BOOK REVIEW: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has

Declined, by Steven Pinker

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why
Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker,
was first published in U.S. by Viking
Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA)
Inc. 2011: New York, New York. Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-670-02295-3
This book review is the second in a series
that looks at works that argue for an
optimistic view of human nature and
development, a view that favors positive
results from efforts to advance disarmament,
peace, and securitythe substance of our
Committees mission. As before, comments
and suggestions are invited.
Steven Pinker, a distinguished professor of
psychology at Harvard who is well-known for
his work on language and cognition (The
Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, and
several others), has brilliantly synthesized
(and critiqued) a stunning range of
knowledge and recent research in the fields of history, economics, sociology,
psychology, and of course cognitive science, to produce this work that argues for
his thesisthat over the course of history human violence has diminished radically
in amount and typeand inquires into the most likely and supportable factors that
make it so.
With 696 pages of text, 33 pages of references, 114 graphics and charts (many
quantitative), and a nifty preface, it can certainly be called a tome, but thank
heavens it is a refreshingly readable one. Pinkers engaging prose style and his wit,
which draws on folk humor and satirical material over the ages, leavens the
sometimes grim materialmassacres, infanticide, execution by torture, the explicit
evidence from forensic archaeologybut we are also often happy to take abstract
refuge in his datasets and data analysis, which are full of surprises, some
unexceptional, some extraordinary.
In the manner of classical rhetoric, he first disabuses us of the conventional notion
that we live in a particularly violent era in history. His evidence (and it is extensive)
shows that a person is safer from violent death and violence against his person
right now than at any time in human history, and at every level, from domestic, to
local communities, to inter-tribal, and inter-state. To exemplify his approach, an
abundance of evidence confirms that, contra the post-Rousseau romance of the

noble savage and the values-based push-back against colonialism and bigotry that
led the early cohorts of anthropologists to dismiss violence among hunter-gatherer
tribes in remote areas, the chances of meeting a violent death as a member of a
contemporary hunter-gather tribe average at 14 percent, based on eight tribes
studied; the chances within a mixed hunter-gatherer-horticultural tribe (e.g., Mae
Enga in New Guinea) are 24.5 percent, based on 10 tribes.
Pinker shows that, while the experience of living under autocratic rule (Mussolini or
Qin-shih Huang-ti, say) may be damned uncomfortable, it is the formation of states
with their exclusive control over violencehe uses the Leviathan of Hobbes as his
organizing imagethat was the historical giant step. For example, in 17th century
Europe, one of the two most violent centuries in Western history, chances of death
from warfare, under arms or as an innocent, was around 2 percent.
This phenomenon, which he calls Pacification, is one of Six Trends that make up
the arc of diminishing violence (the rest comprise the Civilizing Process, the
Humanistic Revolution, the Long Peace, the New Peace, and the Rights
Revolution, each the subject of extensive discussion).
In this and the other major sectionswhich address the elements of human nature
that engender violence and those that work to control or mitigate itPinker
showcases a number of intellectual heroes, such as historian of science Norbert
Elias, bioethicist Peter Singer, and philosopher James Flynn. Some are known
outside their academic circles, some not. All the arguments and data analysis
fascinates and challenges received or under-examined notions.
While aesthetes may object to a utilitarian view of literature, Pinker credits mass
publishing and the novel in particular with informing readers about very different
milieus than their own, and fostering sympathy by presenting alternative
perspectives on life (think Uncle Toms Cabin and Oliver Twist). In that regard,
18th and 19th century novels became a vehicle for the humanistic message of the
Enlightenment.
A tour of this book is impossible in a short review. It may be the most valuable (and
imposing!) summer reading you take on, and is highly recommended. Of great
interest are our present prospects for peace and security. Pinker shows us that the
Four Better Angels of empathy, self-control, moral sense, and reason, in an
escalating multi-factoral bouquet, have brought us a long way. He also notes that
there are no guarantees. A Kennedy or Khrushchev whose character was mired in
pre-modern notions of honoran embodiment of one of the Five Inner Demons
that Pinker calls Dominance--could well have triggered World War IIIreason
prevailed.
- Charles Rosenberg, Editor, Disarmament Times