Skip to main content

★★★★☆ Violence has declined, and no one really knows why

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Steven Pinker

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker, is about a fact that many people find startling: violence has declined steadily over the course of history, and we now live in the least violent time in human history. Wait, WHAT!?! Is that actually a FACT? Yes, it is, and the most compelling and valuable accomplishment of Better Angels is to document it. Pinker also spends a lot of ink in trying to explain the decline of violence, and in this he is less successful.

There are two aspects of the way Pinker thinks that will put off many readers. (Well, there are more than two, but these two are somewhat intentional.) First, Pinker's argument is quantitative. If you don't like or understand numbers, his arguments will whizz right past you. For instance, he laments "the innumeracy of our journalistic and intellectual culture," giving this example

The journalist Michael Kinsley recently wrote, “It is a crushing disappointment that Boomers entered adulthood with Americans killing and dying halfway around the world, and now, as Boomers reach retirement and beyond, our country is doing the same damned thing.” This assumes that 5,000 Americans dying is the same damned thing as 58,000 Americans dying, and that a hundred thousand Iraqis being killed is the same damned thing as several million Vietnamese being killed.

If you can't distinguish 5,000 from 58,000, you're not going to get much out of Better Angels. Second, in the interest of trying to explain why violence has described, Pinker often finds himself obliged to try to understand why violence happens. To an undiscerning reader, such explanations may look like justifications. I don't think they are intended to be that or are that, but I am quite certain that some readers will be offended.

Better Angels has ten chapters. The first, "A Foreign Country", is a relatively brief survey of some sources and facts we are all familiar with, whose aim is to convince you that it is in fact plausible that the past was much more violent than the present. Chapters 2-7 then carefully document in quantitative detail six ways in which we have become less violent, from decreases in war and murder through decreased abuse of children, women, and animals. Chapters 8 and 9 are Pinker the professional psychologist attempting to explain the psychology of the processes that he believes underlie the reduction in violence. The final chapter, chapter 10, is a kind of executive summary of the entire book.

Chapters 2-7 are the heart of the book. I found them quite convincing overall. You aren't going to believe everything that Pinker tells you. And experts have sniped around the edges some of his figures. But the reduction in violence he documents is so huge, something like a 150-fold decrease in violent death over the course of history, that none of the revisions some experts would like to make to his figures amounts to more than a minor correction.

Better Angels has one major fault -- it is far too long. It is hugely bulked out by Pinker's attempts to identify causes for the trends he documents, and to document the scientific evidence, where it exists, for these causes. He clearly worked very hard on explanations, and it pains me to say that they are not very convincing. You will believe them if you already believed them before reading.

I would advise a first-time reader to begin with chapter 10. Then read chapters 1-7. In chapters 2-7 I would advise skimming or skipping the attempted explanations -- pay most attention to the parts that document the trends in violence. (These are usually obvious by the presence of large numbers of down-sloping graphs.) Read chapters 8 and 9 only if you are a glutton for tedium.

This review sounds more negative than I wanted it to. Better Angels is actually a very good book. At least it contains one.

Amazon review

Goodreads review
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing  Saga, Volume 4  is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through  Volume 3  Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that  Demon Copperhead  by  Barbara Kingsolver  is a retelling of  David Copperfield  by  Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning  David Copperfield . If you have read  David Copperfield  at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read  Demon Copperhead . (I last read  David Copperfield  when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read  Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of  David Copperfield  on finishing  Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★☆☆☆☆ Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition

Power Jeffrey Pfeffer I read this eleven years ago (21-Sep-2011). At the time, I wrote this brief note to myself: Based on the first chapter or two, a singularly repulsive little book. It's basically "Petty Evil 101: Corporate edition". Amazon review Goodreads review  

★★★☆☆ Advice I am not going to follow

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals Michael Pollan Michael Pollan  is a person who cares deeply about food. I am not (which is a little strange, since I worked 31 years as a neuroscientist studying feeding behavior). “Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat.” ― Socrates I am definitely a person who eats to live. There are a few books in what I call the "history of substances" genre, for instance  The True History of Chocolate ,  A Perfect Red , or  A History of the World in 6 Glasses . I find these fascinating and would be happy to find more. I picked up  The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World  and  The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals  because I thought they were books in this vein, and  The Omnivore's Dilemma  was getting a lot of love from my friends. Well, my hopes were not completely disappointed.  The Omnivore's Dilemma  does indeed contain fascinating information a...

★★★☆☆ Drivel with occasional brilliance

Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake I have to begin with a disclaimer. Usually I read poetry very slowly, one or two poems a day. This gives me the time to savor it. However, I had surgery two days ago and brought  William Blake 's  Songs of Innocence and Experience  along to read while waiting for the surgeons to slice me open. It is possible that these are not the best conditions for appreciating  Blake . With that caveat, I was more disappointed than pleased by this volume of poetry. It consists mostly of drivel like this: When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it; interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliance like this O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. or this The human d...

★★★☆☆ Lacking the common touch

100 Selected Poems: John Keats John Keats Well, that was disappointing. I am ready to admit that this is an "It's not you -- it's me," case. Since I suspect that some other readers, even readers who love poetry, may likewise find  Keats  disappointing, I will try to explain why he disappointed me. Thus you can judge whether you, too, might suffer the same fate. First thing to say is that the young  John Keats  was not really that great a poet. (By "young", I mean up to and including  Endymion .) That, of course, is a judgment many readers will disagree with, but don't discount it! It was  Keats 's own judgment. In his preface to  Endymion , he says "I apologize for the lousy work, but I just had to get this out of my system." (Obviously I'm paraphrasing.) You may dismiss that as false modesty, but I am more inclined to accept it as the judgment of a man who knew what he was talking about, especially because the quality of his poetry abr...

★★★☆☆ What is it like to be an octopus?

Children of Ruin Adrian Tchaikovsky There is a famous essay called  What is it like to be a Bat? / Wie ist es, eine Fledermaus zu sein?  by philosopher  Thomas Nagel . (Although I am not a philosopher, I am a neuroscientist, and as a neuroscientist it is almost impossible to avoid knowing a little of the nonsense philosophers think about how minds work.)  Nagel  attempts to make an argument about consciousness. He argues that the consciousness of a bat is an experience a human cannot possibly have or understand, because echolocation is so unhuman. I have a little fantasy about  Adrian Tchaikovsky 's  Children of Time series . I imagine he read  Nagel 's effusion and said to himself, "Utter nonsense! I'm gonna show that I can imagine not only what it's like to be a bat, but even what it's like to be a spider or an octopus!" ( Nagel  in fact raises the question of invertebrate experience in his essay, only to make the point that it is an even h...

★★★☆☆ Good-bye Earl, or Small powers do great things

Nettle & Bone T Kingfisher I believe the first  T. Kingfisher  book I ever read was  A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking , and the second  Minor Mage . (I had, however, read some of her middle grade works published as  Ursula Vernon , and I was aware that  Kingfisher  and  Vernon  are the same person.)  Nettle & Bone  feels to me very like those two novels, but with a little of the joy let out. Both  A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking  (irresistible title!) and  Minor Mage  feature child wizards with very limited powers who are called on to do far more than anyone has a right to expect of them, and who rise to the challenge. The first quarter of  Nettle & Bone  is exceedingly grim. It's the all-too-familiar story of a wife suffering, as the publisher's summary says, "at the hands of a powerful and abusive" husband. She's a princess and he's a prince, but that matters only in that it accen...

★★★★☆ Matrimonial predators

The Brides of High Hill Nghi Vo We catch up with Chih, who is accompanying the Pham family -- Mr and Mrs Pham and their daughter Pham Nhung to the castle of Lord Guo. The Phams are a family of merchants down on their luck, and Nhung has been proposed in marriage to Lord Guo. She and Chih met cute, and she asked them to accompany her to Lord Guo's castle for the marriage negotiation. Chih appears to have a mini-crush on Nhung, which she appears to encourage. Chih desperately misses their neixin Almost Brilliant, who is mysteriously absent. Nhung is naturally worried about being married. Chih, who knows many stories, true and fictional, about husbands and wives, would like to reassure her, but cannot honestly do so. Stuff happens. You will recognize the story pretty quickly.  It's Bluebeard. You probably already figured that out -- the plural "Brides" in the title kind of gives it away.  In this one Chih faces serious personal danger, more immediate than in any other  S...

★★★★★ Tactical Assault Clown

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up Dave Barry There is one living human who can write prose that makes me laugh so hard I can't breathe. That person is Tactical Assault Clown  Dave Barry .  Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass—How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up  had that effect on me at least twice -- an automatic five-star rating. ("Tactical Assault Clown" is right up there with "Combat Epistemologist" ( The Jennifer Morgue ) on my list of creative military specializations. And if you're one of those people who get their knickers all in a twist when someone uses parens inside of parens, you know what you can do about it.) (Yes, I know I'm not funny.) It's not all ROFL funny. In fact, he tells about his father's alcoholism ( that story has a happy ending ) and his mother's suicide ( that one obviously does not ). Later in the book he tries to convince us that his real li...