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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), worldwide military expenditures have been growing annually for the past 15 years, and between 15 and 20 major armed conflicts—yes, wars—are in progress as you read this. All told, upward of 175 million people died in war-related violence during the 20th century, plus another eight million because of conflicts among individuals.
Even so, according to a weighty new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking Adult, 2011), by Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker, the "better angels" of human nature have actually brought about a dramatic reduction in violence during the past few millennia. Yes, the absolute number of victims has been rising, but relative to the world’s population, the numbers look good.
The shift toward nonviolence, he says, has been driven by many factors, such as the spread of agriculture and the rise of feminism and democracy. Such trends have led to a reduction in institutionalized torture and execution and slavery and, especially in recent years, to an increase in the rights of women, homosexuals, children and animals.
Pinker acknowledges that one's immediate experience belies these facts to the point where you might even want to call him "hallucinatory." Yet the wealth of data he presents cannot be ignored—unless, that is, you take the same liberties as he sometimes does in his book. In two lengthy chapters, Pinker describes psychological processes that make us either violent or peaceful, respectively. Our dark side is driven by a evolution-based propensity toward predation and dominance. On the angelic side, we have, or at least can learn, some degree of self-control, which allows us to inhibit dark tendencies.
There is, however, another psychological process—confirmation bias—that Pinker sometimes succumbs to in his book. People pay more attention to facts that match their beliefs than those that undermine them. Pinker wants peace, and he also believes in his hypothesis; it is no surprise that he focuses more on facts that support his views than on those that do not. The SIPRI arms data are problematic, and a reader can also cherry-pick facts from Pinker's own book that are inconsistent with his position. He notes, for example, that during the 20th century homicide rates failed to decline in both the U.S. and England. He also describes in graphic and disturbing detail the savage way in which chimpanzees—our closest genetic relatives in the animal world—torture and kill their own kind.
Of greater concern is the assumption on which Pinker's entire case rests: that we look at relative numbers instead of absolute numbers in assessing human violence. But why should we be content with only a relative decrease? By this logic, when we reach a world population of nine billion in 2050, Pinker will conceivably be satisfied if a mere two million people are killed in war that year.
The biggest problem with the book, though, is its overreliance on history, which, like the light on a caboose, shows us only where we are not going. We live in a time when all the rules are being rewritten blindingly fast—when, for example, an increasingly smaller number of people can do increasingly greater damage. Yes, when you move from the Stone Age to modern times, some violence is left behind, but what happens when you put weapons of mass destruction into the hands of modern people who in many ways are still living primitively? What happens when the unprecedented occurs—when a country such as Iran, where women are still waiting for even the slightest glimpse of those better angels, obtains nuclear weapons? Pinker doesn’t say.
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8 Comments
Add CommentMost people think violence is a purely physical thing, but in actuality true violence is always characterised by a distinct psychological ambience or halo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere's a difference between slapping someone to instil fear and shocking them out of hysteria; ditto, chopping someone's limbs off to save their life, as opposed to gratuitously mutilating or torturing them.
A 6 foot four Aussie guy I knew as a kid was always being humiliated by his four foot six English wife, who'd chase him into the street, branding his arms and genial face with old fashioned red hot irons or flinging huge pans of boiling wallpaper paste over him. One day in the local swimming baths as I surveyed in horror all the burns, scalds and stab wounds he'd accumulated, he admitted, "It's not the actual attacks which bring on the old coronaries, it's the waiting for them."
Statistics in the times of the Ancient Romans might've shown only a few hundred Christians were being killed by x amount of lions and y amount of gladiators, but surely the real violence lay with the roaring audiences who paid good money to see blood spilled.
Ditto the vicarious thrill derived from being exposed to images of heroes and villains slaughtering each other, (first in epic poems and ballads, eventually in books, then on celluloid, television and now in video games), may well lower the statistics of real murder and mayhem, but does it really indicate we're less violent?
For that matter, you could argue, given the relative tininess of populations back then, acts of violence may've been limitedly indulged in, i.e., only when absolutely expedient, but otherwise quickly forgotten about. It was only with the advent of the likes of Homer it became glamorised and turned into epic, blood stirring literature.
The very fact Homer made a big deal out of it suggests it was indeed looked on as shocking and abhorrent.
So have we really become less violent or've we merely become so much more skilled in sublimating it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFamily, community, and larger relationships are much more healthful, emotionally productive, and economically productive when problems are solved through non-violent means. This is natural.
It is also natural to restrain violent behavior. But it is not natural to demonize others' violent behavior while exacting oppressive violent behavior ourselves as the means to reduce violent behavior.
So why do we promote the use of "unproductive" violence, form war to Hollywood to our verbal interactions, considering it causes more violence or at best just maintains it. And who claims we have a violent family nature and that we build and enjoy violent communities? No one. Our nature is primarily cooperative. Question the violence hype. Question the demonization of others, of outsiders, of groups.
To restrain, or even stop others with lethal force, is sometimes needed, but our cultural and ideological obsession with violence would be best dealt with not by acting it out but by treating our emotional insecurity.
M7Q83256
This book sounds like a bunch of dingos' kidneys.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstitutional violence (wars etc.) tends to drop when costs outweigh benefits. And wars today are extremely expensive. Individual violence is largely tied up with socio-economic position (I'd suggest relative status in society is more important than absolute - the poor of today are many times better off than the poor of 200 years ago, but are still relatively poor and have to cope with that perceived status).
People are inherently no better or worse today than at any time in history. Rwanda proves that. Where things have improved is in societal structure and culture. It's no longer acceptable in polite society to kill someone because they killed your brother. Civilised nations have abolished the death penalty. Civilised society has come to recognise that torturing prisoners isn't a good thing. Slavery's on the out. But without constant vigilance, these things can and do creep back (witness Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bosnia).
The review only briefly addresses what it considers to be flaws in Pinker's statistical arguments. Personally I am inclined to accept the weight of evidence presented over 700 pages against a one sentence, non-specific doubt. Pinker may well be a victim to some extent of confirmation bias but the reviewer fails in the fundamental task of assessing the evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe notion, suggested by the reviewer, that only an absute decline in violence is worth the effort, is statistically absurd as long as the population continues to grow. Personally I am delighted that my individual risks of torture, murder and death in war have declined.
"To restrain, or even stop others with lethal force, is sometimes needed"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo restrain, obviously, but I'm not comfortable I also put "stop others with lethal force" because today it is so promoted and used, whereas it is actually so not relevant to conflict resolution.
I also just notice this sentence from the articles author:
"What happens when the unprecedented occurs—when a country such as Iran, where women are still waiting for even the slightest glimpse of those better angels, obtains nuclear weapons?"
Why stigmatize Iran? Why the manipulative and violent innuendo? Why the "save the woman rhetoric" like was used to promote the attacks on Afghans? Do we want to promote violence towards Iran and Iranians? Do we want to start the killing of 100,000 individuals like in Iraq? Do we want to make things worse for everyone?
M7Q832
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/steven-pinker-hobbes-pangloss/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Of greater concern is the assumption on which Pinker's entire case rests: that we look at relative numbers instead of absolute numbers in assessing human violence. But why should we be content with only a relative decrease?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOkay, I know "blindboy" covered this in point 4, but seriously, how did this statement make it into the review? To take the counter argument, presumably you'd rather live in a world of 20 people where 9 are murdered every year than a world of a million peole where 10 are. Come on.
"Of greater concern is the assumption on which Pinker's entire case rests: that we look at relative numbers instead of absolute numbers in assessing human violence. But why should we be content with only a relative decrease?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOkay, I know "blindboy" covered this in point 4, but seriously, how did this statement make it into the review? To take the counter argument, presumably you'd rather live in a world of 20 people where 9 are murdered every year than a world of a million peole where 10 are. Come on.