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“Believe it or not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time. And today are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker at the ScienceWriters2011 conference in Flagstaff on October 17th. His new book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
“The decline of violence has not been steady. It has not brought violence down to zero. And it is not guaranteed to continue. But…it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars and genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.”
One example is homicide rates. “It turns out that homicide records go back in Europe in many places for centuries…a medieval Englishman was at least 35 times more likely to be murdered than his modern counterpart. This is true not just in England, but in every European country for which statistics have been gathered.”
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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12 Comments
Add CommentWhat is causing this most peaceful time in our species existence....... Wait!!! No body really knows do they, and you do not want to give away the plot of this possible #1 best selling fictional novel?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI dislike "low violence."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHitting below the belt is just not right...
Not wanting to draw conclusions but I wonder how much this is tied to religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe countries that are perceived as the most religious today happen to be the ones that are likewise perceived as amongst the most violent.
Certainly, you can look back at Europe and see that religion is much less prominent than the middle ages.
I would be interested to see data to see if this perception is correct. Not that that would say religion causes violence- it could equally be the other way around- or a non-causal relationship.
The most likely cause is that we are richer than before (on average), and thus we have less reasons to resort to violence for survival.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPinker appears to have been captured by the fashionable postmodern trend known as “revisionism,” where deconstruction is confused with demystification and all our “romantic” notions regarding so-called “noble savages” must be exposed as so much hokum. Only revisionism is just as much a myth as the idealized notions it seeks to debunk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisForemost among Pinker’s sins against scientific method is his tendency to make assumptions based on simplistic interpretations of the data. This is most glaringly apparent when he indiscriminately groups all “hunter-gatherers” together as equally representative of our paleolithic ancestors, ignoring significant differences with a strong bearing on his hypothesis.
In Chapter Six of my freely accessible online book, Sounding the Depths, I challenge the revisionist view in general and Pinker in particular and I would urge anyone either impressed or outraged by his arguments to read what I have to say: http://soundingthedepths.blogspot.com/2011/02/chapter-six-interlude-utopia-then-and.html
i completely agree with alain's idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso these days people know that they should work peacefully to get more, not act violently; so i think that basic rules of government are playing a big role in this.
In my opine one of the factors which cause violence is deprivation and being inadequate. It means that when human run into something unexpected that stops them to reach their goal, feels having inadequate then reacts a violence behavior. Furthermore when human has not the minimum of source of living, responses aggressively.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisViolence and aggressive in a society is due to inefficiency of economic and social of system. So it might be more convenience in latest human life and making acceptable economy to declaring of violence. Additionally rising communication between societies and human kind is caused a reduction of violence.
well,I suppose that the violence has declined because of
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe time period. I mean nowadays people are more Independent than before they need money,work and food.
so if they want these thing they must be friends together
if they don't they can't reach their needs. however in
the past people were not independent in a country because
of lots of Campaign for wars .but now we can reach our
needs sooner and better than before.
This idea could be discussed from different aspects. If we want to talk about violence and degree of it, many elements and factors included to this topic. For instance big wars happened during last century like WW2 or WW1 and the big costs that human race paid for these wars on the other hand the violence inside the society should be measured and the compare these factors which I didn’t mention lots of them, its pretty hard and we don’t have good index for this because the elements are so much and we should pay attention to the population increase, the cultural development during years, the strict law against violence inside the society and so on…
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess having an idea about topics like this which are more intangible is very hard and the studying in such a great period of time which happened lots of things (e.g. wars, development of technology, culture change, and so on...) have a lots of difficulties and giving theory about it would be a just researcher opinion and nothing more.
It is true especially when we look at developed countries.In my view the main reason of that is treatment of governments change during this years.In past all people wanted ruled other citizens used power and killed them.However,now governments use another power and that is science.With that,countries can change to great power with out a lot of violence.Another reason for that is people hate violence and prevent that and media do not allow authorities some work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn conclude,shape of violence change and convert to business rules.
well i have to say that i kind of disagree because the two world wars were the biggest wars ever and in the history of humanity there was not such a bloodshed but if we change our approach and see the full half of the glass yes you can say that and for example for traveling we are really safer than someone who wanted to travel 500 hundred years before but i totally disagree with behnam123 because since we need those things (food money...)more than ever in history we are more violent and that is the main cause of hunger and so violence
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStatistics show this to be a less violent age. You may disagree with Pinker all you want, but you need to present some stats to back up your claims.
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