At a recent presentation at the Jaipur Literature Festival, on January 21, 2012, popular science author Steven Pinker presented his theory on declining violence that forms the basis of his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.
Introduced by well-known Indian TV journalist and columnist Barkha Dutt, Pinker went into the details of his theory based on five stages or historical developments that aided the decline in violence.
According to Pinker, there are five consecutive stages that furthered a decline in violence across the ages from hunter-gatherer societies to today. State-building, the nationalization of criminal justice, education and literacy, shorter durations of wars and mobilization by various interest groups, respectively, played a huge role on the path to less violence.
A Long Period of Peace Since World War II
Though doubtlessly the 20th century has been the most violent in history, there has been a long period of peace since World War II and fewer civil wars since 1991. The five stages that Pinker mentioned are the following:
- Transition from non-state societies to state-building ones
- A civilizing process in the Middle Ages
- A humanitarian revolution fuelled by the Enlightenment
- A period of long peace since World War II
- The Civil Rights movement
The Possible Reasons for a Decline in Violence
Speculating about why violence has declined, Pinker discounted the possibility that violence had “simply been bred out of us” and cited people today having violent fantasies about killing people they have problems with as proof. “Pro-violent forces” like dominance, revenge and moralistic violence (ie, the urge to punish someone who has committed a sin) are thus still with us. Certainly, the concept and definition of violence has also shifted, and cruelty is not displayed as entertainment any more.
“Anti-violent forces” or the “better angels”, like self-control, the ability to anticipate negative consequences, empathy, moral sense, reason and other such qualities, balance out the pro-violent ones. In addition, current societies tend to outsource revenge to the state by applying and trusting in the justice system. A more likely reason for a decline in violence is for Pinker an increase in what he calls “gentle trade”. Due to better infrastructure and technology, trade routes have expanded.
Plus, the internet and social media have expanded our understanding of other cultures and people and turned the world into the often-quoted “global village”. Or, as Pinker puts it: “People become more valuable alive than dead.” For example, “China makes all the US’ stuff and the US owes them too much money to go to war.” Pinker ended his fast and information-packed presentation by suggesting we do not forget the question of why there is peace and focus on what we have been doing right.
Interested in All Aspects of Language and the Mind
Born in 1954 in Montreal, Canada, Steven Pinker graduated with a bachelor’s degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in 1976. He earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1979 and then did a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. With short interruptions, he taught at MIT from 1982 to 2003, when he went back to Harvard where he currently is a Harvard College professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in psychology.
Since his graduate studies, Pinker has been interested in all aspects of language and the mind and is the chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. In 1994, he published the first of a series of books written for a general audience, The Language Instinct. How the Mind Works followed in 1997; Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language in 1999; The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature in 2002; The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature and his latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined in 2011.
Simone Preuss - Simone is a freelance writer, editor and translator who decided to go solo after a successful career in publishing. That was more than ...
