement of children's care. He highlights the role of the nation-state monopoly on strength, commerce (making "others more precious lives than dead"), increased literacy and communication (promoting empathy), and improving a rational solution of problem-solving. possible causes of this decline in violence. He notes that, paradoxically, our impression of violence does not trace this decline, perhaps because of increased communication, and that further decline is unavoidable, but relies on forces that utilize our better motivations such as empathy and improvement in reason.
Video The Better Angels of Our Nature
Tesis
The title of the book is taken from the end of the first inaugural speech of US President Abraham Lincoln. Pinker uses the phrase as a metaphor for four human motivations - empathy, self-control, "moral feeling", and reason - that, he writes, can "steer us away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism."
Pinker presents a large amount of data (and statistical analysis) which, he argues, shows that violence has declined for thousands of years and that it is presumably the most peaceful moment in the history of the human species. Violent decline, he argues, is very large, visible on a long and short time scale, and is found in many domains, including military conflicts, murder, genocide, torture, criminal justice, and the treatment of children, homosexuals, animals and racial minorities and ethnicity. He stressed that "The decline, to be sure, is not smooth, it does not bring violence to zero, and it is not guaranteed to continue."
Pinker argues that the radical decline in violent behavior he is documenting is not the result of major changes in human biology or cognition. He specifically rejects the view that humans should indeed resort to violence, and thus have to undergo radical changes in order to become more peaceful. However, Pinker also rejects what he regarded as a simple nature versus parenting argument, which would imply that radical change must therefore come purely from external sources ("nurturing"). Instead, he argues: "The way to explain the decline of violence is to identify changes in our cultural and material environment that have given our peaceful motives in the wind."
Pinker identifies five "historical forces" that favor our "peace motif" and "have driven some downturn in violence." They:
- Leviathan - the rise of the modern nation-state and the judiciary "with a monopoly over the use of legitimate power," which "can dampen the individual temptations of exploitative attacks, impede the drive to take revenge, and avoid... self-serving bias. "
- Trade - the emergence of "technological advances [allowing] the exchange of goods and services at a greater distance and a larger group of trading partners," so that "others become more precious lives than dead" and "tends to be the target of demonization and dehumanization. "
- Feminization - raises respect for "women's interests and values."
- Cosmopolitanism - the emergence of forces such as literacy, mobility, and the mass media, which "can encourage people to take the perspective of people who are not like themselves and expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them."
- The reason escalator - "the application of knowledge intensification and rationality for human affairs," which "can force people to recognize the futility of the cycle of violence, to undermine their own interests privileges over others, and to reframe violence as a matter that must solved rather than contest to be won. "
Maps The Better Angels of Our Nature
Outline of the book
The first part of this book, chapters 2 to 7, seeks to demonstrate and analyze historical trends associated with decreasing violence on different scales. Chapter 8 discusses the five "mental demons" - psychological systems that can cause violence. Chapter 9 examines four "better angels" or motives that can keep people away from violence. The last chapter examines the five historical powers listed above that have led to a decline in violence.
Six declining violent tendencies (Chapters 2 to 7)
- The Parenting Process: Pinker describes this as a transition from "anarchy of hunting, gathering, and horticultural society... to the first agricultural civilization with the city and government, beginning about five thousand years ago" that brought "Reduction of attacks and a chronic battle that marks life in a state of nature and a fivefold reduction in cruel death rates. "
- The Civilization Process: Pinker argues that "between the late Middle Ages and the 20th century, European countries saw a tenfold drop to fiftyfold in their murder rates." He attributes the notion of the Civilization Process to the sociologist Norbert Elias, who "attributes this shocking decline to the consolidation of feudal patchwork of territory into the great empire with centralized authority and trade infrastructure."
- The Humanitarian Revolution - Pinker connects these terms and concepts with historian Lynn Hunt. He said the revolution was "open on a centrally shorter scale and took off around the time of Age of Reason and the European Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries." Although he also points to historical and "parallel predecessors elsewhere in the world," he writes: "This sees the first organized movement to abolish slavery, duel, judicial torture, superstitious murder, sadistic punishment, and cruelty to animals, along with the first trigger systematic pacifism. "
- Long Peace: a term he gave to the historian John Lewis Gaddis Peace Long: The question of the history of the Cold War . This "fourth major" transition, "Pinker said," came about after the end of World War II. "During that time, he said," the great powers, and the developed countries in general, have ceased fighting each other. "
- New Peace: Pinker calls this trend "more distant," but "since the end of the Cold War in 1989, organized various conflicts - civil wars, genocide, repression by autocratic governments, and terrorist attacks - have declined worldwide. "
- The Rights Revolution: The postwar period has been seen, Pinker argues, "an increasing resistance to aggression on a smaller scale, including violence against ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals and animals. human rights, civil rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights and animal rights-are affirmed in a cascade of movement from the late 1950s to the present day. " Five spirits (Chapter 8)
- Predators or Practical Violence: violence "is deployed as a practical means of achieving goals"
- Domination: "impulse for authority, prestige, glory, and power." Pinker argues that motivation of domination can occur in individuals and coalitions of "racial, ethnic, religious, or national groups"
- Revenge: "moralistic impulse for retaliation, punishment, and justice"
- Sadism: "deliberate misery for pain aimless but to enjoy the suffering of a person..."
- Ideology: "a system of common beliefs, usually involving the vision of utopia, which justifies unrestricted violence in the pursuit of the infinite good."
- Empathy: that "encourages us to feel the pain of others and align their interests with ours."
- Self-Control: which "lets us anticipate the consequences of acting on our drive and hampering it."
- The Moral Sense: "sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern interactions among people within a culture." This sometimes reduces violence but can also increase it "when norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical."
- Reason: which "allows us to extract ourselves from our parochial point of view."
- 2011 Leading New York Times 2011 book
- Samuel Johnson 2012 Prize, short list
- Royal Society Winton 2012 Prize for Science Books, short list
- Gifford 2012-2013 at Edinburgh University
- Mark Zuckerberg's 2015 book club selection, January
- "Prof. Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature: History of Violence and Humanity" on YouTube. Gifford Lecture 2013 at the University of Edinburgh.
- Pinker discusses The Better Angels of Our Nature with psychologist Paul Bloom at bloggingheads.tv, December 8, 2012.
- Pinker's debate on why violence has declined with the Economist Judith Marquand, BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson and BBC broadcaster Roger Bolton at the Institute of Art and Ideas.
- War Before Civilization
- Victims killed in Lushan rebellion
Pinker rejects what he calls "The Hydraulic Theory of Violence" - the idea "that humans hold an inner impulse against aggression (the instinct of death or bloodthirsty), which builds within us and periodically has to be thrown away." Nothing could be further from that. a contemporary scientific understanding of violent psychology. "Instead, he argues, research shows that" aggression is not a single motive, let alone an increasing impulse.This is the output of several different psychological systems in the trigger of their environment, their internal logic, their neurological basis, and their social distribution. "He examined five such systems:
Four better angels (Chapter 9)
Pinker tested four motives that "can direct [people] away from violence and toward cooperation and altruism." He identifies:
In this chapter Pinker also examined and rejected some of the ideas that humans have evolved in a biological sense to be less harsh.
Influences
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Pinker's book using various sources from various fields. Particular attention was paid to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes whom Pinker thought had been undervalued. Pinker's "un-orthodox" thinkers follow directly from his observations that data on violence is against our current expectations. In his earlier work, Pinker marked a common misconception about Hobbes:
Hobbes is generally interpreted as suggesting that humans in a state of nature are burdened with an irrational impulse for hatred and destruction. In fact, the analysis is more subtle, and perhaps even more tragic because it shows how violent dynamics fall from the interaction between rational and self-serving agents.
Pinker also refers to the ideas of contemporary academics sometimes overlooked, for example the works of political scientist John Mueller and sociologist Norbert Elias, among others. The degree of influence of Elias on Pinker can be added from the title of Chapter 3, taken from the title of Elias' seminal The Civilizing Process . Pinker also refers to the work of international relations scholar Joshua Goldstein. They wrote the New York Times article entitled â € Å"Turning Truly Out of Styleâ € which summarizes many of their shared views, and emerged together at the Harvard Institute of Politics to answer questions from academics. and students about their similar thesis.
Reception
Praise
Bill Gates considered it one of the most important books he had ever read, and in the BBC Desert Disk program he chose it as a book he would take to a desert island. He has written that "Steven Pinker shows us ways we can make positive trajectories a little more likely, that is a contribution, not just for historical scholarship, but to the world." After Gates recommended the book as a postgraduate gift in May 2017, the book re-entered the bestseller list.
The philosopher Peter Singer gave a positive review book on The New York Times. Singer concludes: "This is a very important book To have so much research, spread over many different areas, is a remarkable achievement.Perryer has convincingly shown that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of the decline that. "
Political scientist Robert Jervis, in a long review of the National Interest, stated that Pinker "made a case that would be difficult to refute.The trend is not subtle - many changes involve an order of magnitude or more.Even when the explanation is not entirely convincing , they are serious and reasonable. "
In a review for The American Scholar, Michael Shermer wrote, "Pinker points out that long-term data defeat anecdotes.The idea that we live in a very cruel time is an illusion created by endless media coverage of violence, plus with our brain's evolutionary tendency to notice and remember recent and emotional events, Pinker's thesis is that violence of all kinds - from murder, rape, and genocide to beating children to the persecution of blacks, women, gays, and animals - has declined over the centuries as a result of the civilization process... Taking 832 pink opium pages feels scary, but it's a page-turner from the beginning. "
In The Guardian, Cambridge University political scientist David Runciman wrote, "I am one of those who like to believe that... the world is as dangerous as ever, but Pinker points out that for most people in many ways becomes much more dangerous. "Runciman concluded" everyone should read this amazing book. "
In a later review for The Guardian, written when the book was selected for the Royal Society of Winton Prize for Science Books, Tim Radford writes, "in its beliefs and sweeps, the large time scale, the human point of view and the worldview confident, it is something more than a science book: it is an epic history by an optimist who can register his reasons for being cheerful and supporting them with a persuasive example.... I do not know if he is right, but I think this book is winner. "
Adam Lee writes, in a blog commentary for Big Think, that "even those who tend to reject Pinker's conclusions sooner or later have to grapple with his argument."
In a long review at The Wilson Quarterly, psychologist Vaughan Bell called it "an excellent exploration of how and why violence, aggression, and war have declined sharply, to the point where we live in the most peaceful times of mankind... [P] owerful, mind changing, and important. "
In a long overview of Los Angeles Book Review , anthropologist Christopher Boehm, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California and co-director of USC Jane Goodall Research Center, called the book "very good and important."
The political scientist James Q. Wilson, in the Wall Street Journal, called the book "a remarkable attempt to explain what Mr. Pinker greeted as one of the greatest changes in human history: We kill each other less often than before. but to give this project the greatest possible effect, he has one more book to write: a brief account linking the argument now presented in 800 pages and which avoids some of the topics about Mr. Pinker has not done a thorough research. "Specifically , a statement Wilson objected to was Pinker's writing (in summary Wilson), "George W. Bush" supports torture, John Kerry is right to regard terrorism as 'a nuisance'; 'Palestinian activist groups' have denied violence and are now working to build a 'competent government'. Iran will never use its nuclear weapons... [and] Mr. Bush... is 'not intellectual.' "
Brenda Maddox, in The Telegraph, called the book "absolutely reassuring" and "arguing well."
Clive Cookson, reviewing it at the Financial Times, called it "the fabulous synthesis of science, history, and storytelling, shows how fortunate most of us are currently experiencing serious violence only through the mass media."
Scientific journalist John Horgan calls this "monumental achievement" which "should make pessimists more difficult to cling to their bleak vision of the future" in a very positive review on Slate .
In The Huffington Post, Neil Boyd, Professor and Associate Director of School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, defends this book against his critics, saying:
Although there are several diverse reviews (James Q. Wilson in Wall Street Journal that comes to mind), almost everyone likes to rant about the book or reveal something close to the hatred and humiliation of ad hominem... At the heart of the dispute is to compete the conception of research and scholarships, perhaps epistemology itself. How do we study violence and assess whether it has increased or decreased? What analytic tools do we bring to the table? Pinker, wisely choosing to see the best available evidence of violent death rates from time to time, in pre-state societies, in medieval Europe, in the modern era, and always in a global context; he writes about inter-state conflicts, two world wars, intrastate conflicts, civil wars, and murders. Thus, he takes a critical barometer of violence to the death rate of murders per 100,000 inhabitants... Pinker's is a remarkable book, praising science as a mechanism for understanding problems that are too often covered by unspoken morality, and very empirical assumptions in question. Whatever the agreement or dispute may arise from its specificity, the authors deserve our respect, thanks, and applause. "
This book also looks at the positive reviews of The Spectator , and The Independent .
Critique
R. Brian Ferguson, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University-Newark, has challenged Pinker's archaeological evidence about the frequency of war in prehistoric societies, which he says "comprised of high-caliber casualties, certainly not representative of history in general." Whereas "[b] y considers the total archaeological records of the prehistoric populations of Europe and the Near East to the Bronze Age, the evidence clearly indicates that the war began sporadically out of the conditions without war, and can be seen in various trajectories in various field, to evolve over time as society becomes larger, more settled, more complex, more limited, more hierarchical, and in a very important region, influenced by developing countries. "Ferguson's examination contradicts Pinker's claim that violence has fallen below civilization, showing the opposite is true.
Despite recommending the book as valuable reading, economist Tyler Cowen is skeptical of Pinker's analysis of the centralization of violence in the hands of the modern state.
In his review of the book on Scientific American, psychologist Robert Epstein criticized the use of Pinker from the relatively violent death rate, that is, deaths from per capita violence, as the right metric for judging the appearance of "better angels." , Epstein believes that the correct metric is the absolute number of deaths at any given time. Epstein also accused Pinker of being overly dependent on historical data, and argued that he had fallen prey to confirmatory bias, prompting him to focus on the evidence supporting his thesis while neglecting his research.
Some negative reviews have led to criticisms of Pinker's humanism and atheism. John N. Gray, in a critical review of the book on Prospect, wrote, "Pinker's attempt to ground the hope of peace in science is very instructive, as it proves our need for eternal faith."
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, while "widely assured by the argument that our current relative peace era reflects the long-term trend of violence, and is widely impressed by the evidence that the Pinker marshall supports this view." offers a list of critics and concludes that Pinker assumes almost all progress begins with "Enlightenment, and all that comes before is the darkness of the middle ages."
Theologian David Bentley Hart writes that "a person who meets [in Pinker's book] is the tremendous innocence of a belief that is not filled with reasonable doubts." Furthermore, he said, "it reaffirms the mad and heroic ability of the human spirit to believe in beautiful falsehood, not just beyond the facts, but firmly against them." Hart continued:
Ultimately, what Pinker calls "the decline of violence" in modernity has actually been, in apparent numbers of bodies, an ever-increasing and excessive increase in violence that has gone beyond with a much higher demographic outburst. Well, not very good for her: So what? What can he really imagine telling us about "progress" or "Enlightenment" or about the past, the present, or the future? By all means, praise the modern world for what is good about it, but save us mythology.
Craig S. Lerner, a professor at George Mason University Law School, in a very good but ultimately negative review at the Claremont Review of Books does not ignore the decreased claims of violence, writes, "let's appreciate it the year since World War II was really among the most peaceful in human history, judged by the percentage of the world that was plagued by violence and the percentage of the population who died by human hands, "but disagrees with Pinker's explanation and concludes that" Pinker describes a world in which human rights are not nurtured by the sanctity and dignity of human life, but where peace and harmony still emerge.This is the future - largely freed from strife, and freed from oppressive God - that some will regard as heaven on earth.He is not the first and certainly not the last to entertain the hopes that are so disappointed with it hard by real human history. "In a sharp exchange in the correspondence section of the Spring 2012 edition, Pinker connects Lerner with a" conservative agenda "and accuses him of misunderstanding a number of points, especially Pinker's repeated remark that" the historical decline of violence "is not guaranteed to continue." "Lerner, in his response, said "Pinker's misunderstanding of my review is evident from the first sentence of his letter" and questioned Pinker's objectivity and refusal to "recognize gravity" of the issues he raised.
Professor emeritus of finance and media analyst Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, along with independent journalist David Peterson, wrote a detailed negative review of this book for the International Socialist Review and for the Public Intellectuals Project, concluding it "is a horrible book, the technical work of scholarship and as a moral treaty and guidance, but this fits perfectly with the demands of US and western elites at the beginning of the 21st century. "Herman and Peterson disputed Pinker's notion of 'Long Peace' since World War II:" Pinker is not just argues that "democracies avoid disputes with each other," but that they "tend to stay away from disputes across the board. "This will surely be a surprise to many victims of murder, sanctions, subversion, bombing, and US invasion since 1945."
Two critical reviews are related to the postmodern approach. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a critical review on The New Yorker, which Pinker sent back. Kolbert states that "Pinker's scope of concern is almost entirely confined to Western Europe." Pinker replied that his book has sections on "Violence around the World", "Violence in the United States", and the history of war in the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Japan, and China. Kolbert states that "Pinker is almost silent about European colonial adventures." Pinker responded that "a quick search will find more than 25 places where the book addresses colonial conquest, war, slavery, and genocide." Kolbert concludes, "Mention the strength, trends, or 'better angels' that tend to reduce the threat, and others can name the forces, trends, or 'mental demons' that push back in the other direction." Pinker calls this "postmodernist sofism that The New Yorker so often according to when reporting science."
The explicitly postmodern critique - or more precisely, based on perspectivism - was made at CTheory by Ben Laws, who argued that "if we take a 'perspectivist' attitude in relation to the matter of truth it would not be possible to debate the direct opposite of Pinker's historical narrative about Violence? Are we becoming even more violent over time? Any interpretation can invest a certain stake in 'truth' as ​​something permanent and valid - however, every view can be considered misdirected. "Pinker argues in his FAQ page that economic inequality , like other forms of "metaphorical" violence, "it may be sad, but to unite it with rape and genocide is to obscure moralization with understanding.D Ditto for underpaid workers, undermines cultural traditions, pollutes the ecosystem, and other practices that moralists want to stigmatize by metaphorically m extend the term violence to them. Not that these are not bad things, but you can not write a coherent book on the topic of 'bad things'.... physical violence is a big enough topic for a single book (as described by The Better Angels). Just as a book about cancer does not need to have a chapter on metaphoric cancer, a coherent book on violence can not be put together. genocide with catty comments as if they were a single phenomenon. "To quote this, Law argues that Pinker suffered" a reductive vision of what it means to be violent. "
John Arquilla of the Navy Graduate School criticizes the book in Foreign Policy because it uses statistics that he says do not accurately represent the threat of civilians who died in the war:
The problem with the conclusions achieved in this study is their dependence on the "death battle" statistics. The pattern of the last century - a recurrence in history - is that the deaths of unarmed people from war have increased, steady, and dramatic. In World War I, perhaps only 10 percent of the 10 million-plus who died were civilians. The number of non-civilized deaths spiked up to 50 percent of the 50 million-plus lives lost in World War II, and the sad deaths have steadily increased since then. "
Stephen Corry, director of charity Survival International, criticized the book from the perspective of indigenous peoples' rights. He asserted that Pinker's book "promotes the fictitious, colonialist image of the backward Brutal Savage, which has prompted debate over the rights of tribal peoples for more than a century and is still used to justify their destruction."
Anthropologist Rahul Oka points out that a real reduction in violence is just a matter of scale. War can be expected to kill a larger percentage of the smaller population. As the population grows, fewer warriors are needed, proportionately.
Sinisa Malesevic argues that Pinker and other similar theorists, like Azar Gat, articulate the false vision of humans as genetically predisposed to violence, while they focus on the last forty to fifty years.
Nassim Taleb
The statistician and philosophical essay Nassim Taleb uses the term "Pinker Problem" to describe the error in sampling under conditions of uncertainty after connecting with Pinker on the theory of great moderation. "Pinker has no clear idea of ​​the difference between science and journalism, or one between rigorous empiricism and anecdotal statements.Net science is not about making claims about samples, but using samples to make general claims and discussing properties that apply, beyond samples." In an answer, Pinker denied that his argument had anything in common with the argument of "great moderation" about financial markets, and stated that "Taleb's article implies that the Better Angel consists of 700 pages of statistically luxurious extrapolations that lead to the conclusion that a major catastrophe has become impossible.. [but] the statistics in this book are simple and almost completely descriptive "and" the book explicitly, unequivocally and repeatedly deny that major shocks of violence can not occur in the future. "Taleb with statistician and probabilist Pasquale Cirillo went on to publish the rebuttal official in the journal Physica A: Stat istical Mechanics and its Applications where they investigated the "long peace" thesis and the decline of violence and found that this was statistically invalid and resulted from a naive error and methodology, incompatible with a fat tail and not strong enough to small changes in data format and methodology. They propose alternative methodologies for specifically viewing violence, and other aspects of quantitative historiography in general in a manner compatible with statistical inference, which needs to accommodate fat-tailed data and unreliable conflict reports.
Awards and honors
Media
See also
Culture, Media, and Human Violence: From Savage Lovers to the Complexity of Violence
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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