January 2, 2013
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A History of Violence
Recently, there has been much focus on gun control, senseless violence, unthinkable acts that have caused nationwide anguish. I have no opinion on gun control, personally. I can see and even agree with both sides, so I am not addressing this issue. That is not what this post is about. This post is simply about the book I found, and how it made me believe the world isn’t as ugly as it has been throughout history.
Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology, wrote a lengthy book called “The Better Angels of Our Nature”. This book studies the history of humankind, and reveals the decline of violence in our world. I am not even finished with it, but I am so grateful I found it. There’s no way to sum up even what I have read this far in a single post, so I am going to try to skim some of his main points. Though they seem unbelievable, all the shootings, murders, wars and even genocides – there is no denying that even as the population of the world is increasing, the overall violence is decreasing.
1. Pacification Process -The transition from hunter/gatherer societies to an agricultural civilization created a more peaceful state of existence by decreasing tribal wars and raiding. The reduction in violent deaths is estimated at five to ten times less.
2. Civilizing Process -Between the late Middle Ages and the 20th century, European countries saw a ten to fifty fold decline in homicide rates. The declination in violence is credited to the consolidation of feudal territories into large kingdoms and centralized governments – infrastructure, commerce and authority.
3. Humanitarian Revolution- The Age of Reason and Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries created organized efforts to abolish socually sanctioned violence – dueling, judicial torture, cruelty to animals, etc. These are the seeds of the pacifism movements, ending socially acceptable sadism.
4. Long Peace -Since WWII, the great powers in the developed nations have ceased waging war on one another. (No, this doesn’t mean wars have ended, but historically speaking, we are in a time of peace.)
Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there has been growing repulsion to aggression on smaller scales – violence against women, children, homosexuals, ethnic and religious minorities and animals. Civil rights have been pushed forward at unprecedented rates and violence is no longer seen as macho, superior and good. Changing attitudes towards intolerance, prejudice, sexism, racism – even on the smaller scales such as bullying and spanking – have all contributed to the peace we now know.
The world isn’t perfect today – we still have far to go. But the past seems less innocent and the present less sinister when you take a step back and view the history of violence in our world. I’ve always been a glass is half full kind of girl.
Comments (50)
excellent. yes. and true. I’m going to have to find this book.
thanks for sharing it with us, Christina. : )
and it’s really good to see you!
i just added this to my library wish list. i really need a new perspective on this.
@plantinthewindow - It’s so good to be back! It’s a very long, dense book and I am not all the way through it myself. I think it’s like 850 pages, and it’s written by a psychiatrist
I have been reading much lighter material in between, but the message of hope is just what I needed. Let me know what you think!
@promisesunshine - So did I, the timing was perfect for me. Disheartened is an understatement of what we were experiencing after the Sandy Hook tragedy.
will do!
@promisesunshine - me, too.
@BoulderChristina - yup.
Humanity may not be as violent physically, but we are all still a morally repugnant race. Man is fallen and can only seek salvation through the only perfect being ever to walk the face of the Earth. That man is Christ Jesus. John 3:16.
Nice to see you around again, it’s been awhile.
@Shadowrunner81 - Good to be back! Morally repugnant? Perhaps. We always have been, though. At least now it’s no longer a civic event to watch a beheading. Public sentiment no longer celebrates cruelty and violence, so that’s a start.
I agree with Shadowrunner, except that I don’t think we’ve even changed to become less physically violent. For the most part, we are still as aggressive and violent as our cave dwelling ancestors, we just have fancier tools.
Great post. I have further reason to believe we will become much less violent and more empathetic toward our fellow man and life in general. I’ve seen it. I just wish it didn’t take so long.
Dear Christina,
Thank you for your recent visit and recommendation. (I’m checking on the status of my latest YouTube upload, and noticed the rec, so thot I’d drop by and check out some of your recent entries.First of all, I see you’ve almost completed a book and are attempting to publish. Good luck. I’ve been writing for most all my life and I gave up on publishing a long long time ago. “I can paper my walls with my rejection slips” is a favorite saying of mine. When the internet came along, I just “published” all my poetry online. A lot easier. Of course online there’s no advance nor royalty checks to cash, but at my age, it’s just better to “put it out there”.
I agree with some of your entry here, but I’ll just supply a link (another great thing about having all my writing online, heh heh.) to my essay “History” which isn’t that long considering it took me all of five years to write it.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
The essence of my essay (I’m alliterative even in commets, dang) is that civilization itself and human nature is basically oppressive and violent. It’s a wonder we haven’t all killed ourselves off long ago. (I just added the Pinker book to my Kindle wishlist.)
Glad to “see” you again (just noticed you’d commented as well, it takes me forever to leave a comment.)
Don’t spend your advance (here’s assuming publication of course) in one place!
Yep, I have seen these numbers elsewhere, and you make a good point. Your summary skips over the terrible genocides of the war years, but on the whole, you’re right. We should call moral repugnance for an entirely different reason. We continue to use more and more fossil fuels despite evidence that we’re wrecking the climate. We are committing violence against our grandchildren. End.of.rant.
Thank you Cricket. We need to recognize in our own potential to make this world a better place every day of our lives, with what ever little we can do to improve it. Remember the years when the whole country was divided and up in arms because a teacher would fall in love with her student and have a child by him? We have come so far and things are so wrong sometimes. But I do believe that things and the nation and the world will improve, one day at a time.
Peace to you and yours.
Heh sorry to disagree on this one
You see, US is in peace in their own territory while bombing, murdering and torturing all over the World
to the violence US generates you still have to add all the violence the economy system sustained and supoerted by western societies cause in our countries (Latin America) and other latitudes like Afrika.
I think your intention is good, but the book you read is wrong and your news lie more often than everyone knows. There’s no peace outside your borders, and it’s mostly cause of US foreign policies.
*sigh* I hate to be the bad one but I have to stand up for truth every time
I don’t know… Maybe there’s a modicum of decline, but at the same time I find it worrisome that the overwhelming majority of our entertainment choices involve wanton violence, and the like.
Horror movies, like Saw.
Video games, like Grand Theft Auto, etc.
Music that glorifies drug use and gang violence.
Literature, like Dean Koontz and Stephen King
Television shows like Criminal Minds
I don’t know that we’ve changed. It just seems that our lust for blood has changed from what was largely about survival in the past to purely the attraction of the violence itself now. Yes, you could challenge my claim that the violence of the past was about survival, but let’s look at the examples you’ve given.
The hunter-gatherer tribes. The violent warring between tribes being a matter of tribal survival can’t be argued.
The Middle Ages. Those feudal territories were feudal because people were defending land, food supplies, and settlements that they claimed as their own against others who were trying to take them for their own survival.
The 17th and 18th centuries. Here is actually where I think a shift started to occur. Just, not the shift that was beneficial, in the long run. The opposite. The more civilized we became, the more anonymous we became. With the anonymity of large cities, etc., we lost the accountability we had to our community, and our neighbors.
WWII. That was a nasty, nasty war. It wasn’t even that long ago. Brutal genocides, the wanton torture and abuse of prisoners of war, ethnic cleansing, newer and more efficient ways of killing being developed throughout… And after WWII we have Korea, Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. We’ve got Milosevic, and Islamic terrorism. The wars have become less global in some ways, but the death tolls are just as horrific when you figure that all of these have been rooted in man’s desire for supremacy and authority. Since WWII, they’ve not really been about good, they’ve been about evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.
The Civil Rights push. Granted, in civilized countries, civil rights have excelled, and that’s a great thing. But the rise in seeing these things as a step forward hasn’t stopped them in uncivilized countries. We still have people having arms cut off because they stole. We still have women being stoned because they dared kiss a man that wasn’t their arranged husband-to-be. We still have diamond-seeking tribes killing off entire villages of people, kidnapping the male youth of those tribes to brainwash them into being “soldiers.”
Oh, and we still have that TV show, The View. I don’t know that we need any more proof than that that this world is still a disgusting, horrible, ugly place. Would someone please get Joy Behar a muzzle? Thanks.
(P.S. COMMENT.
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@Erika_Steele - We have a long way to go to find Utopia, I agree. We aren’t a perfect species of perfect people, but the progress we have made in the last 100 years is more than we have made in the last 5000. One person at a time, we are getting better.
@TheSutraDude - Like you, I believe empathy is our greatest tool. However, having something to lose helps, too. There are few things scarier than a man (nation, continent) who has nothing to lose.
@baldmike2004 - Thanks for the well wishes! Royalty check is not in the picture, but thanks for the encouragement! First I had to get the crap unloaded into words. Now I will be working to make it a story. Then I will decide what to do with it, but I don’t expect it to hit the best sellers list! What a sweetie you are, reading my old posts. What a treasure I found in you!
great post and it sounds like a great book. you bring up some good points. certainly you are right, things are not NEARLY as bad as they once were. but. we need to get better. mass shootings need to stop.
@BoulderChristina - I guess I’m just jaded and there will be a utopia. I’m not sure we’ve really made any progress, it’s just easier to turn a blind eye….like I said jaded.
@we_deny_everything - My summary hardly covered the introduction! I found the book shortly after (days) the tragedy in Sandy Hook. I was outraged by a comment he made, stating that tragedies such as these are not the norm, and we shouldn’t make reactionary policies for abnormalities, or something like that. It is a very large, a bit dry, book and I am not quite a third of the way through it, but I am convinced. The world is far from a perfect place and bad things happen and people commit atrocious acts. But when we pull back – wayyyyy back, and look at the larger picture – we are on the right path. Society enforcing good behavior by scorning violence has made a difference. Now, society needs to enforce more good behavior by scorning other wrong acts and behaviors. It won’t make perfect people or perfect societies, but it is a much better place than we started.
@ZSA_MD - Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I agree, the world is a better place, one person at a time – one heart at a time. The smallest acts make the biggest differences, such as we are seeing. I can only hope to see things improve, but I have faith they will. Much of the world is how we see it, and if we see it through eyes of hate, anger and despair – no good can result of these things. Peace and love to you this year, Zakiah
@meddwl - There is still war, there is still violence, there is still atrocities happening at every turn. I am in no way claiming this is good and our world is perfect. You are right though, the higher standard of living and lowest levels of violence are, in fact, in the developed nations. There is more civil unrest, violence, and war in undeveloped nations and we (the US) are part of that. The world is far from a perfect place. But much has changed, and the changes are contagious. It is no longer ethical to exploit child labor and other unsavory work conditions from other nations. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, but when it does, the company engaging in that type of behavior is scandalized and their business suffers. 40 years ago, nobody cared how people were making cheap tennis shoes as long as they kept doing it. This is only an example, and there is so much work to be done, but it is an example of how social pressures are extorting good behavior. This book discusses the global history of violence. I believe it is right. I hope so.
@Under_the_Ghillie - Now you’ve gone way too far, bringing up the View! Who could have prepared for that!!
Hey cutie, nice to see you. Great points, I agree – particularly with the WWII. That war was so horrid that we still feel the effects of it today. I also think that was (well, ok, history books and professors have said, but I will take credit where I can
) the turning point, at least for the developed nations.Like I have said a few times in comments above, I know there is much work to be done and the world is far from perfect. But I am grateful that it is heading in the right direction. I am glad we can have libraries and universities without fear of them being burned, or fear of learning to read because I am a woman or a peasant. All in all, we don’t have it so bad. We need to keep moving in the direction of peace and start extending that freedom and peace beyond our borders. I don’t know what to say about our foreign policy because I understand there is much I don’t know, but I do know that it is better than it used to be. COMMENT
@BoulderChristina - We’ve always had these cluster-shooting events here in America, but they’re becoming more frequent. And nowadays the shooters are wearing body armor. We’ve been at war since 2001, eleven years, and it makes me wonder if we’ve created a new militaristic mindset among young men.
It is true that the number of cluster deaths is relatively small, but among the parents, who are uniformly horrified, I think there will be a movement to make some changes.
@heckels - Mass shootings, rape, kidnappings, domestic violence – there is no end to the work that is yet to be done. We aren’t perfect people, but we can be better than we have been. I can hardly watch or read the news, it breaks my heart. There was an incident here where a cop shot a dog that was safely constrained and no threat to anyone – he just shot it for no reason. That story alone put me in a funk that you wouldn’t believe! But the truth is, it is getting better everyday. Maybe not as fast as it could or should be, but it is happening. I don’t want to be one of the cynics that stand in the way of that, and I don’t want to forget how lucky I am to live now rather than 200 years ago.
Oh, and Happy New Year!!
@Erika_Steele - Well, you are right, there will never be a Utopia, but it’s better than it used to be
It is hard to not be cynical with all the ugliness we see, but if we can see through what the media is always throwing at us to see the positive, it is easier to be happy.
I think that this book and your post make good points that people need to hear more often. If all I did was read the headlines, I would never leave the house because I was so afraid. We have to look deeper than the headlines and we need to see our history more clearly.
@we_deny_everything - And unlike Pinker, I don’t see anything wrong with that. I, personally, have no idea how I feel about gun control. I am genuinely in agreement with both sides, well, other than the sides that say nothing other than “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. That makes me crazy, as if it’s a slogan for defense and they’ve got nothing else.
It does seem the events are getting much more massive – Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Aurora.. If these types of things don’t call for some sort of change, I don’t know what does. (Realize the book was written before the elementary shootings.) About the war – I’ve got little to say about that, too. Again, I can see both sides and have yet to form a solid opinion on that either. Teen violence in the eighties, particularly in the Northeast, were so high that predictions for the nineties were creating a mightier police force and amped up juvenile detention facilities. But the violence dropped, and dropped fast. There are multiple theories surrounding this (I am sure you have read Freakonomics) but no solid explanation can make sense of it. I also hope the same happens with these horrid acts, and I don’t care how they do it.
@BoulderChristina - True and the more people feel it’s okay to create a world in which many feel they’ve nothing to lose the more dangerous the world is for they themselves too. Again, this is where empathy makes sense.
@whyzat - I agree! When I read the news daily, I live in a world of fear. Good is happening in our world, too.
@TheSutraDude - Exactly! I think we are seeing it, too, on a wider level. Or maybe I am an optimist
@BoulderChristina - While not losing sight of reality I believe it’s important to be an optimist. It effects those around us and goes out further like ripples on a lake. That’s what I think. Pessimism also has its effect but its thankfully not as powerful.
and….When lacking wisdom am I, look to Yoda I do.
A History of Violence is a very good movie.
The Chief of police Bratton changed the way police operate in NY. He also went to Los Angeles and he sort of changed things here too.
We can sort of pinpoint some behaviors and have done things to change crime. Did you know car thief of new cars is declining? Being able to remote shut off cars and making cars harder to hotwire has reduced car thief.
I think the murder rate in Los Angeles has decreased. Maybe there is less younger people that commit murder?
India is big on rape prevention right now but I still think the rate of rape is still intolerably happening. Home burglary is down because they are cutting down on truant kids.
I do think that there are some folks trying to cut down on media violence. Then again maybe people are being more isolated and if we are isolated there is less interaction and violence.
There you go making good sense again. Damn, I’m glad you’re back!
So true. These acts aren’t as frequent as they used to be, even though they seem to be. It’s because of the massive amount of media. We hear about it more. 100 years ago, no one would have heard of a mall shooting outside of a 100 mile radius. Now, everyone in the world has the chance to hear of it. We don’t have one or two local news stations. We now have what, 6 networks? Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, the CW, and PBS, plus local indepenent stations. On top of that we have CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, FoxNews, Bloomberg, and BBC. Thousands of newspapers, many cities with 3 or more. The internet, where we have headlines shoved in our faces the second we log in.
There is so much media now. 100 years ago, people didn’t follow the socialites the way we do now. They didn’t follow international politics the way we do. Very few heard about the small wars going on in other nations. They wanted news that affected them. Local weather. Maybe local politics. Local gossip. They could care less how someone 2,000 miles away lived, because it didn’t affect them. There weren’t enough papers or the technology to fit it all in even if they did want to be exposed to it all.
I don’t think we have less violence tendency; it’s just suppressed.
I doubt there are less hatred, it’s just suppressed.
When the suppression mechanism fails, the explosive power of the acts will reveal itself, in much more tragic incidents.
We hear more about tragic acts due to fast news media outlet, expedited by the use of cellphones, tablet, internet, etc
Human nature hasn’t changed for thousands of years. The method of carrying out [violence acts] has.
Our US society may dislike certain [violent] activities, but looking at the news, many countries don’t agree with our viewpoint, policies, etc and may act differently.
It is good to see you here again, Christina! I thought you never come to post again.
The last time when the shootings incident at Connecticut happened, everyone was angry, upset about it.
The thing is that we human has always THAT capability to do evil and even good people can become bad.
Sometimes, this world can be a cruel place for some and it turns one to be such a bitter individual who hates life for reasons that we are not happy, we are depressive and all that …
Let us all pray for the world peace … let us pray that may those we love are protected and live safely where ever they are …
And Happy New Year 2013 to you!
@godfatherofgreenbay - I had to look that up! I am sure it is, and will try to find it on Netflix this weekend!
@PPhilip - I would love to hear what their theories are regarding the drop in crime. Hi Phillip! How have you been? How’s Lovely Lollipop?
@HappierHeathen - Good morning you! How have you been? Buried beneath a foot of snow? How’s your lovely wife?
@grim_truth - I have to wonder if the purpose of some of these acts is a final path to fame? I realize that is probably oversimplifying everything that happened, but if I were depressed, suicidal, and felt like my life meant nothing – I may take extreme measures to make sure it meant something.
@sf2slc - You are right, it would seem very strange that human nature changed overnight (in the big picture I mean.) However, maybe it’s just a matter of whose will is stronger? I know pacifism is not new, either. There have been kind, empathetic people from the start of time too. So maybe this is the era where the pacifists’ wills are stronger than the violence, creating suppression of violent acts?
@SherryAngeLMysteriez - Good morning Sherry! How are you enjoying Xanga? I am going to make time this evening to catch up on other people’s posts to see how everyone has been, and I can’t wait to see yours!
And you are so right. We can choose whether we focus on the ugly or the beautiful in this world, and there is always plenty of both. With so much beauty, love and magic in the world, why would I want to obsess over the pain and horror?
@BoulderChristina - I think you’re right. I don’t think it’s a conscious decision, but somewhere deep in the recesses of the mind, that reasoning takes hold without the person realizing it. Some may think about it, other may just do it without realizing it. Before addressing anything else, we, as a people, need to figure out these “why’s” in order to stop these events from happening again.
@BoulderChristina - problem with the sleeping giant is well… sleeping, and not willing to act, until drastic things happen (when it’s usually too late). Evil will be stop at some point, but unfortunately, it already caused much harm and damage.
Unless we’re willing to give up all our freedom, aka police / military state, it’s hard to draw that fine line that offer freedom (lots of) without giving a chance to evil to act.
Not to be the tempest in the teapot, but I do wonder if the good professor is accounting the numbers correctly. The numbers of deaths under “national socialist” aka communist parties are pretty amazing.
Here’s a Harvard fella I dig as his book is inspiring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW_dxq-KaME
Oh, he’s a neuro surgeon.
@grim_truth - media sort of consolidates and cuts in journalist staff isproof there is less quality journalism.BBC has gone down big time.@BoulderChristina - Birth control and Roevs Wade impact has a measurable impact on crime and poverty. Women cut the number of kids and have a better life because of it.