Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York : Viking, 2011.
Description
We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the past was much worse. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: genocides in the Old Testament, gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm, monarchs who beheaded their relatives, and American founders who dueled with their rivals. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were common features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? Pinker argues that 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.--From publisher description.… (more)
Media reviews
But in its confidence and sweep, the vast timescale, its humane standpoint and its confident world-view, it is something more than a science book: it is an epic history by an optimist who can list his reasons to be cheerful and support them with persuasive instances.
I don't know if he's right,
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but I do think this book is a winner. Show Less
The biggest problem with the book, though, is its overreliance on history, which, like the light on a caboose, shows us only where we are not going.
“The Better Angels of Our Nature” is a supremely important book. To have command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of
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that decline. Show Less
While Pinker makes a great show of relying on evidence—the 700-odd pages of this bulky treatise are stuffed with impressive-looking graphs and statistics—his argument that violence is on the way out does not, in the end, rest on scientific investigation. He cites numerous reasons for the
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change, including increasing wealth and the spread of democracy. For him, none is as important as the adoption of a particular view of the world: “The reason so many violent institutions succumbed within so short a span of time was that the arguments that slew them belong to a coherent philosophy that emerged during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, David Hume, Mary Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and John Stuart Mill coalesced into a worldview that we can call Enlightenment humanism.” Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member WinterFox
The Better Angels of Our Nature falls into a category of book that I've come to think of as happy realization non-fiction. In these books, the author argues that despite what one may think due to exposure to regular media and conventional wisdom, matters in the world as they are now aren't nearly
Pinker's specific argument is that, in contrast to what's usually reported, the world has grown less violent over time, and that the current age we live in is the most peaceful and safest ever. As Pinker himself admits at the beginning of the book, this is not a concept that most people cotton to particularly quickly, what with all the reported violence and the idea of the 20th century being the bloodiest ever, etc. Pretty much everyone who saw me reading the book and stopped to talk about it with me found it a bit odd.
To convince us, then, Pinker marshals hundreds of pages of documentation showing that statistically, rates of violent death from large-scale wars on down through homicides, have been decreasing for a long while, over the course of centuries and then with further focus on decreases after World War II. He identifies four different periods over which the decline occurred, with different exogenous factors given for this change, such as the rise of the state, the emulation of courtly manners by the lower classes, the pacifying nature of commerce, the rising importance of the individual, etc. To me, the presentation of the statistics, and then the ideas behind them, are quite convincing. He also draws attention to how bad it really used to be, the casual cruelty and violence that used to occur regularly that we've lexified, but have forgotten what it means that torture and war were so commonplace that the terms made it in.
After this attempt to convince us of the rightness of his central claim, Pinker turns to an examination of what leads to violence, presenting studies of the neurological bases for different types of violence (e.g. predatory, sadistic, etc.) and psychological studies looking at what can cause people to work along those lines. He then looks at the titular better angels (e.g. empathy, self-control) in the same fashion, and describes where each of these are set within the brain, how they're expressed in psychological studies, and how, to some degree, they may have come to have the upper hand over violence.
Pinker is careful not to make any predictions about the continued lack of war between great powers, or the continuing fall of homicide, rape, and other violent crimes; he points out that only one leader who wants violence is necessary for such a war to occur, and when great power wars occur, they can often be incredibly costly. However, if our tendency towards violence has come to be more muted due to better self-control, to better abilities to take the perspective of others, to rises in symbolic intelligence, and I don't see these reversing course in the near future. That said, yeah, I wouldn't want to stake my reputation on it, either.
The writing style of the book is pretty lucid for the amount of statistics and argumentation in it, and he returns to themes regularly enough for you to know which of the points he's trying to make he wants you to go home with. There was, of course, a lot of violence, and graphic descriptions thereof, but there were also some lighter, more humorous moments in there to alleviate the dark pressure.
It's an interesting book, and I definitely enjoyed reading it. I tend to like his linguistics books more, but this is a worthy addition to his bibliography. If you need convincing about the way violence has been heading, give it a try. There may well be a happy realization waiting for you.
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as bad as they're made out to be, and in fact are greatly improved from how they once were. Other examples, just off the top of my head, include some of Gregg Easterbrook's work, like the Progress Paradox or A Moment on This Earth. I like reading books like this as an antidote to much of the other non-fiction I read, which tends to argue that things are getting worse all the time, with the point usually being that it is now urgent to stand and fight or donate money for their cause, or change your life right away, or sometimes just realize that everything's already gone to hell in a handbasket and there's nothing further to be done.Pinker's specific argument is that, in contrast to what's usually reported, the world has grown less violent over time, and that the current age we live in is the most peaceful and safest ever. As Pinker himself admits at the beginning of the book, this is not a concept that most people cotton to particularly quickly, what with all the reported violence and the idea of the 20th century being the bloodiest ever, etc. Pretty much everyone who saw me reading the book and stopped to talk about it with me found it a bit odd.
To convince us, then, Pinker marshals hundreds of pages of documentation showing that statistically, rates of violent death from large-scale wars on down through homicides, have been decreasing for a long while, over the course of centuries and then with further focus on decreases after World War II. He identifies four different periods over which the decline occurred, with different exogenous factors given for this change, such as the rise of the state, the emulation of courtly manners by the lower classes, the pacifying nature of commerce, the rising importance of the individual, etc. To me, the presentation of the statistics, and then the ideas behind them, are quite convincing. He also draws attention to how bad it really used to be, the casual cruelty and violence that used to occur regularly that we've lexified, but have forgotten what it means that torture and war were so commonplace that the terms made it in.
After this attempt to convince us of the rightness of his central claim, Pinker turns to an examination of what leads to violence, presenting studies of the neurological bases for different types of violence (e.g. predatory, sadistic, etc.) and psychological studies looking at what can cause people to work along those lines. He then looks at the titular better angels (e.g. empathy, self-control) in the same fashion, and describes where each of these are set within the brain, how they're expressed in psychological studies, and how, to some degree, they may have come to have the upper hand over violence.
Pinker is careful not to make any predictions about the continued lack of war between great powers, or the continuing fall of homicide, rape, and other violent crimes; he points out that only one leader who wants violence is necessary for such a war to occur, and when great power wars occur, they can often be incredibly costly. However, if our tendency towards violence has come to be more muted due to better self-control, to better abilities to take the perspective of others, to rises in symbolic intelligence, and I don't see these reversing course in the near future. That said, yeah, I wouldn't want to stake my reputation on it, either.
The writing style of the book is pretty lucid for the amount of statistics and argumentation in it, and he returns to themes regularly enough for you to know which of the points he's trying to make he wants you to go home with. There was, of course, a lot of violence, and graphic descriptions thereof, but there were also some lighter, more humorous moments in there to alleviate the dark pressure.
It's an interesting book, and I definitely enjoyed reading it. I tend to like his linguistics books more, but this is a worthy addition to his bibliography. If you need convincing about the way violence has been heading, give it a try. There may well be a happy realization waiting for you.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jcbrunner
Steven Pinker’s book hides its evil message well. You have to read the second-to-last chapter in this huge book to drill down to Pinker’s key message: There is less violence because humans are more intelligent now. The world should be ruled by the best and the brightest (of Harvard), the
As Pinker’s real message is as unpalatable as many other of Harvard’s claims, he has to repackage it, hide his ugly views by presenting the great Norbert Elias’ civilization process and amassing a huge amount of dubious statistics. Pinker is certainly right that the level of violence in the Western world has declined, although this statistic relies on the absence of Black Swan events. The huge killers of the 20th century that are the drivers behind Pinker’s downward trend were one of a kind events (WWI, WWII/Holocaust, Stalin, Mao). A nuclear bomb would obliterate Pinker’s trend.
Pinker is also wrong in attributing the decline in violence to the individual. He neglects the influence of Leviathan: Good government both protects the weak and offers non-violent means of conflict resolution. This also explains what Pinker cannot explain (apart a crude cultural origin honor and hidden in it racial explanation): Violence in the ghettoes is so much larger in the United States because their inhabitants do not have access to governmental conflict resolution mechanisms. Pinker also runs into the trouble of not being able to explain why the best nation of the world (“USA! USA! USA!”) is actually much more violent than the civilized world (Pinker doesn’t state it explicitly but the ideas of The Bell Curve are not very distant in his idea of dumb people creating more violence.).
Naturally, Pinker also ignores the harm caused by non-violent actions: The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was caused because the fat cats of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club failed to pay for the maintenance of the dam. Likewise, the poor of New Orleans suffered because the levies were not properly maintained. In Pinker’s view, these actions would not count (as long as they are not performed by Communists). Likewise, people dying in famines isn’t violence but force majeure. They could have chosen to be born to different parents (or, according to the Harvard educated philosopher Matthew Yglesias, they don’t value life as much).
"The better angels of our nature" is a piece of ideology rather than science. The origin of this book, in all likelihood, was Pinker's shock about the (on-going) American descent into the darkness of torture and murder. Pinker's belief in a steady progress of prosperity was shaken. In this book, he has assembled a large number of factoids to reassure his belief that this blip in violence is an aberration in the greater picture of diminishing violence. The montage results in much "truthiness" and will fool many (“mission accomplished”). Those with the stamina to read also the second to final chapter will see Pinker finally drop the masquerade: Violence is committed by stupid people. Education and genetic improvement will create a brave new world led by the best and the brightest. That exactly those people, many of them Harvard educated, have caused incredible misery and harm in the world escapes Pinker's perception. Then again, the book's purpose was re-assurance not truth.
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philosopher kings, the Elois, the alphas, keeping the Morlocks, the great unwashed people from the levers of power. Karl Popper fought against this totalitarian worldview in his great work The Open Society and Its Enemies. Pinker effectively allies himself with the open society’s enemies, good servant of the plutocracy that he is as are so many of his colleagues at Harvard, always defending the privileges of the few against the demands of the poor, the sick and the tired.As Pinker’s real message is as unpalatable as many other of Harvard’s claims, he has to repackage it, hide his ugly views by presenting the great Norbert Elias’ civilization process and amassing a huge amount of dubious statistics. Pinker is certainly right that the level of violence in the Western world has declined, although this statistic relies on the absence of Black Swan events. The huge killers of the 20th century that are the drivers behind Pinker’s downward trend were one of a kind events (WWI, WWII/Holocaust, Stalin, Mao). A nuclear bomb would obliterate Pinker’s trend.
Pinker is also wrong in attributing the decline in violence to the individual. He neglects the influence of Leviathan: Good government both protects the weak and offers non-violent means of conflict resolution. This also explains what Pinker cannot explain (apart a crude cultural origin honor and hidden in it racial explanation): Violence in the ghettoes is so much larger in the United States because their inhabitants do not have access to governmental conflict resolution mechanisms. Pinker also runs into the trouble of not being able to explain why the best nation of the world (“USA! USA! USA!”) is actually much more violent than the civilized world (Pinker doesn’t state it explicitly but the ideas of The Bell Curve are not very distant in his idea of dumb people creating more violence.).
Naturally, Pinker also ignores the harm caused by non-violent actions: The Johnstown Flood of 1889 was caused because the fat cats of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club failed to pay for the maintenance of the dam. Likewise, the poor of New Orleans suffered because the levies were not properly maintained. In Pinker’s view, these actions would not count (as long as they are not performed by Communists). Likewise, people dying in famines isn’t violence but force majeure. They could have chosen to be born to different parents (or, according to the Harvard educated philosopher Matthew Yglesias, they don’t value life as much).
"The better angels of our nature" is a piece of ideology rather than science. The origin of this book, in all likelihood, was Pinker's shock about the (on-going) American descent into the darkness of torture and murder. Pinker's belief in a steady progress of prosperity was shaken. In this book, he has assembled a large number of factoids to reassure his belief that this blip in violence is an aberration in the greater picture of diminishing violence. The montage results in much "truthiness" and will fool many (“mission accomplished”). Those with the stamina to read also the second to final chapter will see Pinker finally drop the masquerade: Violence is committed by stupid people. Education and genetic improvement will create a brave new world led by the best and the brightest. That exactly those people, many of them Harvard educated, have caused incredible misery and harm in the world escapes Pinker's perception. Then again, the book's purpose was re-assurance not truth.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Widsith
VIOLENCE HAS DECLINED, AND I WILL KICK THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ANYONE WHO SAYS IT HASN'T
Disappointingly, Pinker strikes a slightly less confrontational tone than that, but the basic idea is the same. His thesis is that violence of every kind, from international warfare down to murder and corporal
Not convinced? Wondering if village life in the 30s can really have been as bad as dodging rapists in today's inner cities? Well, prepare for approximately 8,266 graphs and charts proving you wrong in every direction. Leafing through them is at first daunting, then fascinating, then astonishing, and eventually wearying. But they keep coming!
The decline in some forms of violence is so dramatic that the figures have had to be plotted on a logarithmic scale, so vertiginous is their descent. Hitting kids – gone from normal to unacceptable in barely a generation. Murder rates? Dropping like a knackered lift. Paedophiles and child abduction? Statistically speaking, if you wanted your child to have a better-than-average chance of being abducted and held overnight by a stranger, ‘you'd have to leave it outside unattended for 750,000 years’. Terrorism, surely? Nope; in fact ‘the number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can increase the risk of dying’ – one study suggests that 1,500 more Americans died in the year after 9/11 because they started driving rather than flying.
Okay then, what about WAR. ‘As of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.’ This is important, because inter-state warfare is much, much more deadly than the small-'n'-nasty invasions and civil wars that are more common today. And even they are becoming less frequent and less individually deadly.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a happy-clappy book about mindless optimism, and he is assiduous in stressing that the situation could easily change.
The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them.
Pinker takes a good, long look at several possibilities, and (to my mind at least) identifies three major factors behind the decline. The first is the growth of democracy, which strongly correlates with lower rates of violence across the board, and we get the figures to prove it. The second is the revolution in communications, firstly during the Enlightenment, and then more recently with the birth of the mass media age. Again, huge numbers of studies are adduced to make the point.
The third factor is what he calls ‘feminization’: women are just less violent than men, and the more involved they are in a society the more peaceful it is. ‘We are all feminists now,’ he concludes, after a typically detailed examination of changing attitudes to, and rights of, women through history. (He is talking about the West here, but even elsewhere the trend is unmistakeable.) Studies suggest that this is not just a consequence of changing attitudes, but a cause of them, particularly given that ‘the one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men.’ Pinker hones in on the obvious implications:
Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? The question is just as interesting if the tense and mood are changed. Has the world become more peaceful because more women are in charge? And will the world become more peaceful when women are even more in charge? The answer to all three, I think, is a qualified yes.
When he's finished considering social movements and political changes, he pokes inside your brain. We have pages and pages of various neuro-sociological experiments where people were strapped to an MRI machine and told to slap a puffin in the face, or something, so that various lobes and cortexes could be identified and examined. The question is whether there are anatomical, or evolutionary-psychological, causes for violence, and if so how easily they can be overcome. We get a lot of impressive-looking diagrams like this (I may have remembered some of the details wrong).
Pinker is very interesting on the Flynn Effect, which, if you're not aware of it, is the upward trend in general intelligence observed around the world in standardised testing since such things began. Many people that have written on this subject are skeptical that folk nowadays can really be smarter than anatomically-identical humans of a few generations ago, despite what the tests say – but Pinker, after a careful examination of how thought processes are influenced by changing social norms, is not afraid to draw his conclusions, at least in the ethical sphere:
The other half of the sanity check is to ask whether our recent ancestors can really be considered morally retarded. The answer, I am prepared to argue, is yes. Though they were surely decent people with perfectly functioning brains, the collective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was as primitive by modern standards as their mineral spas and patent medicines are by the medical standards of today. Many of their beliefs can be considered not just monstrous but, in a very real sense, stupid.
Obviously we are into speculative territory here, but I actually found it very heartening and thought-provoking to see someone prepared to follow the evidence that far.
How's it written? His style is exact without being dense, although he is not averse to the odd cliché (‘capital punishment itself was on death row’), and from time to time his desire to cloak the science in colourful imagery leads him into some awkward prose:
The age distribution of a population changes slowly, as each demographic pig makes its way through the population python.
Yikes. Also…and this may sound like a weird thing to pick up on, but once I noticed it I couldn't take my eyes off it…he is absolutely obsessed with telling the reader to ‘recall’ things he's already said.
Recall the mathematical law that a variable will fall into a power-law distribution…
Recall from chapter 3 that the number of political units in Europe shrank…
Recall that there were two counter-Enlightenments…
Recall that the statistics of deadly quarrels show no signature of war-weariness.
…and recall that duelling was eventually laughed into extinction.
Recall that the chance that two people in a room of fifty-seven will share a birthday is ninety-nine out of a hundred.
England and the United States, recall, had prepared the ground for their democracies…
Recall that for half a millennium the wealthy countries of Europe were constantly at each other's throats.
Cronin, recall, showed that terrorist organizations drop like flies over time…
And recall the global Gallup survey that showed…
Recall that narcissism can trigger violence…
Recall that the insula lights up when people feel they have been shortchanged…
Patients with orbital damage, recall, are impulsive…
Recall from chapter 3 the theory of crime…
Just how much stuff are you expecting me to remember, Pinker?! And surely someone who wrote three books on language has a fucking thesaurus handy?
There are a couple of minor errors, too, that an editor should have caught. The Polish city of Wrocław is printed in my edition as ‘Wroctaw’; and he also refers to some statistics gathered in the ‘town of Kent’ (there are dozens of towns in Kent, which in the dataset concerned is a county).
However, and despite my sometimes flippant tone in this review, the truth is that I thought this was a magnificent book – convincingly argued and truly multidisciplinary, so that I felt like I was getting a synthesis of the important studies carried out in half a dozen different fields. It's a big, serious argument that deserves proper consideration, and one that'll give you some ammo to argue back next time you're feeling cynical about the relentless news headlines. I think it's a clear 4.5.
Disappointingly, Pinker strikes a slightly less confrontational tone than that, but the basic idea is the same. His thesis is that violence of every kind, from international warfare down to murder and corporal
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punishment, has been on a steady decline throughout human history, up to and including the present day – and not only does he make this case in considerable detail, but he goes on to give a very wide-ranging discussion of possible political and psychological causes for what's happened. This book is big, and it needs to be: it's built around a vast accumulation of raw evidence. Historical, statistical, sociological, neurobiological, and anecdotal – and I'm slightly confused by some of the negative reviews here, because although you might not like all of his conclusions, it's not easy to argue with the facts when they're laid out in this much detail.Not convinced? Wondering if village life in the 30s can really have been as bad as dodging rapists in today's inner cities? Well, prepare for approximately 8,266 graphs and charts proving you wrong in every direction. Leafing through them is at first daunting, then fascinating, then astonishing, and eventually wearying. But they keep coming!
The decline in some forms of violence is so dramatic that the figures have had to be plotted on a logarithmic scale, so vertiginous is their descent. Hitting kids – gone from normal to unacceptable in barely a generation. Murder rates? Dropping like a knackered lift. Paedophiles and child abduction? Statistically speaking, if you wanted your child to have a better-than-average chance of being abducted and held overnight by a stranger, ‘you'd have to leave it outside unattended for 750,000 years’. Terrorism, surely? Nope; in fact ‘the number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that even minor measures to avoid them can increase the risk of dying’ – one study suggests that 1,500 more Americans died in the year after 9/11 because they started driving rather than flying.
Okay then, what about WAR. ‘As of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.’ This is important, because inter-state warfare is much, much more deadly than the small-'n'-nasty invasions and civil wars that are more common today. And even they are becoming less frequent and less individually deadly.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a happy-clappy book about mindless optimism, and he is assiduous in stressing that the situation could easily change.
The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them.
Pinker takes a good, long look at several possibilities, and (to my mind at least) identifies three major factors behind the decline. The first is the growth of democracy, which strongly correlates with lower rates of violence across the board, and we get the figures to prove it. The second is the revolution in communications, firstly during the Enlightenment, and then more recently with the birth of the mass media age. Again, huge numbers of studies are adduced to make the point.
The third factor is what he calls ‘feminization’: women are just less violent than men, and the more involved they are in a society the more peaceful it is. ‘We are all feminists now,’ he concludes, after a typically detailed examination of changing attitudes to, and rights of, women through history. (He is talking about the West here, but even elsewhere the trend is unmistakeable.) Studies suggest that this is not just a consequence of changing attitudes, but a cause of them, particularly given that ‘the one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men.’ Pinker hones in on the obvious implications:
Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? The question is just as interesting if the tense and mood are changed. Has the world become more peaceful because more women are in charge? And will the world become more peaceful when women are even more in charge? The answer to all three, I think, is a qualified yes.
When he's finished considering social movements and political changes, he pokes inside your brain. We have pages and pages of various neuro-sociological experiments where people were strapped to an MRI machine and told to slap a puffin in the face, or something, so that various lobes and cortexes could be identified and examined. The question is whether there are anatomical, or evolutionary-psychological, causes for violence, and if so how easily they can be overcome. We get a lot of impressive-looking diagrams like this (I may have remembered some of the details wrong).
Pinker is very interesting on the Flynn Effect, which, if you're not aware of it, is the upward trend in general intelligence observed around the world in standardised testing since such things began. Many people that have written on this subject are skeptical that folk nowadays can really be smarter than anatomically-identical humans of a few generations ago, despite what the tests say – but Pinker, after a careful examination of how thought processes are influenced by changing social norms, is not afraid to draw his conclusions, at least in the ethical sphere:
The other half of the sanity check is to ask whether our recent ancestors can really be considered morally retarded. The answer, I am prepared to argue, is yes. Though they were surely decent people with perfectly functioning brains, the collective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was as primitive by modern standards as their mineral spas and patent medicines are by the medical standards of today. Many of their beliefs can be considered not just monstrous but, in a very real sense, stupid.
Obviously we are into speculative territory here, but I actually found it very heartening and thought-provoking to see someone prepared to follow the evidence that far.
How's it written? His style is exact without being dense, although he is not averse to the odd cliché (‘capital punishment itself was on death row’), and from time to time his desire to cloak the science in colourful imagery leads him into some awkward prose:
The age distribution of a population changes slowly, as each demographic pig makes its way through the population python.
Yikes. Also…and this may sound like a weird thing to pick up on, but once I noticed it I couldn't take my eyes off it…he is absolutely obsessed with telling the reader to ‘recall’ things he's already said.
Recall the mathematical law that a variable will fall into a power-law distribution…
Recall from chapter 3 that the number of political units in Europe shrank…
Recall that there were two counter-Enlightenments…
Recall that the statistics of deadly quarrels show no signature of war-weariness.
…and recall that duelling was eventually laughed into extinction.
Recall that the chance that two people in a room of fifty-seven will share a birthday is ninety-nine out of a hundred.
England and the United States, recall, had prepared the ground for their democracies…
Recall that for half a millennium the wealthy countries of Europe were constantly at each other's throats.
Cronin, recall, showed that terrorist organizations drop like flies over time…
And recall the global Gallup survey that showed…
Recall that narcissism can trigger violence…
Recall that the insula lights up when people feel they have been shortchanged…
Patients with orbital damage, recall, are impulsive…
Recall from chapter 3 the theory of crime…
Just how much stuff are you expecting me to remember, Pinker?! And surely someone who wrote three books on language has a fucking thesaurus handy?
There are a couple of minor errors, too, that an editor should have caught. The Polish city of Wrocław is printed in my edition as ‘Wroctaw’; and he also refers to some statistics gathered in the ‘town of Kent’ (there are dozens of towns in Kent, which in the dataset concerned is a county).
However, and despite my sometimes flippant tone in this review, the truth is that I thought this was a magnificent book – convincingly argued and truly multidisciplinary, so that I felt like I was getting a synthesis of the important studies carried out in half a dozen different fields. It's a big, serious argument that deserves proper consideration, and one that'll give you some ammo to argue back next time you're feeling cynical about the relentless news headlines. I think it's a clear 4.5.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AsYouKnow_Bob
I was fully prepared to hate this, and didn't hate it.
Pinker is controversial, if not an outright figure-of-fun*, but the case he builds here is not wrong on its face.
I was leery of some of his sources (there's no excuse for giving citation juice to a hate website) , and some of his graphs are
The thesis - which he's pretty coy about, and only reveals after about 650 pages - is that life is better today because people are smarter. Uh, OK: Pinker is a psychologist, and thinks that the grand sweep of historical progress is due to psychological factors.
That's not wrong on its face, but I'd think he's slighting the material conditions that support the luxury of viewing competing human claims as equivalent. Hungry, desperate people are funny about seeing the validity of other's claims to resources.
* (E.g.: In the course of the month I spent reading this, I ran a cross a review by one of the editors of the LRB, a review of three books about Google that had absolutely NOTHING TO DO with Pinker. And in the Oct 6th LRB, - out of a clear blue sky - there was an offhand observation made about the importance of citation-ranking on reputation:
"Rankings based on citations aren't necessarily a measure of excellence - if they were, we wouldn't hear so much about Steven Pinker - but they do reflect where humans have decided that authority lies."
Pinker is now a standing example of someone whose reputation is overrated.)
Pinker is controversial, if not an outright figure-of-fun*, but the case he builds here is not wrong on its face.
I was leery of some of his sources (there's no excuse for giving citation juice to a hate website) , and some of his graphs are
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simply Crimes Against Tufte, but the case he makes is certainly well-supported. The thesis - which he's pretty coy about, and only reveals after about 650 pages - is that life is better today because people are smarter. Uh, OK: Pinker is a psychologist, and thinks that the grand sweep of historical progress is due to psychological factors.
That's not wrong on its face, but I'd think he's slighting the material conditions that support the luxury of viewing competing human claims as equivalent. Hungry, desperate people are funny about seeing the validity of other's claims to resources.
* (E.g.: In the course of the month I spent reading this, I ran a cross a review by one of the editors of the LRB, a review of three books about Google that had absolutely NOTHING TO DO with Pinker. And in the Oct 6th LRB, - out of a clear blue sky - there was an offhand observation made about the importance of citation-ranking on reputation:
"Rankings based on citations aren't necessarily a measure of excellence - if they were, we wouldn't hear so much about Steven Pinker - but they do reflect where humans have decided that authority lies."
Pinker is now a standing example of someone whose reputation is overrated.)
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LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
I have read enough history to agree with Steven Pinker's thesis in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" that the trend of human existence has been toward less violence, less cruelty and more tolerance. Yet most people, aware of ongoing wars, global terrorism, mass shootings, the soaring murder rate in
Pinker takes nearly 700 pages to make his case, and though he often strays from science into opinion, it is a sound one. War, if still commonplace, is not as common as it once was. Nor is the mistreatment of animals, the owning of slaves, the burning of witches, the torture of criminals, the spanking of children, the beating of wives or the persecution of minorities and, despite what has been taking place at those college campuses, those who hold unpopular points of view.
The reasons are many. For one thing, people everywhere seem to be getting smarter. IQs keep rising. Smart people are more likely to realize that violence may not be the smartest way to solve a problem. (Again those college protestors stand as a notable exception.)
Before the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, human rights were not something most people even thought about. Now, in much of the world at least, everyone thinks of and speaks of rights. You can't walk into a doctor's office without being told of your right of privacy. All those groups of people who once had few rights now have them written into law. Recognizing the rights of others has led to less violence. (And once again those college protestors are an exception to the rule.)
Stronger central government, a government with a license to put down violence with violence when necessary, has been vital to the pacification of the populace. When someone damages your car, you call the cops; you don't try to resolve the matter yourself with your fists or a gun.
Trade and international organizations, says Pinker, have made countries less inclined to go to war. Why invade a neighboring country when you are already getting what you want from it through trade?
Pinker develops these ideas, and others, in great detail, complete with graphs and illustrations. Much of what he says will surprise you, much will probably anger you. Whether or not he is correct on all points, I think he is right on the central one: Human beings are less prone to violence than we once were.
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Chicago and the violent protests on certain college campuses whenever conservatives try to express an opinion might believe otherwise.Pinker takes nearly 700 pages to make his case, and though he often strays from science into opinion, it is a sound one. War, if still commonplace, is not as common as it once was. Nor is the mistreatment of animals, the owning of slaves, the burning of witches, the torture of criminals, the spanking of children, the beating of wives or the persecution of minorities and, despite what has been taking place at those college campuses, those who hold unpopular points of view.
The reasons are many. For one thing, people everywhere seem to be getting smarter. IQs keep rising. Smart people are more likely to realize that violence may not be the smartest way to solve a problem. (Again those college protestors stand as a notable exception.)
Before the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, human rights were not something most people even thought about. Now, in much of the world at least, everyone thinks of and speaks of rights. You can't walk into a doctor's office without being told of your right of privacy. All those groups of people who once had few rights now have them written into law. Recognizing the rights of others has led to less violence. (And once again those college protestors are an exception to the rule.)
Stronger central government, a government with a license to put down violence with violence when necessary, has been vital to the pacification of the populace. When someone damages your car, you call the cops; you don't try to resolve the matter yourself with your fists or a gun.
Trade and international organizations, says Pinker, have made countries less inclined to go to war. Why invade a neighboring country when you are already getting what you want from it through trade?
Pinker develops these ideas, and others, in great detail, complete with graphs and illustrations. Much of what he says will surprise you, much will probably anger you. Whether or not he is correct on all points, I think he is right on the central one: Human beings are less prone to violence than we once were.
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LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing
Pinker attempts to study trends of violence throughout human history. He sees a decline in violence of all kinds, on all scales of time and magnitude. The first seven chapters document the historical decline of violence, including hate crimes, murders, domestic violence, animal cruelty, war, and
To sum up, here are the factors that don't show a consistent relationship with violence: weaponry and disarmament (when people want to be violent, they'll do so regardless of available weaponry and rapidly develop more, whereas when they want to be peaceful, the weapons are not used), resources (wealth originates not just from natural resources but also the ingenuity, effort, and cooperation used on resources. A country rich in minerals could experience more war and civil unrest while everyone scrambles for it, or less because other actors rationally understand that peacefully trading will result in more money for everyone), affluence (wealth doesn't correlate with dips in violence, nor are richer countries less violent), or religion (ideologies can be used for violence or for peace). Factors that do show a consistent relationship with violence: a state that uses a monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another, commerce, women's involvement in decision making and society's respect for the interests of women, the expansion of the circle of sympathy, and increased use of reason. I've stuck points that particularly struck me in the "status updates" section; go there for more specifics and quotes.
I was overall impressed. The sheer number and breadth of sources Pinker draws upon is really impressive; even if you discount a number of the facts or his interpretation of them (for instance, I don't believe that a test showign differences in men and women's reaction to hypothetical cheating necessarily reveals an innate, biological difference between the sexes when it could just as easily be due to being socialized to react and think about sex differently), there still remain a mountain of evidence upon which his arguments can still rest. I also think this book suffers from an unfortunate tendency to focus on 19th and 20th century Western Europe and the USA; relatively modern western thought and social movements are given vastly more time and attention than any others, and although I understand that Pinker can draw upon those traditions most readily (and can count on his English-speaking audience to do the same), I still wish a global history of violence used more a more global lens. His data on violent crime, wars, and genocides is decidedly global, but his anecdotes, examples, and the philosophies he draws from are almost exclusively western. That said, his arguments convinced me. I think he demonstrates pretty conclusively that violence, both as a whole and as individual categories, has decreased over time, and his theories as to why made sense to me.
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genocide. The remainder of the book traces probable causes of the decline, drawing on a huge range of fact sources, from histories to atrocologists to evolutionary psychologists. To sum up, here are the factors that don't show a consistent relationship with violence: weaponry and disarmament (when people want to be violent, they'll do so regardless of available weaponry and rapidly develop more, whereas when they want to be peaceful, the weapons are not used), resources (wealth originates not just from natural resources but also the ingenuity, effort, and cooperation used on resources. A country rich in minerals could experience more war and civil unrest while everyone scrambles for it, or less because other actors rationally understand that peacefully trading will result in more money for everyone), affluence (wealth doesn't correlate with dips in violence, nor are richer countries less violent), or religion (ideologies can be used for violence or for peace). Factors that do show a consistent relationship with violence: a state that uses a monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another, commerce, women's involvement in decision making and society's respect for the interests of women, the expansion of the circle of sympathy, and increased use of reason. I've stuck points that particularly struck me in the "status updates" section; go there for more specifics and quotes.
I was overall impressed. The sheer number and breadth of sources Pinker draws upon is really impressive; even if you discount a number of the facts or his interpretation of them (for instance, I don't believe that a test showign differences in men and women's reaction to hypothetical cheating necessarily reveals an innate, biological difference between the sexes when it could just as easily be due to being socialized to react and think about sex differently), there still remain a mountain of evidence upon which his arguments can still rest. I also think this book suffers from an unfortunate tendency to focus on 19th and 20th century Western Europe and the USA; relatively modern western thought and social movements are given vastly more time and attention than any others, and although I understand that Pinker can draw upon those traditions most readily (and can count on his English-speaking audience to do the same), I still wish a global history of violence used more a more global lens. His data on violent crime, wars, and genocides is decidedly global, but his anecdotes, examples, and the philosophies he draws from are almost exclusively western. That said, his arguments convinced me. I think he demonstrates pretty conclusively that violence, both as a whole and as individual categories, has decreased over time, and his theories as to why made sense to me.
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LibraryThing member oparaxenos
I picked up this book by chance in a bookstore, and did not know I was in for a reading adventure. With great sensitivity and a marvellous sense of humour, Pinker lays out the justification of his surprising thesis that violence in today's world is at its lowest level in human history. Along the
His insights into the role of reading as an important contributor to the pacification of the world, and to the indispensability of human reason to the betterment of our species are profund and inspiring.
This was a true tour de force, introducing me to dozens of insights that never would have occurred to me otherwise. The book at 840 pages is somewhat of a long slog, but it was a very good investment of my reading time.
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way, he gives the reader lessons in the darker periods of world history, in the physiology of the human brain, and in the evolutionary reasons for why people act as they do. His insights into the role of reading as an important contributor to the pacification of the world, and to the indispensability of human reason to the betterment of our species are profund and inspiring.
This was a true tour de force, introducing me to dozens of insights that never would have occurred to me otherwise. The book at 840 pages is somewhat of a long slog, but it was a very good investment of my reading time.
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LibraryThing member StigE
Throwing in the towel two-thirds through.
The first part of the book is quite interesting and Pinker successfully argues that we now live in a much less violence-prone world.
He then goes on to talk about the whys, and this part is both less convincing and intensely tedious. I felt that at times he
Worth reading for the first half. Avoid the rest when you start gnawing on your arms in boredom.
The first part of the book is quite interesting and Pinker successfully argues that we now live in a much less violence-prone world.
He then goes on to talk about the whys, and this part is both less convincing and intensely tedious. I felt that at times he
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overstated the evidence and walked very close to woo territory. Worth reading for the first half. Avoid the rest when you start gnawing on your arms in boredom.
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LibraryThing member carolynjray
Outstanding. Pinker's engaging style draws you in - in spite of offputting dense copy. Recounting the violence of the old testament is shocking but true. Debunks the Freakonomics guys, Levitt & Dubner re the cause of crime decline in 1990s was due to Roe v Wade - see pp 119-120. The Pacifist's
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Dilemma - p 679 - pacifism per se works only when the other country is also pacifist. But how tomove toward a pacifist goal? Several ways - the Leviathan - a strong state keeps violence under control - gentle commerce - trade makes war less appealing - feminization - women's are simply less inclined to violence - expanding empathy and reason - made more possible with education and connection via media. Show Less
LibraryThing member Lovering
I enjoyed his arguments and his collection of data from different historical surveys and textual study, but I found the overall structure of the book longwinded and incoherent. Pinker jumped around throughout history, when the obvious structure of the book would follow time, as violence has
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decreased through time. Also, many of his causal explanations were lacking. Show Less
LibraryThing member nmele
Steven Pinker has written a very ambitious book exploring the decline of violence over human history and the possible reasons for that decline. Some of his data sets seem to me too small for the weight he puts upon them, like the incidence of spanking to discipline children, but the evidence that
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violence is declining is very strong, and Pinker''s book is bringing that evidence to a broad public. I was more interested and more excited by his discussion of possible mechanisms for the decline in violence. This book is a long read, but well worth the time spent on it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Niecierpek
Do you know what hemoclysm is? Or, what the difference between genocide, democide and policide is? If you don’t, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because they all mean different types of mass murder. The good news is that they are all on the decline. Violence is on the decline on the whole,
It shouldn’t come as such a surprise because when you think of it we do live in a much more civilized time than ever before. Yet, it doesn’t feel that way every time we hear about an insane idiot killing schoolchildren or of other awful atrocities perpetrated somewhere in the world, so it’s nice to have it supported with numbers. Violence is on the decline across the board when numbers of crimes are calculated relative to the populations in which they occur.
Regardless of its uplifting thesis, it is a difficult book to read. It is oppressive from time to time with all the minute analysis of violence and its research overkill. I felt oppressed by the amount of violence described and by all the ways people have caused harm to other people. But, it’s a wonderfully argued book, and Pinker cannot be accused of not having given enough proof to support his theses. It’s that sometimes it just feels we have too much.
I loved the vindication of humanism, rationalism, democracy, feminism, human and animal rights, and old and boring Hobbesian political philosophy. It is a superb book, but you don't know how glad I was when I finally finished it. It may be his best book so far though, and I thought nothing was going to beat Blank Slate.
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actually.It shouldn’t come as such a surprise because when you think of it we do live in a much more civilized time than ever before. Yet, it doesn’t feel that way every time we hear about an insane idiot killing schoolchildren or of other awful atrocities perpetrated somewhere in the world, so it’s nice to have it supported with numbers. Violence is on the decline across the board when numbers of crimes are calculated relative to the populations in which they occur.
Regardless of its uplifting thesis, it is a difficult book to read. It is oppressive from time to time with all the minute analysis of violence and its research overkill. I felt oppressed by the amount of violence described and by all the ways people have caused harm to other people. But, it’s a wonderfully argued book, and Pinker cannot be accused of not having given enough proof to support his theses. It’s that sometimes it just feels we have too much.
I loved the vindication of humanism, rationalism, democracy, feminism, human and animal rights, and old and boring Hobbesian political philosophy. It is a superb book, but you don't know how glad I was when I finally finished it. It may be his best book so far though, and I thought nothing was going to beat Blank Slate.
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LibraryThing member lizday
I first became interested in this book through a TED talk Pinker gave on the same subject. It was a fascinating idea (that violence that greatly decreased over time) and one that struck me as true fairly quickly. Picking up the book, I was shocked by the many instances of barbarism of past
However, where the book fell apart for me was in Pinker's reliance on evolutionary psychology, particularly in relation to differences between genders and between races. Evo-psych is not a discipline I have a lot of respect for (most of its claims are unfalsifiable and supported by little to no evidence) but I pride myself on being openminded and was willing to hear out Pinker's evidence that this differences are primarily the product of evolution, not society. The only problem was he never presented any.
If I was being generous, I might say he provided some anecdotal evidence, but as far as hard, scientific evidence, crickets. It was actually quite jarring in contrast to heavily evidence-backed claims of the rest of the book. I hadn't been too familiar with Pinker's work before picking this up, but it turns out he has a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing.
I still think there are many good ideas in the book but Pinker's embracing of some very morally and scientifically dubious ones calls the whole thing into question.
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centuries that modern persons would never even consider. Some may find the length of the book and Pinker's many examples for each point excessive, but I greatly enjoyed the thorough exploration of the myriad strange forms human violence has taken. Pinker's comparison of cultures separated by time and space was well done and backed up by a lot of statistical evidence. (He was also careful analyze the possible limitations of the statistics he cited.)However, where the book fell apart for me was in Pinker's reliance on evolutionary psychology, particularly in relation to differences between genders and between races. Evo-psych is not a discipline I have a lot of respect for (most of its claims are unfalsifiable and supported by little to no evidence) but I pride myself on being openminded and was willing to hear out Pinker's evidence that this differences are primarily the product of evolution, not society. The only problem was he never presented any.
If I was being generous, I might say he provided some anecdotal evidence, but as far as hard, scientific evidence, crickets. It was actually quite jarring in contrast to heavily evidence-backed claims of the rest of the book. I hadn't been too familiar with Pinker's work before picking this up, but it turns out he has a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing.
I still think there are many good ideas in the book but Pinker's embracing of some very morally and scientifically dubious ones calls the whole thing into question.
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LibraryThing member barlow304
An amazing blend of evolutionary psychology, sociology, neuroscience, statistics, and history, Professor Pinker’s book takes the reader on a tour of our violent past from pre-history nomadic raids up to the ethnic cleansings of today. His point: as a species we have become progressively less
But why has violence declined? After considering our brain structures and the results of numerous psychology experiments (often humorously recounted), Pinker settles on five key developments: the government as Leviathan, the influence of “gentle commerce”, feminization of culture—that is, taking the interests and welfare of women seriously--, our ability to create an expanding circle of empathy, and “the escalator of reason”.
A large, heavy book, it is lightened somewhat by the author’s quick wit and smooth style.
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violent. Fewer murders and wars, fewer deadly quarrels, fewer rapes, less cruelty and abuse all are carefully documented in this fine, well-written book. But why has violence declined? After considering our brain structures and the results of numerous psychology experiments (often humorously recounted), Pinker settles on five key developments: the government as Leviathan, the influence of “gentle commerce”, feminization of culture—that is, taking the interests and welfare of women seriously--, our ability to create an expanding circle of empathy, and “the escalator of reason”.
A large, heavy book, it is lightened somewhat by the author’s quick wit and smooth style.
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LibraryThing member MarkBeronte
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
This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.
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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?This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the essence of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives- the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away-and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society.
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LibraryThing member rivkat
If you can stand evolutionary psychology, this is a very interesting book arguing that violence, while still a huge problem, has declined substantially across many categories of behaviors, from wars to intimate violence to animal cruelty. Pinker argues that literacy and rationality have contributed
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to the decline: both lead us to put ourselves in other people’s positions, and make it harder for us to explain why I should be able to hurt you just because I am me and you are not. He also suggests that cleanliness/health may have something to do with it too: it’s very easy to make the fundamental attribution error of concluding that people who live in bad conditions are therefore bad. I wish I could write the essay about this book’s perspective on human nature versus that of David Graeber’s Debt, because Pinker seems to believe that money/market capitalism is the natural form of mutually beneficial exchange, when Graeber makes a strong case that reciprocal indebtedness without measurement is more firmly rooted in human history. Show Less
LibraryThing member eglinton
Society is not broken, and the world is less scarred by violence than at any time in history. It's not a jungle out there. In fact, we're all getting nicer and nicer, except perhaps in a few marginal places, far from Harvard. Yes, Dr Pangloss is in the house, as the amiable Steven Pinker offers
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some perspective on our contemporary world. His thesis is fair enough, and indeed quickly stated - that law, government and rationalism have reduced much of the brutishness that previous generations suffered under. But he spins it out over such garrulous length that one is pretty much obliged to skim the book. It's always enjoyable to read despite the author's excesses of style, but in the end too Eurocentric, and has no special insight for predicting what will come next. Will we perhaps all go veggy or tolerate currently taboo sexual relations? No, no, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds (or in the current rendering: "Everything is awesome, ..."). Show Less
LibraryThing member MahaErwin
Another brilliant read from a wise old professor.
LibraryThing member starcat
Required reading for anyone who cares about the State and its relation to violence. The charts and graphs detailing the decline of violence are convincing. The proffered explanations less so, but Pinker isn't trying to be authoritative. They are intriguing and well developed, and give much to think
4.5 stars on completion (oc)
After a few months: I find myself frequently using arguments from this book, to great effect. It remains a 4.5 star book.
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about. A lot of neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology, and game theory.4.5 stars on completion (oc)
After a few months: I find myself frequently using arguments from this book, to great effect. It remains a 4.5 star book.
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LibraryThing member mbmackay
This is a mighty book about a very interesting and surprising piece of information - the decline of violence in almost all forms across most societies in the world.
Pinker piles up the data from an amazing range of sources until even the most sceptical reader must be convinced - levels of violence
Then Pinker tries to go through causes and contributory factors. And there are many. The first is the role of an effective state in its "monopoly of violence". As Locke stressed in the Leviathan, man not living in an organised state lives in a state of war. Then there are many others to follow - a general "civilising process"; the enlightenment, the growth in empathy that flowed from the widespread consumption of fiction made possible by the printing process and the growth in literacy levels are key factors.
I think there is a shorter book in here, but that is not Pinker's style. And with such a great story to tell, it is hard to criticise.
Read October 2014.
Pinker piles up the data from an amazing range of sources until even the most sceptical reader must be convinced - levels of violence
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really have fallen, and to a quite amazing degree.Then Pinker tries to go through causes and contributory factors. And there are many. The first is the role of an effective state in its "monopoly of violence". As Locke stressed in the Leviathan, man not living in an organised state lives in a state of war. Then there are many others to follow - a general "civilising process"; the enlightenment, the growth in empathy that flowed from the widespread consumption of fiction made possible by the printing process and the growth in literacy levels are key factors.
I think there is a shorter book in here, but that is not Pinker's style. And with such a great story to tell, it is hard to criticise.
Read October 2014.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
I have recently learned about some stunning statistical anomalies and misinterpretations in here which I had shamefully missed. A simple understanding of Chinese history in the 20th century already seems to be a profound stumbling block for this hypothesis. The jury is out. Further deliberation
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continues. Show Less
LibraryThing member superant
Better Angels of Our Nature is a very ambitious book. I admire the goal and premise of the book. Attempting to prove a premise like this is probably impossible at this time. The required additional models needed as proof are themselves on weak ground, so in order to reach the conclusions Pinker
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seeks, we must accept many other premises and conclusions. This is a common issue that confronts us on social and cultural challenges. The question seems straightforward: is there less violent death in the present century than in previous centuries. But this question depends on many other questions. Can we trust the demographic records at the present time and from previous times? Which deaths are considered violent deaths? Likely, more people die from disease in each war, than from stabbing or shooting. The populations have changed, so how do we adjust for numbers of dead? So while I applaud the intent of the book, I believe the weight of evidence depends less on charts, graphs and numbers and more on clearly defining models under which a valid answer can be obtained. Probably a good reason to read this book would be to see how this type of question can be approached and to encourage other people to take on these types of questions. Show Less
LibraryThing member JosephKing6602
A very engaging book that combined history/science/politics/economics/psychology as it impacts violence, and (counter-intuitively) the decline in violence... It was very broad in scope and massive in length...but well worth reading. Pinker reminds us that we can often gain insights by carefully and
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thoroughly looking at empirical evidence. Data is king! Show Less
LibraryThing member St.CroixSue
Brilliant book combining psychology, history, sociology, cognitive science, and economics illustrating in a stunning fashion that the world of the past was violent and atrocious, and we are now living in the best of times. Long, fascinating and important book.
LibraryThing member Daniel.Estes
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Mr. Pinker makes an exhaustively credible case for why violence has declined throughout recorded history. Accounting for natural human biases, his optimistic and scientific view of the available data shows that people, from one generation to the next, are
The examples and specific statistics given are fascinating and often suprising, but this is a long book. I can't help but wonder if Mr. Pinker could have made his point in half as many pages because his overall message is important, and certainly some brevity would have made Better Angles a more accessible read.
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learning to be better people. It's a common misconception that rates of violence have increased given what we see on the 24-hour news cycle, but in reality the opposite is true. So true in fact that the period since World War II has been dubbed "The Long Peace."The examples and specific statistics given are fascinating and often suprising, but this is a long book. I can't help but wonder if Mr. Pinker could have made his point in half as many pages because his overall message is important, and certainly some brevity would have made Better Angles a more accessible read.
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Awards
Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize (Shortlist — 2012)
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (Shortlist — 2012)
Cundill History Prize (Finalist — 2012)
Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize (Nominee — 2012)
Language
Original publication date
2011-10
ISBN
9780670022953