Steven Pinker: “Our ancestors were far more violent than we are.”

[BurtWorm]

The Harvard psychologist says we're living in the most peaceful time in history.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006259.html

Steven Pinker on the Decline of Violence

Ethan Zuckerman
March 8, 2007 4:51 PM

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, begins his presentation with an image of corpses on a truck, being taken from Auschwitz concentration camp. The image is one of many characteristic of the 20th century, a century that included brutality under Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and the genocide in Rwanda. The 21st century, which has barely started, already includes the brutality of Darfur and the daily destruction in Iraq.

These sorts of images can lead us to thinking that modernity brings terrible violence. Perhaps native people lived in a state of harmony that we’ve departed from.

This, Pinker tells us, is bullshit. “Our ancestors were far more violent than we are.” We’re probably living in the most peaceful time of our species’s existence, a statement that seems almost obscene in light of Darfur and Iraq.

The decline of violence, he tells us, is a fractal phenomenon - we see it over the centuries, the decades and the years. That said, we see a tipping point in the 16th century - the age of reason - particularly in England and Holland.

Until 10,000 years ago, all humans were hunter gatherers. This is the group that some believe lived in primordial harmony - there’s no evidence of this. Studying current hunter-gatherer tribes, the percent of male adults who die in violence is extraordinary - from 20 to 60% of all males. Even during the violent 20th century, with two world wars, less than 2% of males worldwide died in warfare.

....

[Webster Green]

1. Yeah...the war-chimp needs to try a little harder..

..if he wants to keep up.

[xchrom]

2. how about this -- we use fewer people to inflict greater harm.

lol -- i violently disagree with this guy.

never before have so few killed so many in the name of so many others.

[shadowknows69]

3. Maybe.

But those pointed sticks didn't do nearly as much damage as a cluster bomb.

[Canuckistanian]

4. The 'Age of Reason' is being repealed

Some are trying to jump straight back to the 15th century.

[cali]

5. Steven Pinker is brilliant but

it's immaterial whether or not we're less violent. The fact is we're far more technologically adept at mass killing- and that more than compensates for our being less violent than our ancestors.

[villager]

6. right -- just takes one finger on the right button..

...to obviate -- oblviate -- his entire contention about violence...

[BurtWorm]

9. He seems to be claiming that a smaller percentage of us dies violently

than among our ancestors. This is certainly not true in Baghdad or Darfur at the moment, but even taking those areas into account, it seems he's saying, a smaller percentage of humans as a whole is dying violently. So I'm not sure what you mean by "more than compensates for our being less violent." If Pinker is right and the percentage of violent deaths is down, then even contemporary WMD lack the power to match the violent combination of our ancestors' lethal technologies and their willingness to kill. (I repeat: if Pinker is right...)

[cali]

13. OK, that may be what he's saying and may be true- this minute

but I'm not sure it's meaningful, and it could be negated very quickly in a nuclear conflagration. Not to mention that a mere 60 years ago, WWII killed what? Something like 60 million?

[BurtWorm]

14. Numbers games are perverse, but large as that figure is,

if, even given that number, fewer than 40-60% of all humans alive at the time died violently (i.e., in or because of that war, as well as from other kinds of violence), then Pinker is right at least as far as numbers reflect human violence.

[happydreams]

17. good point. nt

[EFerrari]

7. Yeah, and I am more agile than Handy Man. So what?

Is this some kind of apology to the predatory history of the US government? Or just a lazy strawman looking for a grant?

We need to pump some oxygen up to that ivory tower.

[cali]

12. Hardly. Pinker is

as well established in his field as you can possibly get. He's very influential.

From Wike:

Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a prominent Canadian-born American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his spirited and wide-ranging advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Pinker’s academic specializations are visual cognition and language development in children, and he is most famous for popularizing the idea that language is an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection rather than a by-product of general intelligence. His four books for a general audience — The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules and The Blank Slate — have won numerous awards.

<snip>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Pinker

[WinkyDink]

8. I think SP should stick to linguistics. Violence between and within tiny tribes

he's comparing negatively to AERIAL bombing, concentration camps, etc., etc.?
Just because the population is now billions more?

"No evidence of (primordial) harmony"~~~And what would constitute EVIDENCE of PEACE?

Sorry, Steve; not buying your thesis.

[EFerrari]

15. Those small groups can't even be called tribes.

:shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Why not compare them?

The thing is, very few of us kill someone else these days. He's saying in hunter-gatherer societies, it's far more common.

[WinkyDink]

41. Because "percentage-wise" ignores real numbers.

[BurtWorm]

42. Consider this.

If, in a group of 10, over the course of five days five die violently, whereas in another group of 100, 10 die violently over five days, assuming you would rather not die violently, which group would you rather belong to for the next five days if those trends hold? Which group would you say was the more prone to violent death?

[Virginia Dare]

10. Give us time....

I think with the coming catastrophic climate change and the ensuing chaos, the world is about to become a much more violent place, probably more violent than any other time in history.

[Double T]

11. The 21st century is just getting underway, the greatest violence.......

is most likely yet to come. Barbarians then, barbarians know; the only differences are the forms of weapons.

[DrunkenMaster]

16. it's a bit early to make that call, innit?

I mean, the 21st Century just got started! Give us a bit more time...the general depletion of natural resources and specific climate change should be just the impetus we need!

[EFerrari]

19. Maybe he's not counting killing a planet? n/t

[DrunkenMaster]

22. "violence" = smiting only

I guess. Slow strangulation of entire ecosystems may not be "violent", but the cultural consequences sure will be.

[Rex]

18. So wrong it's stupid. Our ancestors didn't have microwaves or

lawyers at the ready. Nor did they have cars or planes or iPods. Still, are we less violent than all the ancestry before us? Total hogwash. We've killed more people in modern times than at anytime in our history. This guy might know psychology, but he is piss poor on our history. He needs a few lessons from a cultural anthropologist how knows about human history. :eyes:

I better not find out this idiot is on the BFEE payroll.

[treestar]

23. This guy is a hypocrite if he ever disses the legal system

It has developed over the centuries to settle the types of disputes people might have killed each other over in earlier eras.

So let's not see him on the "limit access to courts" bandwagon.

[Rex]

27. He needs to read up on the Rule of Law.

Maybe a good dose of moral philosophy would set him straight.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. How about Lawrence Keeley?

For the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, and unimportant. According to this view, it was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization.

Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, Keeley convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. He cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, and surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare, again finding little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples.

But Keeley goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.
...
Lawrence H. Keeley is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Anthropology/?view=usa&ci=9780195119121

[Rex]

26. I think using the atomic bomb on a civilian populace says it all about

civilizations current love affair with death. I guess it is a good thing that the global population is expanding in a geometric rate.

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. So it wasn't evidence you were interested in, after all

When faced with an anthropologist who's done the research backing up Pinker's claim, you forget about your claim about history, just point to one act, and say "that proves my point". :eyes:

[Rex]

32. Not the only point in history but a very pointed one.

Nice knee-jerk response.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. So why did you give your knee-jerk response, then?

Wouldn't it have been better to discuss the theories of Keeley and others? Now that you've realised that saying "atomic bomb" is an inadequate response, won't you talk about what anthropologists actually say?

[BurtWorm]

29. "We've killed more people in modern times than at anytime in our history."

What is your basis for that statement? I don't know if you or Pinker is right, but at least I can ask you why you believe what you believe. Pinker is saying that a greater percentage of people died violently in the past. Perhaps there's a basis for believing modern methods have killed more people, but Pinker is saying that a greater portion of us live to die of causes other than violence. Is that a legitimate measure of an age's peacefulness, do you think? And if so, can you refute his point? Or if not, why isn't it and what would be a better measure?

[Rex]

33. I don't know what is more violent, a mace or the a-bomb.

I think we live more to die for causes today then ever before. I suppose a meta-analysis of total death during key points is a valid interpretation, but I just don't agree with Pinker. My viewpoint is different than his.

[BurtWorm]

37. But it seems clear that you have some sort of prejudice against the modern human

which is no doubt common, but it's not entirely rational, being based on a sense that weapons of mass destruction are "worse" than ones used in hand to hand combat. Pinker, whether he's right or wrong, is appealing to a rational standard on which to base a comparison that has less to do with the instruments of violence than their big-picture effects. Whether or not "we live more to die for causes today then ever before," which is debatable, the more relevant fact, it seems to me, is how likely one is to live or die violently now compared to our ancestors. There's no question that civilization promotes a violence of its own, but it's probably naive to base a comparison of its forms of violence with ancient forms on how relatively innocent or organic each seems to be. The relevant questions are how much damage do they do overall, and how likely are they to affect individual lives.

[cali]

38. Oh for fuck's sake

This has nothing to do with politics, and I completely doubt that he's ignorant of hx.

[DaveJ]

21. Probably because servitude is way up

Think about it. Since people probably are much more submissive to the dominant upper class, there is no longer a need for violence. They have more fun controlling us than killing us.

[treestar]

24. In day to day disputes, he may have a point

But on war, we have become potentially much more lethal. The potential is the scarier part. Like the Holocaust, which could not have occurred in those days on a scale of millions of people. Nor could there have been a nuclear bombing.

[BreweryYardRat]

31. The Mongols routinely depopulated entire cities (minor and major) for resisting.

They did kill millions, just not in the short span of time Hitler did.

Crusaders and Muslims during the Crusades both had multiple incidents of civilian mass murder to their discredit.

Genocide happened back then just as much as it does today.

[Odin2005]

30. He is very correct.

People like to idealize traditional cultures as peaceful "noble savages" (often for ideological reasons), but in reality most are/were very warlike according to a book on prehistoric modern humans called Before The Dawn. I often read a lot of nonsense going around about neolithic Europeans being peaceful, it's BS according to that book.

[cali]

35. Yeah, but it's kind of pointless in light

of the fact that humankind now has the technological capability of destroying our habitat and hundreds of millions, if not billions of us. I've never romanticized the past, but Pinker is, I think, missing the boat here.

[BurtWorm]

40. That is an excellent point.

Pinker is restricting his attention to human on human violence. He doesn't seem to address human violence against nature, which seems inarguably to have progressed (as a disease progresses).

[Taverner]

36. No we just changed from hand to hand combat to carpet bombing

Since from a mile up in the sky, we're not bombing people, we're bombing "targets"

[BoneDaddy]

39. I believe he is correct

but that does not justify the violence that is occuring now. I mean if we are honest with one another, everyday violence among the pre-modern populace was rather rampant.

[cali]

43. Hey Burtworm, thanks so much for posting this

The thread developed into a really interesting and thoughtful discussion- the type of thing I wish we had more of.

[BurtWorm]

44. You're welcome.

And thank you!

[The2ndWheel]

45. That's because of a lack of actual diversity

If everything is the same, why wouldn't there be less violence? That's where the violence comes from, a wanting of sameness. We still have violence against other people, but as large scale war(military, economic, whatever) has created a more identical reality(whoever loses becomes like the winner, unless you just exterminate everyone), we've turned to the only thing that remains different; nature(as has been mentioned). We've been altering our environment for centuries, but now we're getting into the DNA of life. It's no longer taking down a tree or four hundred thousand, now we want to create trees that fit our wants and desires. We experiment on other species for our benefit, and only our benefit. That's violent, no matter what.

The best part is that once we get everything to fit our wants, we'll have to turn on each other again, since there might still be something different. We'll have to find that and crush it. We(civilization, mass society, whatever you wish to call it) don't like diversity or evolution, and we will do whatever we have to in order to create a more perfect(what's more perfect than the number one? Maybe zero) world.