Which One Is Ed?

I have finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker and have been recommending it to the few of my friends I think might read it. Pinker convinces me that violence has declined and he convinces me about the reasons it has declined. Neither my view of human nature nor of our future are the same as they were before I read the book.

The two most immediate concepts impacted for me: political correctness and the evolving sense of decency. The evolving sense of decency will take a little more work, so I'll comment on political correctness.

I have for the most part viewed what we call political correctness as an irritating interference with free expression: Who cares if I say "stewardess" or "flight attendant?" (Apparently a lot of people). I heard a slight quibble this weekend over the use of "Comanches" as a sort of a mascot for a professional organization. The organizer who liked the name because it was Texan and Native American argued that the name was being honored and not ridiculed. The politically correct objector said we should not use any racial or ethnic monikers because it promotes stereotyping. I'm not sure who wins this in the long run, but after reading Pinker's book, it occurs to me the advocate of the name may be dating himself (and me, since it sounded fine to me) whereas the PC objector may be right about where we are going in society.

When I was in high school, it was perfectly polite to make fun of homosexuals. I did not hear the word "gay" used in that sense until later. Then, I thought a perfectly good word (Like the Gay Nineties) had been ruined. Much the same about jokes about violence against women. A man would discipline his wife, much in the way of Kate in "The Taming of the Shrew." Cruelty to animals was much more acceptable when I was young, now it leads to Dahmerism.

Now, these things have changed. And violence has also plummeted. Pinker makes a connection. If he is right, good riddance to bad jokes and welcome PC. We can call the group The Fat Old White Men Pretending to be Young and Energetic Like a Band of Plains Indians Warriors.

At Night, He Is Studying for an IT Career

Each year I seem to end up with one BIG BOOK. Last year it was Ian Morris and Why the West Rules--For Now. This year it is shaping up to be Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. I could list about 50 books, for 50 years. I'm never sure when I am reading them which ones will keep coming back to visit me. Some from when I was younger include Eric Hoffer's True Believer and Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled.

I mention these, because although there would be more famous books on my list (if I ever made this list), I don't think these books are known to most people I know.

The Better Angels of Our Natures may be a book that will give me a sense that, even without major changes in the way things are going, things may turn out better than they have been anyway. (Candide is probably on my list, also, and I have about 45 years avoiding becoming Dr. Pangloss, so you can imagine my worry about this confession.)

Wouldn't that be the damnest thing. All these years, fearing that we were becoming the worst of all possible worlds, and then one new book, and I can finally lean back and relax.

This book makes me think science is about to tell us why people do bad things to each other. Maybe, then, violence can stop. Pinker doesn't make this promise, but I'm reading between the lines. Or maybe I'm just making up new lines.

One of the many factors that Pinker credits for an improved humanity is satire. He quotes the King of Brobdingnag when he responds to Gulliver's description of English government: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth." That has long seemed an accurate description to me, but I am delighted to accept any evidence of change.

I am not sure if, like many old men, I am becoming more conservative as I age, or if there is really some hope that gradual improvement is possible in people, families, society, government, law. If I'm just getting old, I'll ask my friends to wait until after the holidays before they dump the ugly truth in my lap again.

Apologizing to Hobbes

Maybe I owe Thomas Hobbes an apology. All these years I thought he was just a propagandist for Charles II. I thought Hobbes was wrong about human nature. He insisted we needed a strong government, a Leviathan, to control man's evil nature. Without this strong government, we would be in constant fear, in danger of violent death, "and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

This is not what I have concluded of human nature with some 35 years of talking to folks in jails, prisons, and mental hospitals. Or those people on the outside who are largely indistinguishable from those on the inside. I have tended to the argument of Rousseau that "nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state...." And of Kropotkin, that the natural state of man (without the Leviathan) is one of mutual aid. Differently put, people, unless society locks them in cages together like rats in a small pen, do a pretty good job of getting along. They help each other because the cooperative groups are more likely to survive. Until we have been damaged, we don't have a desire to damage other people.

I am not ready to jettison this view of human nature. But I have been reading a book by Steven Pinker that argues that when Hobbes was asking to for strong government, he had his reasons, and a good argument apart from trying to please a young king. Pinker proves quite convincingly that without strong government, in history, rates of murder have been higher. Much higher. Not uncommonly, a hundred times higher.

No wonder Hobbes was born as twins with "fear." No wonder, he wanted someone, even a silly, hedonistic Merrie Monarch, with the power to stop the violence.

Pinker has published "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." He compares murder rates throughout the existence of our species. He looks at the level of homicides during anarchy of the hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies. He argues a five-fold decrease in murders in moving into agricultural societies. In the move from feudal territories to kingdoms, he argues a ten-fold to fifty-fold decline in the murder rates. Since World War II, he argues we have moved into a New Peace and a time of fewer civl wars, genocides, repressions by autocratic governments and terrorist attacks.

Oh Thomas, I'll be more patient with you in the future.