Steven Pinker Deduces All's Well

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."...

CBC Books - Steven Pinker on The Better Angels of Our Nature