Image: Illustration by Patrick Leger
-
What a Plant Knows
How does a Venus flytrap know when to snap shut? Can it actually feel an insect’s tiny, spindly legs? And how do cherry blossoms know when to bloom? Can they...
Read More »
On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik opened fire on participants in a Labour Party youth camp on the island of Utoya after exploding a bomb in Oslo, resulting in 77 dead, the worst tragedy in Norway since World War II.
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously argued in his 1651 book, Leviathan, that such acts of violence would be commonplace without a strong state to enforce the rule of law. But aren’t they? What about 9/11 and 7/7, Auschwitz and Rwanda, Columbine and Fort Hood? What about all the murders, rapes and child molestation cases we hear about so often? Can anyone seriously argue that violence is in decline? They can, and they do—and they have data, compellingly compiled in a massive 832-page tome by Harvard University social scientist Steven Pinker entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking, 2011). The problem with anecdotes about single events is that they obscure long-term trends. Breivik and his ilk make front-page news for the very reason that they are now unusual. It was not always so.
Take homicide. Using old court and county records in England, scholars calculate that rates have plummeted by a factor of 10, 50 and, in some cases, 100—for example, from 110 homicides per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford to fewer than one homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London. Similar patterns have been documented in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The longer-term trend is even more dramatic, Pinker told me in an interview: “Violent deaths of all kinds have declined, from around 500 per 100,000 people per year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to around six to eight today worldwide, and fewer than one in most of Europe.” What about gun-toting Americans and our inordinate rate of homicides (currently around five per 100,000 per year) compared with other Western democracies? In 2005, Pinker computes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of domestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined.
As for wars, prehistoric peoples were far more murderous than states in percentages of the population killed in combat, Pinker told me: “On average, nonstate societies kill around 15 percent of their people in wars, whereas today’s states kill a few hundredths of a percent.” Pinker calculates that even in the murderous 20th century, about 40 million people died in war out of the approximately six billion people who lived, or 0.7 percent. Even if we include war-related deaths of citizens from disease, famine and genocide, that brings the death toll up to 180 million deaths, or about 3 percent.
Why has violence declined? Hobbes was only partially right in advocating top-down state controls to keep the worse demons of our nature in check. A bottom-up civilizing process has also been under way for centuries, Pinker explained: “Beginning in the 11th or 12th [century] and maturing in the 17th and 18th, Europeans increasingly inhibited their impulses, anticipated the long-term consequences of their actions, and took other people’s thoughts and feelings into consideration. A culture of honor—the readiness to take revenge—gave way to a culture of dignity—the readiness to control one’s emotions. These ideals originated in explicit instructions that cultural arbiters gave to aristocrats and noblemen, allowing them to differentiate themselves from the villains and boors. But they were then absorbed into the socialization of younger and younger children until they became second nature.”
That second nature is expressed in the unreported “10,000 acts of kindness,” as the late Stephen Jay Gould memorably styled the number of typically benevolent interactions among people for every hostile act. This is the glue that binds us all in, as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently expressed it, “every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land” through “the mystic chords of memory” that have been touched again by these better angels of our nature.
This article was originally published with the title The Decline of Violence.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
21 Comments
Add CommentThanks for "The Decline of Violence" article!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEasy to put drama into the scene:a foto dated 1902,with a harbour in the background:lots of sailships...so we know that about 100 years MAKES a DIF!
A brittish hospital had very high ERROR rates,..they MOWED on it:today the same hospital has almost no errors!!
HUMAN KIND is living inside a huge LAB,violence is a lot like the BIG ERROR RATE on the uk hospital,...human kind has a lot of thinking potentiel: inside REASON....
"In 2005, Pinker computes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of domestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat would be 800 out of 100,000, far larger than the other homicide rates mentioned in this paragraph.
Pinker may want to check his calculations. According to other respectable sources over 100 million people died from war during the 20th century, and approximately 160 million were murdered by their own governments in genocides. The infectious disease Smallpox alone killed over 300 million in just 70 years of the last century. This doesn't include the 15 to 20 million who died each year of the last century from malnutrition, hunger and famine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't doubt that violence has been decreasing over time but that doesn't mean our capacity for mass murder has, or this trend will continue. One bio-terrorist attack (weaponized smallpox) could kill well over a billion people. This technological capacity for mass murder will only grow with the power and increasing affordability and availability of dual use technologies that are virtually impossible to control.
I don't think that death from disease or starvation counts as a violent death, in the sense that Pinker means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr. Tinkerpaws. In his article Pinker states "Even if we include war-related deaths of citizens from disease, famine and genocide, that brings the death toll up to 180 million deaths, or about 3 percent." This number is waaaaay off and should be corrected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would really, really like to know what Steven Pinker's response is to Elizabeth Kolbert's review of his book in the New Yorker (Oct. 3). How can I find out? Maybe I can't. I'm a huge fan of Pinker, but Ms. Kolbert makes some interesting points. For example, how does he reconcile the supposed civilizing process of the rise of cities in Europe with the bloodiness of colonial adventures? He also apparently sets aside genocide because "only a fraction of the population... actually commits the murders." And if the rest of the population knows what is happening and does little or nothing to stop it, is that what it means to be more "civilized"? But overall I think it's definitely important to be aware of how much violence there was during most of human evolution, so that we can understand ourselves better; and also quite worthwhile to attempt to identify and discuss what has made or could make us less violent and accepting of violence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI keep arguing with people that the world is NOT becoming a worse place to live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone thinks the world is more violent, more dangerous, etc- yet all proof points in the other direction.
In the words of Merle Haggard "I think we're living in the good old days".
Well I'm not sure you should count smallpox as "war related"... I think he's referring to the smaller number of disease deaths that come as a result of war disruptions... diseases that strike regardless of war conditions are not part of the calculation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA large drop in violent conflicts around 1992:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cidcm.umd.edu/pc/
Easy link to above graphs:
http://www.systemicpeace.org/conflict.htm
But refugee numbers from 1998 to 2006 appear to holding steady at just under 14,000,000
Though I haven't read Pinker's book, I tend to agree that overall violence has been dropping a very long time, and from what I can see it is a trend that was preceded by a long rise in violence that started around 50,000 BC and peeked with, lets say, to use one of Pinker's frames, the appearance of prestate societies (I assume he is referring to Greek "prestates" that existed prior to approximately 500 BC).
M7Q832
I was interested to see confirmed that violence is actually on the decline. I was also interested in your comment about the gun toting US and its murder rates. A couple of years ago I received an email from a friend in America clearly forwarded from some other source. Living in Australia I was surprised to see a quote on Australian statistics for gun crime and the allegation that these had increased after the imposition of stricter gun laws. So I was prompted to do a brief study of the comparative statistics published by the US and Australian government agencies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy analysis showed that the murder rate for all causes other than guns is the same as in Australia and annually is about 1 murder/100000 people. However the rate for gun related murder is about 0.5/100000 in Australia compared to 5/100000 in the USA and I therefore conclude that if the US were to enact and enforce gun laws similar to those in Australia then the total US murder rate would fall to about the same level as we have in Australia about 1.5/100,000.
The murder rate statistics for Canada are similar to Australia and while one could argue that the differences in murder rates in Australia compared to America are due to cultural differences, it would be more difficult to argue that case for Canada given the close proximity of the US and Canada and the closer ties.
If you want to compare the statistics then here are the links.
Australian Statistics
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2008/01_recorded_crime.html#rates
US Statistics
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm
Canadian Statistics
http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/legal12b-eng.htm
Of course methods for determining the statistics do vary a bit from country to country but the contrasts are marked.
In the 2010 revised edition of "The Company of Strangers: a Natural History of Economic Life" Paul Seabright compellingly argues that violence in human societies began to fall (per capita) as a consequence of the need for the trust-based economic relationships that enabled the rise of specialized forms of human labor (e.g. agriculture). The evolutionary argument: post-neolithic trade increased biological fitness(reproductive success) but was only sustainable when human groups fashioned ways to foster trust among strangers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is important to ask if average violence increase in present-day societies where/when economic trust declines. If it does, is there a causal relationship? If so, can we address outbreaks of violence by institutionalizing behavior patterns (e.g., tax laws) that will warrant socioeconomic trust, as opposed to taking measures like building jails and equipping ourselves with small arms, while further institutionalizing distrust through, e.g., tax law loopholes that increase economic disparities? Gold has long been an economic touchstone. What's more, on good scientific grounds, it may be the case that Golden Rule is the best longterm bio/economic touchstone for ensuring thriving, low-violence human societies. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A saying attributed to the gods, but, in reality, conceived by trusting humans.
The world is becoming a better place to live, and violence may be declining. But we are NOT safer. The evolution of powerful dual use technologies will enable extremists (religious or environmental) to create WMDs that will make nuclear weapons appear as inefficient killing tools. See "Likelihood of Smallpox Recurrence". May 18, 2011 Journal of Bioterrorism and Biodefense. That doesn't include our growing dependence on increasingly vulnerable (cyber, space or environmental systems).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe spread of the Spanish Flu's (30 million deaths world wide- 500,000 US deaths) was accelerated by the movement of troops during WW!. It killed more US soldiers than the war and resulted in the decline of freedoms, prosperity and quality of life for everyone. HIV/AIDS emerged from the rainforests of the Congo aided by truck drivers, proposition and war. It now destabilizes nation states and as Colin Powell said in 2002, is a greater threat to our security than Al Qaeda. We are overdue for another global pandemic of equal or worse effect. Poverty, lack of clean water/sanitation, mass travel, mass food production, and modern medicine (antibiotics and invasive surgery), environmental degradation, on going conflicts and the natural evolution of pathogens...make for a very lethal mix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShermer quotes Pinker as follows:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"In 2005, Pinker computes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of domestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined."
All other statistics are in the form n deaths per 100,000 of the population. The population of the USA in 2005 was 288.4m. 0.8% of this figure gives a total of 2,310,000 deaths at a rate of 800 per 100,000 - higher than any of the proportions from the earlier, supposedly more violent, populations.
As this can't be true (and would blow Pinker's hypothesis away) why didn't one of these erudite guys "do the math"?
That 8 tenths of 1% includes wars where the other numbers don't. He also points out that the USA has a higher violent death rate than Europe by a factor of about 5. This is still a vast improvement over 15%.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat number is not "way off" Tens of millions of stavation and disease deaths have no relation to wars at all. He is only using war related disease and starvation deaths. You need to work on your reading comprehension.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile your list of potential disasters is completely correct, none of it has happened. There are many potential disasters that have been averted, never happened or were much smaller than anticipated. Until one of these diasters occurs your list is speculative and has no bearing on violence rates. We are no safer but we are also at no more risk than ever before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good catch! I ran the numbers and oddly enough 500 per 100,000 in prestate societies IS lower than the 800 per 100,000 we are at now. Europe is at 1 per 100,000 and he states that the USA is about 5 times that at 5 per 100,000 which clearly is very different than 800 per 100,000.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if the error is from Pinker or Shermer's write up describing the book. Someone got it very wrong.
The article is inconsistent in the way that rates are calculated. As a result the author Shermer ( or are these Pinker's numbers?) mixes rates per 100,000 and percentages, grossly misstating the actual data one way or the other. For example 500 per 100,000 is actually 0.5%, 50 per 100,000 is actually 0.05% etc. These percentages are lower than the more recent data of 0.8% (800 per 100,000) that he quotes, and undermining his argument of lower death rates now. He further states that the homicide rate today in the U.S. is 5 per 100,000 (.005%). Please review the math you are quoting Mr. Shermer. We would like to know the actual data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm told that checking any statistics that claim to prove or disprove an argument makes me a REAL skeptic (or "sceptic" here in England).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There are lies, damned lies - and statistics."
Now my scepticism is whether Shermer or Pinker reads this forum! We shall see.
As much as I enjoy Mr. Shermers columns, this time I couldn't help doubting the numbers. I also wondered, why they were not presented in an easy-to-compare way. Thanks to Dr. Tinkerpaws and terryw for pointing it out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould M. Shermer reply?