The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,429

destructive contests is not a cosmic purpose, it is a human purpose. Defenders of religion have long claimed that in the absence of divine edicts, morality can never be grounded outside ourselves. People can pursue only selfish interests, perhaps tweaked by taste or fashion, and are sentenced to lives of relativism and nihilism. We can now appreciate why this line of argument is mistaken. Discovering earthly ways in which human beings can flourish, including stratagems to overcome the tragedy of the inherent appeal of aggression, should be purpose enough for anyone. It is a goal that is nobler than joining a celestial choir, melting into a cosmic spirit, or being reincarnated into a higher life-form, because the goal can be justified to any fellow thinker rather than being inculcated to arbitrary factions by charisma, tradition, or force. And the data we have seen in this book show that it is a goal on which progress can be made—progress that is halting and incomplete, but unmistakable nonetheless.

A final reflection. In writing this book I have adopted a voice that is analytic, and at times irreverent, because I believe the topic has inspired too much piety and not enough understanding. But at no point have I been unaware of the reality behind the numbers. To review the history of violence is to be repeatedly astounded by the cruelty and waste of it all, and at times to be overcome with anger, disgust, and immeasurable sadness. I know that behind the graphs there is a young man who feels a stab of pain and watches the life drain slowly out of him, knowing he has been robbed of decades of existence. There is a victim of torture whose contents of consciousness have been replaced by unbearable agony, leaving room only for the desire that consciousness itself should cease. There is a woman who has learned that her husband, her father, and her brothers lie dead in a ditch, and who will soon “fall into the hand of hot and forcing violation.”21 It would be terrible enough if these ordeals befell one person, or ten, or a hundred. But the numbers are not in the hundreds, or the thousands, or even the millions, but in the hundreds of millions—an order of magnitude that the mind staggers to comprehend, with deepening horror as it comes to realize just how much suffering has been inflicted by the naked ape upon its own kind.22

Yet while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, that species has also found ways to bring the numbers down, and allow a greater and greater proportion of humanity to live in peace and die of natural causes.23 For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible.

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NOTES

Preface

1. Estimating probability from availability in memory: Slovic, 1987; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973.

2. Long Peace: Coined by Gaddis, 1986.

3. Discussions of the decline of violence in my previous books: Pinker, 1997, pp. 518–19; Pinker, 2002, pp. 166–69, 320, 330–36.

4. Other books on the decline of violence: Elias, 1939/2000; Human Security Report Project, 2011; Keeley, 1996; Muchembled, 2009; Mueller, 1989; Nazaretyan, 2010; Payne, 2004; Singer, 1981/ 2011; Wright, 2000; Wood, 2004.

Chapter 1: A Foreign Country

1. Survey data: Bennett Haselton and I presented 265 Internet users with five pairs of historical periods and asked them which they thought had higher rates of violent death: prehistoric hunter-gatherer bands or the first states; contemporary hunter-gatherer bands or modern Western societies; homicide in 14th-century England or 20th-century England; warfare in the 1950s or the 2000s; homicide in the United States in the 1970s or the 2000s. In each case respondents thought the later culture was more violent, by a factor of 1.1 to 4.6. In each case, as we shall see, the earlier culture was more violent, by a factor of 1.6 to more than 30.

2. Ötzi: B. Cullen, “Testimony from the Iceman,” Smithsonian, Feb. 2003; C. Holden, “Iceman’s final hours,” Science, 316, Jun. 1, 2007, p. 1261.

3. Kennewick Man: McManamon, 2004; C. Holden, “Random samples,” Science, 279, Feb. 20, 1998, p. 1137.

4. Lindow Man: Joy, 2009.

5. Severed skull with preserved brain: “2000-year-old brain found in Britain,” Boston Globe, Dec. 13, 2008.

6. Murdered family: C. Holden, “A family affair,” Science, 322, Nov. 21, 2008, p. 1169.

7. Homeric warfare: