The Better Angels of Our Nature
By Steven Pinker
Status: Dropped (chapter 4)
Rating: 2/5
Review
I think, on long time scales, the world is improving. People are richer, smarter, and healthier. So it is intuitive to me that violence would have declined. I was open to this book’s thesis.
The first couple chapters do a nice job of characterizing the past, and showing how the development of states reduces violence. He offers some data, and strong theoretical arguments for why anarchic societies would be more violent. I liked this part of the book, but also noticed how long-winded Pinker was being. “Why is he taking so long to say this? What is the point of the digression I am reading right now?” I kept asking myself those two questions. As the book went on, the book became even more meandering, and my interest steadily faded. By the time I stopped, I was feeling quite frustrated by the book.
Part of the problem is that his thesis is very general: “why violence has declined.” What does he mean by that? If he just means that the percentage of deaths from war and homicide has declined, then he settles this question quite early on. But Pinker is clearly being more expansive than that. He goes on-and-on listing specific examples of types of violence that have declined. Pinker doesn’t believe that violence is continually decreasing, in every possible measure, in every possible case. Yet, he thinks this is closer to being true than most people appreciate.
As a consequence of having such a general thesis, the topics and periods of his focus are often unmotivated. I had no idea what he was going to talk about next. I often lost sight of the specific question he was trying to answer. I read it as a list of stylized facts that happened to align with his general thesis. But I am confident that someone could come up with a list of stylized facts that showed violence was increasing. You can find stylized facts for anything. I think Pinker is probably more right than wrong, but I would have preferred a more focused argument.
Summary of First Two Chapters
Chapter 1
It should be intuitive that violence has decreased, because our glimpses of the past always seem bizarrely violent. For example:
Pre-history
Natural mummies, like Ötzi, often show signs of being victims of violence. Ötzi himself was murdered.
Homeric Greece
Characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey think in violent terms. For example, the “hero” Odysseus has all of the female slaves who slept with his wife Penelope’s suitors.
Hebrew Bible
The Old Testament is absurdly violent.
Roman Empire and Early Christendom
New Testament actually doesn’t seem that violent, but Jesus does say that he “has not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The entertainment at the Colosseum was very gruesome. The torturous mythology around hell is very violent.
Medieval Knights
The tales of King Arthur have lots of violent scenes.
Early Modern Europe
King Henry killed some of his wives. Bloody Mary also killed lots of people, as did Queen Elizabeth. Even nursery rhymes are surprisingly violent.
Honor in Europe and the Early United States
You hear stories about dueling, like when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton.
20th Century
Over the course of the 20th century, violence has become more taboo. More and more, war memorials commemorate victims of violence rather than valorize soldiers. In the early 20th century, ad campaigns celebrated masculine toughness (e.g. people who can win fights) and even condoned domestic abuse. Now, these things would not be seen as okay.
Chapter 2
Pre-state societies were much more violent than post-state societies.
Logic of Violence
People are survival machines. They do that which lets them live. In nature, people are violent to compete for resources, to settle disputes, and to foster a reputation that deters attacks from others. This can trigger a cycle of predation and retaliation that can best be disrupted by the state imposing a rule of law. Here’s the money quote from Hobbes:
So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name?
Violence in Human Ancestors
Human’s closest living relatives are the chimpanzee and bonobos. We share a common ancestor with both. Bonobos are peaceful and chimpanzees are extremely violent. Primitive humans were probably more like chimps, because bonobos are very unusual primates. Observing the violence among chimpanzees today gives us an idea for what primitive humans might have been like.
Kinds of Human Societies
(Note: my eyes glazed over in this part and I didn’t feel like rereading it)
Since sub-populations develop at different times, it’s best to categorize them into stages of development, and see how violence changes as you progress through these stages. For example, you compare people in the pre-state stage to people in the post-state stage. Anthropologists like to romanticize the pre-state hunter-gatherers, but more serious inquiry consistently finds high levels of violence among pre-state societies. There are lots of gruesome anecdotes reported by colonists, missionaries, and the natives themselves. Here is a scary quote supposedly from a Maori warrior:
You wanted to run away, did you? But my war club overtook you. And after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? He is cooked. And where is your brother? He is eaten. And where is your wife? There she sits, a wife for me. And where are your children? There they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves.
Rates of violence in state and nonstate societies
Researchers have tried to estimate deaths from violence in historic societies, either using demographic records or by forensic analyses of samples of skeletons. They find that nearly all pre-state societies were more violent than even the most violent post-state societies. Pinker reports the comparison in terms of the “Percentage of deaths in warfare” and the “War deaths per 100,000 people per year.” There’s a lot of variation within nonstate and within state societies, but pre-state societies are almost always notably more violent by both metrics. On average, the nonstate societies are about 5 times as violent as the state societies.
Civilization and its Discontents
People in state societies shift to agriculture, and early-agriculture tended to produce lower-quality nutrition than hunter-gathering. This led people in the states to have worse health and be shorter. In addition, these early states were often despotic. The Roman historian Tacitus said:
Formerly we suffered from crimes, now we suffer from laws.
This reflects that as people decided to live under states, they were choosing to trade away freedom (and better food) for safety.