Reddit reviews The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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Read Harvard Prof Steven Pinker's new book 'The Better Angels of our Nature' in which he shows that the homicide rate has been decreasing throughout history and that the homicide rate in modern societies is much lower than that in primitive societies, despite the myth of the 'noble savage'.
Of course, none of this can excuse the treatment of native Americans and nor does it mean that native Americans had their condition improved upon colonization.
I can understand that, and I honestly used to think that way too; but the problem with that kind of thinking is two-fold:
Ironically we are living in the least violent time in human history.
(It's a thick read, but tl;dr a lower % of people die by violence now than ever did)
There is! sorta.
It has a bit more of a positive spin to it though. It's about how violence has gone down despite many people thinking otherwise.
>Humanism is a group of philosophies and ethical perspectives which emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually, and collectively, and generally prefers individual thought and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over established doctrine or faith (fideism).
>As the ethical movement began using the word in the 1930s, the term "humanism" became increasingly associated with philosophical naturalism, and with secularism and the secularisation of society. The first Humanist Manifesto, formalised at the University of Chicago in 1933, identified secular humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and justice, while specifically rejecting supernatural and religious ideas as a basis of morality and decision-making.
So humanist (and atheists) prefer reason over (religious) scripture to look for (moral/human) values.
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I relate to this, since I reject any authority on human values. I encourage intellectual discussions. I am open to religious scriptures to function as starting point or inspiration, but never (!) as authority. Same goes for god's words. In that sense, I am pretty in line with Christopher Hitchens, an anti-totalitarian himself and seeing god as a dictator.
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>I ask mostly because browsing around this sub-Reddit, it seems most people are utter twat waffles when it comes to being humanists, by definition.
Is that so...? How can you tell whether someone is being a humanist or not, by just reading their comments?
>It seems the most humanistic behavior happens after tragedy or when species-driven comforting needs to happen.
Is it after tragedy or after the attention in media? I suspect the latter.
>but damn are we some villainous creatures.
I assume that you are pointing at the fact that we can do evil, implying that we can also do some good.
Throughout the history, violence has declined and we are now living in the most peaceful time, ever - Steven Pinker.
Our nature has not really changed that much. So that means that more people choose to do good (or more people choose to do less evil).
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Your post is rather resentful philippic towards humans. Why? You seem to completely ignore the good side of men and the decline of violence.
Suggesting that we live in a society that looks like that of Game of Thrones. Empirically false. :-/
I am quite optimistic about the development of humanism in society, for good reasons: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455883115
Just as a starting point of comparison, you might want to read this.
If you're really interested in the topic, and it is an interesting topic, I'd highly recommend this book.
As bad as things are for some Americans, the everyday realities of life for nearly everyone in medieval Europe were much worse in every conceivable way.
This is really just a summary of Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature.
Your evidence was not directed at your premise. The evidence that we have advanced as a species and are more peaceful is from history.
You did not condemn any system, you complain about humans. That is not the same thing.
>Simple, lustful, non thinking people are akin to animals.
Humans are animals. We are members of the animal kingdom. "Animal" is not an insult.
And you're assuming all three of those descriptors automatically go together. You're certainly assuming a lot about a woman from just one picture.
If you're not into sex for the sake of sex, fine. Don't have sex for the sake of sex then. Just don't shame other people for wanting what you don't want. It doesn't help them, it doesn't help you, and it's just a waste of electricity.
>They seldom render any great service to their fellowmen. They are just very small, weak creatures that draw blood and reproduce.
You must be a hit at parties.
>well we are already reaching the point where we are counting the straws that will break the camels [sic] back.
And this woman is one of the straws?
Read this book. It won't turn you into a Pollyanna, but it'll make it slightly harder for you to come off like a pseudo-intellectual, pessimistic cliche.
>A big war could break out any day, we don't know.
There's already a petty big war going on right now.
>Do the world a favor and care a little.
And now we're getting personal.
I work at a non-profit law firm that does foreclosure defense, prisoner's rights, bankruptcy protection for the indigent, and consumer debt. I keep families in their homes. I still find time to volunteer outside this job. This job, by the way, gets me less than $900 per month, 10% of which I donate to charity.
I'm not exactly Jonas Salk, Baynard Rustin, Susan B. Anthony or [insert your own hero here], but I carry my weight and still like to occasionally get laid. I care as much as you, more than you, or maybe slightly less than you. But caring about things and caring about the sex life of a woman you've never met isn't the same thing.
>It's complacence with crime to perpetuate this ideal, which is underscored in this very image, this is the sapience of the ego distilled in this image.
Put down the thesaurus and listen up.
First, "crime" does not mean what you think it means. Second, there are many accomplishments that may mean a lot to one person, but nothing to another. This man, through hard work and discipline, looks super fine. You have not established a connection between his fineness and the fact that many people are "addicted to drugs" along with the other random stuff you listed.
There are many things wrong with the world. His six pack and her admiration of his six pack isn't one of them.
Sex-negativity, on the other hand, is one of them.
I really enjoyed the book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It's huge and he first shows that by any possible way you can measure it, things are getting less violent all the time. The second half explores possible reasons why.
So yes, lots of glitches, but less and less every passing year.
Reading Steven Pinker's new book now. That violence has precipitously declined over the centuries and millenia is the central premise.
He has a ted talk about it.
Its interesting to reflect on how alien that attitude seems to us today. As creepy as it is to see that grin, its even crazier to think that just a few hundred years earlier people were publicly tortured to the delight of a crowd (that included children) for minor offenses, many of which were victimless. For a lot of these tortures, decapitation would have been seen as the merciful end to the spectacle.
Sorry if that seems a bit offbeat. I'm reading Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature right now so human's nearly monotonic decrease in violence is something that's been on my mind a lot lately!
To the contrary. Science has shown that human violence has declined and still is declining rapidly. Steven Pinker has written a brilliant book on this. Here he is talking about it on TED.
Life has never been better.
Let me start out by saying I'm totally willing to concede that, as a group, people with concealed carry permits are probably much more responsible and better trained than the general gun-owning population. That seems to make sense, and I've never seen any data to suggest otherwise.
That said, gun ownership is significantly down in the last 40 years, according to the General Social Survey, and so is the violent crime rate (ignore the headline on the second article and look where they are getting their numbers-- FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, I would have linked through to the reports but the government shutdown has made the DOJ webpage unavailable).
Of course, you're talking about concealed carry laws passed in the early 90s that coincide with the decrease in violence I'm talking about, but a report from the National Research Council found no causal link between the introduction of those laws and the violent crime rate.
More broadly, if you enjoy looking at this kind of stuff and want to read about the nature of violence in human society and its downward arc over time, Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker is an incredibly eye-opening work that genuinely changed my mind on a number of issues.
Personally I don't believe in the Singularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
so I'm going to assume my lifetime is finite.
I think we will reach a point where we have self-reproducing swarms of complex machines that adapt and help humans. We'll get there through a combination of advances in machine learning, 3D printing, Big Data, genetics and neuroscience.
However, I think attaining machines with 'human-level' abilities is a long way off: how would a machine empathize with us? In other words, how would it know what it's like to be a human? Much of our behavior is predicated on our ability to empathize with our fellow humans, predict what they'll do next, and either move to cooperate or compete with them. Steven Pinker's latest book provides a good overview of the neural correlates of empathy.
>The crucial point is that WHERE YOU GO AND WHAT YOU DO CAN GREATLY AFFECT YOUR CHANCES OF BEING ASSAULTED.
What's this—all actions have consequences, and "victims" sometimes engage in behaviors that make them targets (for degenerates, no doubt)?
Rape will be eliminated shortly after murder ceases to occur—and as a species we have made remarkable leaps toward a world without them that an any point in history.
For me personally there are many but the one that keeps drifting back into my mind is Steven Pinker. His book on The Decline of Violence was for me a perspective changing experience on how much humanity has evolved and how much work still needs to be done. I think framing of a problem effects the outcome and I believe Steven has done a fantastic job in re-framing and challenging our embedded views of human nature.
Here's another great resource for this with mountains of research: http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1455883115
There's a great book on this subject, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker, that deals with not only with the "long peace" but also with the decline in warfare over longer periods, in other inter-communal violence, in homicides, and abuse and torture.
Specifically regarding the long peace of the last 60 years, I would cite the following as reasons why US hegemony and/or NATO, although important things, are not the primary causes:
Read the book The Better Angels of Our Nature, it deals exactly with this issue. It seems that before the invention of cities, violence was around 150 times greater than right now. Same was observable with native Indians and some isolated tribes in the Amazonas and Indian ocean today.
Steven Pinkers The Better Angels of our Nature is a deeply researched book that has this point as its main message.
I do agree that it's natural for humans to be generous and share resources. But if you look at what we know about human civilizations before agriculture, cities, and the modern state, the level of violence in those societies was extremely high throughout the world and without any significant periods of decline. It wasn't until the "Leviathan" of government was put into place that we began to see the relatively peaceful societies we have today as the rule rather than the exception. Steven Pinker wrote a very good book on this that makes a far more compelling case for this and than I can here, supported by a mountain of evidence.
Non-historian here- what do you think about the argument put forth by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of our Nature, that violence is/has been declining over time?
Exactly. More on that: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
[citation needed]
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BTW:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence#History
Some random links from a 5-seconds google search.
http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/most-peaceful-time-in-history.htm
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/23/the_world_is_actually_safer_than_ever/
A decent book on the topic.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1455883115
No, that's false equivocation, and I think you know it. I am making a stronger claim than that. Let me state it explicitly:
Given my (admittedly less than total) knowledge of the history of the places where Islam took hold, the doctrines of Islam and the psychology of religious belief, I estimate that there is a >90% chance that the world is more violent as a result of the rise of Islam than it would otherwise have been. In other words, if we had a time machine and could keep Mohammed as a merchant, I would accept 10 to 1 odds on the proposition that this alternate history would have had more humans dying at the hands of other humans intentionally.
Also, given my (admittedly less than total) knowledge of the history of the western world, colonialism, the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the conflicts of the 20th century and the trend in rates of violence across the world in the period of the Western world's ascendance, I estimate that there is a >99.5% chance that the world is less violent as a result of the rise of the ideas of the Enlightenment than it would otherwise have been. In other words, if we had a time machine and could shut up all those European philosophers since the 17th century, I would accept 200 to 1 odds on the proposition that this alternate history would have had fewer humans dying at the hands of other humans intentionally.
I therefore reject your proposition that
>"We carry out our violence in the name of 'freedom' now and they carry out theirs in the name of 'Allah'. The violence is the same, it's really just a matter of rhetoric."
Violence has been provoked by the ideas of the Enlightenment and of Islam, but this does not make them equivalent - we have to judge them by the contents of the ideas and the real world consequences they have had.
I was going to forego replying at "unfortunately things aren't what they were 50 years ago", but I'll bash on regardless.
Firstly, I'm in the UK, so I can't speak on your political struggles with the First Amendment to any great extent. But of course I can differentiate for you the two ideas you have conflated - reporting rumours to the government, and stopping physical assault when you see it happening.
I understand that there's an atmosphere of mistrust and you don't like it. I'm with you in feeling that the White House has acted unlawfully in its surveillance endeavours and should be brought to hefty justice, possibly in the form of complete government reform (I feel similarly about our twin program over here). But surely you can see the difference between reporting (willingly) a suspicious act, and reporting a crime you have just seen happen?
I get that you feel this is some kind of example of the taut surveillance strings running from Government^TM to the individual lives of people. I think that's nonsense and, more specifically, counter-productive. The 'PC movement' is not a government invention to control the masses, no matter how many Orwellian novels one might read. And to equate speaking up against physical assault in a public place to that is frankly insulting to the masses who are actually trying to get some consideration and understanding into the societal conscious.
Between black and white, there are a million shades of grey. We, as an animal, are starting to come to grips with this necessity we have for exercising our critical thinking. I agree that we should not all live in a climate of fear where we suspect everyone else of being a terrorist - but we should also not all live as if our neighbours have suddenly been turned into automatons acting out the will of our governing bodies. Because honestly, and with all due respect, you come across a bit nutty when you fling out florid coined phrases like "Big Brother IS watching, and he's recruited your neighbour". As far back as I remember, if I had good reason to justify the belief that a neighbour was doing something that warranted reporting, I would have done it with or without the government asking me to, as I hope most people would. THAT is what I mean by 'social responsibility'. It's becoming more and more apparent to people that the Bystander Effect is a real thing that has been reinforced over years and years of "if it's not directly involving me, it's not my business" mentality. And lo and behold, as the age of greater social awareness kicks in, it turns out not only that getting involved would have saved a lot of people pain, but that what you ignored actually DOES involve you on a wider scale! It's just that you don't see it. It turns out societies are much more convoluted and interdependent than we ever thought, and the trickle-down effect of ignoring your fellow man's struggles is wide-spread so much so that you can't even see it from close-up. You can only feel the effects in your life and wonder where that came from.
Your misinformed opinion on the greater violence we now apparently endure in our lives is just a question of reading up on the matter. It turns out not only in the States, but worldwide, violence is actually on the decline and has been for some time. These. Are. Good. Starting. Points. And. From. there to begin the proper reading on the subject I usually recommend The Better Angels Of Our Nature, which was one of the main books I sourced my thesis on. It's information-rich, well-defined and very well-sourced, and a lot of its critiques are centred around the absence of faith-based hope for humanity, which I perversely find to be one of its strengths. I mean from there you can find different texts to do follow-up reading on in the bibliography and so on, but I don't have to tell you how to read haha!
The rise in litigiousness and the faults in our legal systems are not unknown to me, either, as the post-modern understanding of historical criminology goes hand-in-hand with the apparent pre-emptive policies necessary in light of modern changes. But don't forget, not once have I advocated that the guy jump on top of the man hurting the woman and attempt to rip out his intestines. Getting involved doesn't mean inciting a physical altercation and in fact I specified not putting yourself in harm's way whenever possible. The safety-conscious person knows that the safest and most effective way to diffuse such a situation is to alert the assaulter that they have been noticed and the appropriate authorities are being informed (going to the clerks/asking the woman if she wants you to call the police). Most studies of people convicted of violent crimes agree that they usually carry on their actions under the apprehension that they are not going to be stopped, that people will walk past and their actions will go unchecked. I wonder how we might go about breaking that apprehension...?
I mean I actually specified in my previous comment, you should "avoid putting yourself in harm's way whenever possible". I fully understand the importance of valuing and protecting your own life, and I don't think it sounds cold to consider the specifics of any situation, merely pragmatic. We're in full agreement on that point. I'd hate for anyone to read this and think I'm advocating thoughtless vigilante justice. We bear a social responsibility, and as anyone who understands the concept knows, this is primarily reliant on conducting yourself in as safe a manner as possible. This includes fending off violence in others, because it spreads like poison. 'Minding your own business' doesn't wash. It's everyone's business. It affects everyone. That violent person can be violent to other people if they feel like it's allowed in this situation. You do your bit to help other people and stop the violent person, that's just Humanity 101.
Finally, the different levels of physical assault warrant differing levels of punishment, not differing levels of interference. OP specifies that the woman did not even simply physically squirm and try to get away, she vocally yelled at him to let her go. This is not an ambiguous situation. This was unwanted physical contact, and it hurt her. This is physical assault. In this situation, you interfere. I'm happy to discuss other situations with you on a case-by-case basis if you really want to (you mention spanking a child, and escalating forms of physical assault), but this situation reserves very little ambiguity and I can't concede that OP should not have got involved.
I'm also sorry if I misinterpreted your meaning, and am grateful for your structurally cohesive and respectful response.
>This gets into a question about metrics: "how do we know things are worse or better?" [...]
http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1455883115
>you'd just see a transfer of the same ugly obsessive shit from money/religion to whatever happens to be handy once you've taken those two things away.
I think that's still a very pessimistic (not realistic) view considering that violence has been on the decline as a phenomena for several hundred years.
Scientific American Article
A Lecture by Steven Pinker (He has a book on the subject which I haven't read yet but will add to my reading list.)
Clearly societal change is possible and, ethically speaking, the human race is moving up in the world-- not down.
>So these things can be provided competitively/privately.
The question wasn't whether a private interest can supply them: it as whether they can be provided on a competitive basis. If you don't like one private interest's road, the tolls they set or the level of quality they keep, it's not exactly a low barrier of entry to make your own road.
And that privately constructed dam doesn't exist in a purely free-market environment: it follows regulations, it complies with government standards. The environmental impacts of the dam weren't even understood when it was built: put all such constructions in the hands of competing private interests and the resulting cascade of effects is even harder to account for.
>Actually, if I want real security for my property, the best thing I can do is remove poverty. Crime is an effect of poverty. So any organization competing for my money to prevent crime is going to have to address poverty as part of its plan. This may mean either making significant monetary contributions to alleviate poverty, or providing low cost patrols in impoverished areas.
Once again, congratulations in realizing this: the vast majority of people take the "screw you, I got mine" approach and simply buy big walls and lots of guards. If that were the predominant form of security enforcement, we'd basically be reverting back to the age of fiefdoms and castles.
>Not values I share either. Yet another thing a justice provider is going to have to do to get my business is prove that they aren't favoring the wealthy over the poor. This means third party audits and a focus on a reputation for justice.
Third party auditors that are funded how, exactly?
>I've been an anarchist a while now, I've seen many flaws of such a system, and adequate addressing of each for me. If you care to cite specifics, I'll be happy to address them myself for you.
Ah shit, I was hoping you were just a form of libertarian. Nothing personal, but I've long since tired of arguing such matters with anarchists: there's a chance you're more logical and evidence-based in your ideology than they all were, but a very small one, and it's just not worth the time investment for me to find out : /
As shown in your posts so far, the results seem predictably the same as past experiences: you're satisfied with your ideology because you presume everyone is a virtuous, educated rational actor. They're not. So as noted, it's kind of like talking to a communist about how their theories don't quite work in the real world.
I'll give you a chance to change my mind though, as is only fair. How does your hypothetical system deal with environmental protection?
From what I've seen, this is an area libertarians consistently fail to address, and is one of the major things that eventually made me stop considering myself one.
The basic idea I have of how libertarians/anarchists deal with pollution is that, with strong private property laws, individuals or companies that damage the environment will respond to litigation, so this litigation should in theory make up for the damages the companies do and deter future incidents.
Unfortunately, ecology is such a fantastically complex system that proving simple cause-and-effect responsibility from a private interest to an environmental issue is often impossible in a realistic time-frame to halt or address the behavior. And that's assuming enough funding could be provided to even investigate the cause-and-effect of a particular natural disaster or damage of pollution, especially if those affected are too poor.
What's worse, no change in limits on retaliatory litigation could make up for permanent damages to health or ecology. In many cases, private interests simply don't have nearly enough money to make up for all the damage their actions might do, even assuming the problem can even be fixed by money, and that they're made to pay for it in the first place.
As an example, if I start a company whose actions begin poisoning a river or lake (on my property) that feeds an aquifer three towns over, but the effects of it aren't realized or traced back for decades after I've already made my money and liquidated the company, even if my middle-men get dragged to court and our army of lawyers fails to prevent a guilty verdict, all the millions we lose will not undo the damage to the children born with leukemia as a result of those chemicals.
>I've already address roads above, but I'll ask you this, if nobody is going to these "isolated towns and locations" then why would roads be needed to go there?
"Few people" =/= "nobody." The value society gets from making sure the barrier of travel is as low as possible far exceeds the incredibly minor portion of its taxes that go to roads.
>On average Americans give about 5% $135.8 billion of their household income to charity, after paying an average of 17% federal, 2009 in taxes. I'd be willing to bet the charity rate increases when people are not taxed, and thus have more disposable income.
In your magical scenario where people are suddenly free from the shackles of taxes, but aren't now having to pick up the slack of what those taxes used to pay for for their personal security, roads, fire stations, mail services, medical services, education, etc, etc, sure :) Too bad that's not how reality works.
>Other countries do things differently, and I don't know them as well as I know how the United States government does things, but that doesn't change the nature of government.
You must recognize that this is a belief utterly lacking in massive amounts of data and alternate perspectives, as you yourself admit. May I humbly suggest you educate yourself, maybe even travel and talk with citizens of other nations, before jumping to such broad generalizations?
>It is a privileged group of people who are able to enact violence on others.
Careful, your bias is showing. "Able to enact violence on others" implies no accountability or oversight or consequences. Your perspective of government is pretty skewed indeed if you're basing it entirely on all the worst case scenarios and practices, and ignoring all the cases in which centralized authority deters and prevents harm. There are a number of studies and books on this: may I recommend The Better Angels of Our Nature?
>Since a large part of my morality states that it is never appropriate to initiate violence against another sentient being, I view government as immoral at its foundation, so how the violence is arranged is of little consequence to me.
And this is why I said above that I've tired of debate with anarchists: when so much of your worldview is based on black and whites, there's little room for reason, let alone honest debate.
I am a great fan of the book "The Better Angels of our Nature" by Steven Pinker. His premise is society IS getting better and has research to prove it. Amazon.com describes is like this:
> Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.
At the same time. much of society is getting more godless. You may not able to persuade your Gran, but be assured you are RIGHT.
I think so.
Check out this book, it's really good.
better angels of our nature
I think the central problem must be that you simply don't understand how inductive logic works. I'm talking about certainty. I'm making a general philosophical point about how knowledge works, and being careful about not overstating the certainty we possess.
To use a classic example: before Australia was discovered, Europeans believed that all swans were white. This was later discovered to be false when black swans were discovered. At no point in time, however, could a European say "It is impossible for any swan to be any color but white," because such a claim reflects a greater degree of certainty than they actually possessed.
My point, in a nutshell, is that we may someday be able to design a form of government that does not prioritize war and corruption. You claim that this is impossible. I reply that you do not have sufficient evidence for that claim.
May I suggest some reading on
and
I'm not sure TF made his argument very well.
It may be absolutely true that dressing more conservatively reduces the risk of a woman being raped, but women should also be able to exert freedom in their dress.
It comes down to whether women should value safety over freedom when there's a trade-off between the two.
It's similar to the issues surrounding free-speech. Some may choose to censor their speech to maximize their personal safety, but others find it important to defend the principle that they should have the right to criticize any ideology or political group they dislike. For instance, TF would probably find his life much easier if he stayed silent on controversial topics, but he obviously finds it more important to engage in debates on hot-button issues.
I think it's absolutely reasonable to tell women how they can best minimize their chances of being raped, but it doesn't follow that women have a duty to follow that advice or that they're to blame if things go wrong.
In Western society, we don't blame the victim and that means a woman who is raped after going out in a mini-skirt has as much right to justice as a woman who wears the hijab.
Is TF a 'rape apologist'? No, not at all- but I still think he didn't get it absolutely right in these videos.
One other problem (from TF's first video)- the gloomy idea that we shouldn't expect men to change because rape is inherent to (at least some) male brains.
That's just wrong. There has been a dramatic reduction in rape over the last few decades and furthermore- it's got nothing to do with women covering themselves up.
It turned out that society can act to curb the worst tendencies of humanity, even if those tendencies have a biological basis. As Steven Pinker showed in his recent book on the decline of violence- the incidences of both homicide and rape have fallen to record low levels in the modern West and there's no reason to think they can't be reduced further.