Steven Pinker on The Better Angels of Our Nature

First aired on The Current (29/11/11)

Intensive media coverage of horrific events such as the genocide in Rwanda and the massacre perpetrated by Anders Breivik in Norway has us convinced that we live in an increasingly violent world. But according to Harvard professor of psychology and bestselling author Steven Pinker, that's a misperception. In his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, he argues that human society is more peaceful than ever before.

"It's only when you calculate the amount of violence as a proportion of the world's population that you know how prevalent violence is today and how it's changed compared to earlier periods," Pinker said in a recent interview on The Current.

The baseline for Pinker's statistical analysis was the rate of violence in traditional tribal societies. "There, at least 15 per cent of people on average die from violence. Even the worst statistic that you can squeeze out of the 20th century — say, you add up all of the genocides, all of the wars, all of the manmade famines — that gets you up to about three per cent. That's the highest you can go during the worst period you can imagine, and it's five times lower than a conservative estimate of the rate of death in tribal societies," he told host Anna Maria Tremonti.

In his historical survey, Pinker touches on the fact that violence is rampant in Western mythology and even in our religious foundations, in part because they are rooted in early civilizations. "All of the first empires and kingdoms engaged in human sacrifice, torture, execution for victimless crimes, slavery," he said.

Pinker has identified a number of factors that helped us become less violent. "Good government is one of them. If you outsource your deterrents and revenge to a disinterested third party, namely a court system and a police force, you're less likely to get endless cycles of vendetta and violence, the Corleone method of dispute resolution. As flawed as our police and courts are, they're probably better than taking justice into your own hands."

He also credits the growth of commerce and trade, the broader reach of education and literacy, and "technologies that encourage people to take the viewpoints of other people: fiction, media, journalism, history, memoir, that elevate you from your tribal, parochial vantage point."

Though western liberal democracies are relatively peaceful, there's no shortage of war and acts of terror. When asked how these differ from the violence of earlier time periods, Pinker said it's a question of numbers. "They kill fewer people, especially as a proportion of the world's population. There are more and more spots in the world where wars and genocides aren't taking place," he added.

He also pointed out a shift in perception as far as the use of rape as a weapon of war is concerned. It's an age-old practice, but now reviled. "It's now considered a war crime," Pinker said. "Doesn't prevent it from happening...but at least it's recognized as a war crime, whereas in the past, it was the spoils of war."

In his book, Pinker also distinguishes between different forms of violence or aggression, which include "simple exploitation" and "the motive for dominance, where you want to climb the pecking order and become alpha male or you want your group to be dominant over other groups." He also cited sadism, which is responsible for "the most horrific kind of violence," and "moralistic violence," which involves punishing someone for a perceived transgression.

According to Pinker, the shift to a less violent world has come about gradually, and mostly because we've developed institutions "to pacify our inner demons and promote our better angels."

At the level of individual psychology, Pinker lists self-control, empathy, a sense of fairness and reason as attributes that also support our "better angels."

We are also more concerned about violence. Pinker pointed out that "whole categories of harm" have been redefined as violence. "Bullying on the playground is a new category of violence that we've been targeting, rightly so, I think," he said. "Fifty years ago that wouldn't have been called violence, that would have been called childhood. Boys will be boys." He goes on to mention domestic violence as another example of that kind of redefinition.

Though the media have contributed to our mistaken perception that we live in an increasingly violent world, Pinker recognizes that they also have a role to play in raising awareness. "There's a sense in which emphasizing the violence that remains is a positive force," Pinker said. "But it's also important to realize how far we've come."

by Steven Pinker

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From the publisher:

"The author of The New York Times bestseller The Stuff of Thought offers a controversial history of violence.

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?..."

Read more at Penguin Canada.