"The Better Angels of Our Nature"

(Why Violence Has Declined)
2011
-by steven pinker
A towering work. Pinker describes us as a species more moral than at any time in recorded history, due to civilizing trends that over recent centuries (and especially recent decades) have made us far less violent...a claim that flies in the face of headlines and common cynicism, but steven offers enough statistical evidence to silence a herd of cats in heat. That doesn't mean he's always right, but he maintains appropriate scientific humility. He analyzes the history of war, interpersonal violence, slavery, superstitious/ideological violence, and genocide, all of which are trending down (or disappearing entirely), and trounces the notion that the 20th century was the most warlike. He deconstructs how the rights revolutions have decreased government violence against its own citizens, with individual rights slowly superseding the good of the state. In almost excruciating detail, he explores the psychology and physiology of violence. He hangs all this pacifying on the rise of hobbesian leviathan states which replaced feudal systems. He describes civilizing as a downward process by which the poor mimic the genteel rich (i know that might not sit well with some, but pinker makes it plausible). He cites literacy as a linchpin of ever-expanding empathy, commerce as an antidote to tribal violence, and global feminism as a further pacifying factor. Pinker avoids political correctness, and even exposes its flaws. He doesn't shy from unsettling points, like the effect that our post-Three Mile Island nuclear abandonment has had on the fossil fuel apocalypse. He points out that the traffic fatalities of people who refused to fly in 2002 contributed six times the number of 9/11 deaths. He explains America's hyper-violence by showing that we're several countries, not one - the east and midwest have comparable violence rates to any advanced democracy, but the south and west have rates that reflect their origins as a culture of honor. It's tempting to compare this book to michael shermer's "The Moral Arc", which attributes all this to the ever-expanding ripples of the age of enlightenment and reason...an explanation which my humynism finds more appealing, but these two books might be complementary, not competitive (indeed, pinker is complimentary of shermer). Making sense of history's trends is one of the more challenging tasks any thinker can undertake. Wrong or right, pinker does humynity proud.