The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,424

clamp down on the gangs by violent repression, or he can try to co-opt them, which usually requires adopting a macho ruling philosophy that is congenial to their mores. Best of all, he can export their destructive energy by sending them to other territories as migrant workers, colonists, or soldiers. When the leaders of rival countries all try to dispose of their excess men, the result can be a grinding war of attrition. As Hudson and den Boer put it, “Each society has plenty of bare branches to spare in such a conflict—and the respective governments might be happy to spare them.”10

Traditional gynecide, joined in the 1980s by the female-abortion industry, injected a bolus of excess males into the population structures of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, and parts of India (chapter 7).11 These surpluses of men bode poorly for the immediate prospects of peace and democracy in those regions. Over the longer term, the sex ratio may eventually be rebalanced by the feminist and humanitarian concern with the right of female fetuses to take their first breath, together with political leaders’ finally grasping the demographic arithmetic and enhancing the incentives to raise daughters. The resulting boon for baby girls would translate into less violent societies. But until the first fifty-fifty cohorts are born and grow up, those societies may be in for a bumpy ride.

A society’s respect for the interests of women has one more connection to its rate of violence. Violence is a problem not just of too many males but of too many young males. At least two large studies have suggested that countries with a larger proportion of young men are more likely to fight interstate and civil wars (chapter 6).12 A population pyramid with a thick base of young people is dangerous not just because young men like to raise hell, and in bottom-heavy societies will outnumber their more prudent elders. It’s also dangerous because these young men are likely to be deprived of status and mates. The sclerotic economies of countries in the developing world cannot nimbly put a youth bulge to work, leaving many of the men unemployed or underemployed. And if the society has a degree of official or de facto polygyny, with many young women being usurped by older or richer men, the surfeit of marginalized young people will turn into a surfeit of marginalized young men. These men have nothing to lose, and may find work and meaning in militias, warlord gangs, and terrorist cells (chapter 6).

The title Sex and War sounds like the ultimate guy bait, but this recent book is a manifesto for the empowerment of women.13 The reproductive biologist Malcolm Potts, writing with the political scientist Martha Campbell and the journalist Thomas Hayden, has amassed evidence that when women are given access to contraception and the freedom to marry on their own terms, they have fewer offspring than when the men of their societies force them to be baby factories. And that, in turn, means that their countries’ populations will be less distended by a thick slab of young people at the bottom. (Contrary to an earlier understanding, a country does not have to become affluent before its rate of population growth comes down.) Potts and his coauthors argue that giving women more control over their reproductive capacity (always the contested territory in the biological battle of the sexes) may be the single most effective way of reducing violence in the dangerous parts of the world today. But this empowerment often must proceed in the teeth of opposition from traditional men who want to preserve their control over female reproduction, and from religious institutions that oppose contraception and abortion.

Several varieties of feminization, then—direct political empowerment, the deflation of manly honor, the promotion of marriage on women’s terms, the right of girls to be born, and women’s control over their own reproduction—have been forces in the decline of violence. The parts of the world that lag in this historical march are the parts that lag in the decline of violence. But worldwide polling data show that even in the most benighted countries there is considerable pent-up demand for female empowerment, and many international organizations are committed to hurrying it along (chapters 6 and 7). These are hopeful signs in the long term, if not the immediate term, for further reductions in violent conflict in the world.

THE EXPANDING CIRCLE

The last two pacifying forces scramble the psychological payoffs of violence. The first is the expansion of the circle of sympathy. Suppose