30 March 2008 - 12:30The myth of rising violence

Every few days I read some newspaper article which says “in this age of senseless violence” or some such nonsense.  I always wonder what age in between the trenches of WWI and the race riots of the 60’s they are comparing the present to.  Was there perhaps some period before industrialization I am unaware of when everyone got along in Utopian harmony?  Or are things better now than they used to be, or indeed have ever been?

Official Spiel: In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we’ve come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

My Spiel: Steven Pinker and I don’t exactly hold eye to eye on some issues, but here we line up perfectly.  Things are apparently better than they used to be, all the way back since the hunter gatherer cultures in terms of safety, peace and personal danger.  It is simply very, very safe these days.  Anyone who says differently is selling something.  (Quick aside: the only thing which is substantially worse than it has been in centuries past is the environment, which is not related to safety but to long term survival of a species.  Still, it is a problem worthy of many other TED talks.)

Free speech, human rights, religious freedom and average lifespan are all up.  Deaths by murder and war are way down.  Pinker has a great observation on this, which paraphrased is that the better interconnected and in communication you are with your peers the less harm you will tend to do them and the more you will treat them the way you would like to be treated.  

In Oregon a thousand years ago you would only have to go a few hundred miles to find “others”, or another tribe of Indians that was not part of yours and considered dangerous or an enemy.  How far outside of Oregon would you have to go now before you can find someone from an opposing society?  Californians might be ‘different’ but they’re still on the same side- even the Canadians are considered pretty friendly.

Unfortunately, this relative peace is only true as an average across the whole of humanity.  There are large pockets of inequality, hatred and war that fill our screens and our hearts with dismay, allowing the merchants of death a way to fix our attention, cut our enthusiasm and hide the otherwise positive trend of improvement across humanity.  We have a long, long way to go, but we are on the right path- so says the history book of times far worse than now.