Pinker
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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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Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, is the author of the best-selling books, “How the Mind Works,” and “The Blank Slate.” But he is also a public intellectual, devoted to bringing the ideas of academia to questions of broad public interest. His latest work is an ambitious attempt to understand the origins, history—and perhaps the future—of human violence. The book is called “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” and it combines science with history to conclude that, by many measures, we live in the best of times, not the worst. He spoke recently with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.
COOK: What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about violence?
PINKER: That we are living in a violent age. The statistics suggest that this may be the most peaceable time in our species’s existence.
COOK: Can you give a sense for how violent life was 500 or 1000 years ago?
PINKER: Statistics aside, accounts of daily life in medieval and early modern Europe reveal a society soaked in blood and gore. Medieval knights—whom today we would call warlords—fought their numerous private wars with a single strategy: kill as many of the opposing knight’s peasants as possible. Religious instruction included prurient descriptions of how the saints of both sexes were tortured and mutilated in ingenious ways. Corpses broken on the wheel, hanging from gibbets, or rotting in iron cages where the sinner had been left to die of exposure and starvation were a common part of the landscape. For entertainment, one could nail a cat to a post and try to head-butt it to death, or watch a political prisoner get drawn and quartered, which is to say partly strangled, disemboweled, and castrated before being decapitated. So many people had their noses cut off in private disputes that medical textbooks had procedures that were alleged to grow them back.
COOK: What made you interested in violence as a scientific question?
PINKER: I’ve long argued that the human mind is not a blank slate but has been fitted by evolution with a complex set of emotions, drives, and systems for reasoning, learning, and communicating. Advocates of the blank slate fear that the very idea of human nature dooms us to perpetual conflict—that if we are killer apes with a territorial imperative, a thirst for blood, a death instinct, and genes for aggression, then it’s pointless to try to make the world a better place.
These fears, I’ve argued, are illogical. Human nature may embrace motives that lead to aggression, but it also embraces motives like empathy, self-control, and reason, which, under the right circumstances, can outweigh the aggressive impulses.
And empirically, we can observe many ways in which violence has decreased over time, including a relief from cycles of deadly raiding and feuding when tribes came under the control of states, the 35-fold decline of homicide in medieval Europe, the abolition of slavery, cruel punishments, and frivolous executions, and the recent replacement of totalitarian regimes with democracies. These observations amounted to a few paragraphs in “How the Mind Works”and “The Blank Slate,” but I knew when writing them that they really deserved a book of their own.
COOK: How has neuroscience contributed to our understanding of violence and its origins?
PINKER: Neuroscientists have long known that aggression in animals is not a unitary phenomenon driven by a single hormone or center. When they stimulate one part of the brain of a cat, it will lunge for the experimenter in a hissing, fangs-out rage; when they stimulate another, it will silently stalk a hallucinatory mouse. Still another circuit primes a male cat for a hostile confrontation with another male. Similar systems for rage, predatory seeking, and male-male aggression may be found in Homo sapiens, together with uniquely human, cognitively-driven systems of aggression such as political and religious ideologies and moralistic punishment. Today, even the uniquely human systems can be investigated using functional neuroimaging. So neuroscience has given us the crucial starting point in understanding violence, namely that it is not a single thing. And it has helped us to discover biologically realistic taxonomies of the major motives for violence.
COOK: You discuss in detail the "long peace," the period of calm in Europe after World War II. What do you conclude has been behind this—and what do you conclude has not been an important factor?
PINKER: Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday. But there are reasons to be skeptical. One is that World War II proved that conventional warfare in modern times was already plenty destructive. The fear of conventional World-War-II-style war would have been enough to scare the major powers away from a repeat performance. Another is that nuclear weapons have, fortunately, acquired such an apocalyptic aura that the threat is seen more as a bluff than a deterrent, which is why non-nuclear powers have repeatedly defied the nuclear ones (Argentina vs. Britain in 1982, Egypt vs. Israel in 1973, Iraq vs. the US in 1991 and 2003, and so on).
Better candidates include conventional deterrence, the spread of democracy, the expansion of international trade, the growth of international organizations, and the gradual eclipsing of the value of national and ethnic grandeur by the value of human rights—a hard-won lesson of the two world wars.
COOK: Does your reading of the scientific literature suggest ways that societies can drive violence down even further? Are there any specific strategies that you think have not received enough attention?
PINKER: Policy is a subject best left to policy analysts, since the devil is in the details, but there are a few general forces that seem to work across times and places. Decent government helps, particularly non-corrupt, non-brutal, and consistent policing. Halfway decent governments also provide basic services like education (which gives young men an alternative to adventure in militias) and an infrastructure of commerce (which tips the incentives from zero-sum plunder to positive-sum trade). In the international arena, peacekeepers are demonstrably effective—not 100 percent of the time, but more often than when adversaries are left to fight to the bitter end.
More nebulously, the forces of cosmopolitanism—literacy, travel, journalism, education, the mixing of peoples—corrodes tribalism, authoritarianism, and puritanism, with all the punitive sentiments that go with them, and make it harder to demonize foreigners and nonconformists. Intellectuals, for their part, should avoid the thrills of utopian, group-exalting, and struggle-glorifying ideologies, and promote incremental and evidence-based improvements that put the flourishing of individuals first.
COOK: Is the general trend toward less violence going to continue in the future?
PINKER: It depends. In the arena of custom and institutional practices, it’s a good bet. I suspect that violence against women, the criminalization of homosexuality, the use of capital punishment, the callous treatment of animals on farms, corporal punishment of children, and other violent social practices will continue to decline, based on the fact that worldwide moralistic shaming movements in the past (such as those against slavery, whaling, piracy, and punitive torture) have been effective over long stretches of time. I also don’t expect war between developed countries to make a comeback any time soon. But civil wars, terrorist acts, government repression, and genocides in backward parts of the world are simply too capricious to allow predictions. With six billion people in the world, there’s no predicting what some cunning fanatic or narcissistic despot might do.
COOK: Having worked through this material, I wonder, do you see current events differently now?
PINKER: Absolutely. The present looks less sinister, the past less innocent. The mind always focuses on current threats, and takes for granted the violent events that don’t happen but could easily have happened a few decades ago. A sniper in Norway kills dozens of innocent people—and the population does not riot or lynch the perpetrator and his extended family, but holds candlelight vigils. The Egyptian government falls—but the new one does not vow to push the Israelis into the sea. North Korea sinks a South Korean ship, killing 45 sailors—but instead of escalating to war, the Koreans go back to life as usual. Every day I notice the dogs that don’t bark.
Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.
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18 Comments
Add CommentI think that one reason people see violence as so much more prevalent now is improved access to information - 10 years ago most people would have had no clue if there was a war happening on the other side of the planet. Today we have access to global news, so instead of just seeing the violence that happens in our own backyard we're also exposed to violence from around the world. Also, the technology of war has made for a few tremendously bloody conflicts (most notably the US Civil War and WWI) where modern technology combined with archaic tactics and turned battlefields into killing factories - like the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which saw over 1,000,000 soldiers killed in just under 6 months. It's hard to look at a statistic like that and think that the world is becoming less violent, but it's really just an anomaly. If they'd had machine guns and mustard gas in the 12th century, the crusades would have been far more bloody (which is saying a lot).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder (just to give an example) what the people of Libya would think about these opinions, after the whims of Western democracies drove their nation into chaos, violence, shortages and uncertainty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, the trend seems towards greater and greater humanism. Including empathy for animals as mentioned. Animals being used both for meat and for scientific studies. (there were some very violent descriptions of testing on cats in this interview).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's not forget that a well-functioning developed justice system and social safety nets decrease frictions in today's society. However,violance has many forms and mobbing and insults continue to break hearts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt strikes me that the author is cherry-picking the single most violently brutal period of human development, and then determining our current time to be peaceful by contrast. This is disingenuous. "medieval and early modern Europe" occurred extremely recently compared to the whole of human evolution. At the beginning of the medieval time period in 5th century A.D, the Aboriginal people in Australia had been living in near-complete peace for at least 100,000 years, exceeding our capacity of carbon dating tools to date. The anthropological record shows the Shoshone Indians, the Inuit, and countless other indigenous groups that didn't even have a word in their language for war, and the archaeological record shows far fewer violent injuries than even modern American society. Even "warlike" nations like the Pequots and Narragansetts never approached war in the same way, it was never intended to destroy the enemy and rarely resulted in widespread fatalities, and almost never in "civilian" casualties. Certainly, there were exceptions, such as the New Zealand Maori who slaughtered and ate the island's previous inhabitants, but statistically, those exceptions are rare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUndoubtedly, white Europeans of recent times were a particularly brutal bunch. And certainly, modern implements have enabled situations like Rwanda to occur. However, since the span of human history is so much longer than just a few thousand years ago and so much broader than just white Europe, I think it is foolish to use that example as the primary data point.
I've always thought of war as a tool. And I suspect the decline of violence could very well herald the rise of slavery.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHIS; "literacy, travel, journalism, education, the mixing of peoples—corrodes tribalism, authoritarianism, and puritanism" - Nail on the head (in the non-violent sense). Great article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is how to find out - ask a Libyan. You can use something called "email" on something called the "internet". I did that to my friend Riad. He said - "it is about time we (the US and NATO and the world community) got rid of that madman who has killed more people than the revolution did". Pinker is pointing out that something called a "numerator" is small and something called a 'denominator' is large - approx. 7 billion for the 'denominator". Civilization gave us the internet and math - read up on it sometime...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPinker: "The present looks less sinister, the past less innocent."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf violence is down, obesity is up. We have traded violence for materialism and self-gratification. Shameless materialism might not be as sinister as public decapitation, but it is troublesome all the same.
Author of this good article speaks about fantastic causes for peace: 1)democracy: who shot the Kennedys ? 2)wars between nuclear and non-nuclear: reason why for an US Ship to launch a missile on an arab Airbus, destroying it, a thing that may have triggered Gaddaffi's revenge ? 3) Nazi regime was criminal, but this regimes do fade, war against it caused much more victims, sometimes fireman caused harm is worse than fire. Allies had no inconvenient in appearing in photographs with Stalin, he had caused death of 5 million Ukranians by hunger . 4) Some, as professor Rodriguez-Delgado, spoke about a psycho-civilized society, his experiment was provocating a bull, and then stopping it thru a radio signal triggering something inside the bull's brain. Theologists use to say that acts of humans lack any moral value when devoided of freedom. We can't accept being treated as bulls 5) Violence is not limited to Europe, an Asyrian king claimed having took away the eyes of 10'000 of his enemies. 6) Jesus Christ openly said being the Son of God, nobody making him shut up,He chased away sellers from the temple, most today have no commitment from nobody, less from God to violence, but we aren't better than God. 7)Violence of losers is a crime, the one of winners, fighting for freedom and human rights 8) Having the power eases living the good life, it's easy blaming possible competitors as violents,bothering them until they react, so making evident they were violent 9) N-weapons are a factor of peace, see how the situation between India and Pakistan changed when both had the bomb.N-war would be mutual guaranteed destruction, but also, there aren't enemy nations in the world that can start a war;but nuclear nations have not proven superior moral value over those who are not. There's no war if there are no enemies. Building A or H bombs would be insane, but the N-weapons control treaties reduce sovereignity of nations, and this has important economical consequences, in fact, with the exception of self-destroyed Russia, N-powers do have an economical power on others. Innocent wars ?: - The american-spanish war in Cuba ? -the seizing of Malvinas ? the repeated british pirat attacks, and their attacks to other nations in the XIXth century and earlier ? -the attacks on people in India to maintain its status as a colony ?. -some groups stating that if the russian zars had treated them equal the zars treated other russians, the zars would have lived until today ?. First show everybody you have rule of law at home, then we can talk and discuss. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like it best when scientists stick to what they know. When Pinker said " Policy is a subject best left to policy analysts," he should have stopped there. His statements really only apply to 1st world nations. I want to know how he quantified and analyzed the level of violence for everywhere else and compared it to what went before. The world's a big place and e.g. Africa's a pretty screwed up, violent place right now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe lost me again with "In the international arena, peacekeepers are demonstrably effective" I object to the term "peacekeeper" used for anyone with a gun.
"More nebulously, the forces of cosmopolitanism—literacy, travel, journalism, education, the mixing of peoples—corrodes tribalism, authoritarianism, and puritanism, with all the punitive sentiments that go with them, and make it harder to demonize foreigners and nonconformists."
This is true, but the "mixing of peoples," also known as "integration" also destroys culture. Is Pinker arguing for a world monoculture? Is he arguing against national, ethnic or other cultural identity? What's the right balance? Oppression and segregation, sadly, can have the effect of preserving culture and identity. Once these prejudices are removed then there is more mixture among different groups. Must we choose between one and the other? I don't know.
"Intellectuals, for their part, should avoid the thrills of utopian, group-exalting, and struggle-glorifying ideologies, and promote incremental and evidence-based improvements that put the flourishing of individuals first."
Agreed with most of this but I am strongly against an Ayn Rand level of individualism. In the US we've lost a sense of community that used to be there. We tend not to know - and therefore not to trust - our neighbors, and this makes it a lot easier for us to be coerced, manipulated and exploited by wealthy and powerful entities - it's effectively divide and conquer. One can't focus primarily on the individual and get a sense of unity, belonging, socializing at the same time. What's the balance there? Unity needs to come under some kind of banner/identity. What would that be?
Your snarky tone isn't necessary. Perhaps they don't know a Libyan. What are they going to do, make up an address? It was a completely valid question, and you could have replied just with what your friend said. However, your friend doesn't represent all Libyans, either, so a single-person poll isn't exactly meaningful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"You discuss in detail the "long peace," the period of calm in Europe after World War II."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin Europe, yes, but I don't think the people in Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia (Pol Pot killed millions), China (Mao-unknown number dead in cultural revolution), Russia (Stalin killed an estimated 8,000,000 Russians), any middle eastern nation (beheadings, stonings, public whipping), any sub-saharan nation (name one that hasn't had a war or rebellion), most Latin American nations are or have been dealing with brutal guerrilla movements, and most of the rest would beg to disagree.
"based on the fact that worldwide moralistic shaming movements in the past (such as those against slavery, whaling, piracy, and punitive torture) have been effective over long stretches of time."
Slavery exists on every continent, whaling continues, piracy is growing exponentially, and ask the victims of the Taliban, Al Queda, all those other guerrilla groups, plus North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Lybia and many other countries, what do they think of that statement.
Sorry, but the author needs to climb down from that ivory tower he is obviously holed up in.
In the human history Polemology (War) have received more attention and resources than Irenology ( Peace). To state violence is declining using only Europe as a comparative trends is not correct. There are many forms violence is still present in the world .Actually "domination "is present with a more sophisticate signals.Just a planet general view corroborate this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWorld wide stats, including both murder and war, show pretty clearly that people are less likely to die by violence. Slavery still exists but it is far less common than it used to be. Historically, laws applied mostly to slaves and peasants. Now laws apply to almost everyone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can whine all you want but the bulk of humanity will not have a direct personal experience of war or murder. Death rates among soldiers has dropped steadily since the Roman and Persian empires.
Colateral damage (killed civilians) has been dropping quite rapidly as well. Genocide used to be fairly common but now people react rather poorly to it. It still happens but not on as large scales as it used to.
Vastly larger populations may translate into larger numbers but as a percentage of population, the violence is less common.
Well, postman, it is only fair to note that violence in ivory towers is extremely low nowadays...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is misleading and harmful to peoples' perception and self-concept of being 'good'.I don't think Dr. Pinker took human violence against non-human animals into account when he researched for his book. Very sad is the fact that he himself as a psychologist is not aware of this blindspot. Humans torture and kill approximately 10 billion non-human animals each single year for pathetic reasons, and he says violence has declined, and speaks of 'good angels'? How ignorant of him to speak such words without considering life beyond the narcissistic, self-serving human. I really have an issue with this type of research. Please write a sequence about human violence towards non-human animals if you want me to take you serious.
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