ARE PEOPLE LESS VIOLENT? (COMMENT).
ARE PEOPLE LESS VIOLENT? (COMMENT). Both Dick Weisfelder and Nick commented on my most recent post on concussions in football, each expressing the thought that people today are more concerned about injuries in sporting events than in the days of gladiatorial combats and bare knuckle fighting—that, as Nick put it, in many ways society is more “civilized”. They are raising issues which have been raised by a new book by Steven Pinker, the cognitive psychologist: THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE: THE DECLINE OF VIOLENCE IN HISTORY AND ITS CAUSES. The book is considered important and controversial—so much so that it was chosen to lead off a new feature in the Guardian (the “Reading room”) devoted to discussions with readers to “explore major new works by contemporary thinkers.” This article by Pinker from 2007 in The Edge website seems to be a good introduction to the book. One sentence which bears on the comments from Dick Weisfelder and Nick: “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.’
It seems doubtful that human nature has changed. The most likely explanation would be that modern culture gives us another way to resolve our difficulties namely, argumentation. In use continually as an educational technique since ancient times it is also a primary component of democracy-think free speech, free press and deliberative bodies.