The Better Angels of Our Nature

August 8, 2011
In the perennial debate over nature versus nurture, Steven Pinker has established himself as the pre-eminent contemporary spokesman for biology as destiny. Every few years, Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, publishes a doorstop-sized, improbably readable tome that swiftly generates controversy. Pinker’s thesis is that the human condition is, in effect, coded into the human genome. We have about two dozen basic cognitive and emotional systems operating between our ears. They are the product of evolution. Our capabilities as a species (for example, language) as well as our all too obvious limitations (say, the penchant for aggression) have eons of momentum behind them. Thus human nature, while somewhat flexible, is, for the most part, fixed.

So it proves mildly surprising to consider the subtitle of Pinker’s new book. The very claim that violence has declined seems counterintuitive. After all, the 20th century obliged us to invent new terms such as “genocide” and “concentration camp”—while this one has been plenty bloody so far. But rather than claiming that some homicidal imperative is hard-wired into us as organisms, Pinker maintains that we’ve grown less bloodthirsty over the course of recorded history.

Through historical shortsightedness, we’re prone to underestimate just how pervasive routine violence was in previous eras. But Pinker’s graphs—and the evidence he harvests from anthropologists, historians, criminologists, and experts of many other kinds—suggest that the percentage of the population killed in warfare or everyday mayhem has declined, from century to century. The number of executions has gone down, and routine public displays of viciousness (such as torture and lynching) have grown less socially acceptable.

By Pinker’s account, our evolutionary inheritance includes a tendency for dominance—as well as a knack for rationalizing violent actions as “provoked, justified, involuntary, or inconsequential.” But we also have capacities for self-control and empathy that become reinforced when societies undergo what the great sociologist Norbert Elias called “the civilizing process” of establishing a central, rational authority.

Alas, that process has failed to pacify “the lower strata of the socioeconomic scale, and the inaccessible or inhospitable territories of the globe.” (The latter phrase evidently refers to the Third World, rather than Antarctica.) Better Angels is a fascinating and deeply irritating book—full of thought-provoking data, but also prone to bursts of dismissive sneering toward researchers whose work runs counter to Pinker’s current of thinking. He effectively reinvents Victorian notions of “the dangerous classes” and “lesser breeds without the law.” But his vision of “civilized” societies triumphing over humanity’s murderous impulses would be more credible if highly developed countries had not developed so many weapons capable of destroying all life on Earth several times over.

Reviewed by Scott McLemee, who writes the weekly column Intellectual Affairs for Inside Higher Ed.

September 1, 2011

Frightened of your own shadow? Worried about lone gunmen and psycho killers? Pinker (Psychology/Harvard Univ.; The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, 2007, etc.) encourages readers not to fret so much.

Recognizing that the world can be a dangerous place, the author sets out as his overarching thesis the fact that violence has steadily declined in human society over the generations—"today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species's existence." For those who consider humans to be simply well-armed chimpanzees, Pinker argues that there would seem to be nothing innate about "coalitional violence"—that is, the savage raiding that so characterizes chimpanzee society on one hand and what ethnologists used to call primitive human societies on the other. Yet, he adds, neither is there much reason to believe that we evolved to be peaceniks on the putative model of bonobos, who, in nature, turn out not to be the hippies of the primate world but who nonetheless cause less mayhem than their (and our) chimp relatives. In other words, our behavior is more situational and provisional than hard-wired, for which reason, as Pinker writes, the rate of violence (at least, of the non-coalitional sort) in most parts of the world is steadily declining. As evidence, he cites the steady disinvestment of many world powers in military enterprises, as well as the complex statistics in rates of death in warfare in state and nonstate societies (for the Aztecs, about 250 per 100,000; for America during the Vietnam era, about 3.7 per 100,000). Pinker ranges widely, citing the literature of neuroscience here and the poems of Homer there, visiting vast databases of statistics while pondering the wisdom of Thomas Hobbes' conception of human life as "nasty, brutish, and short," and analyzing such weighty matters as "the adaptive logic of violence" and "pathways to self-control."

Classic Pinker, jammed with facts, figures, and points of speculative departure; a big, complex book, well worth the effort for the good news that it delivers.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2011

The subtitle might seem counterintuitive, but Pinker reminds us that, in fact, centuries past were saturated with slavery, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, and cruel and unusual punishments of all kinds. Those things have declined, as evidenced by the charts and graphs Pinker supplies. A heartening thought; what will be even more interesting is seeing how the penetrating Pinker, Harvard psychology professor and author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate, explains how and why "the better angels of our nature" are prevailing. Pinker can be demanding and yet is pervasively popular--as suggested by the 12-city tour--and this book expands beyond his previous audience.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
Readers will understandably question psychology professor Pinker's basic premises that violence has declined significantly and that we are living in the most peaceable era of human existence. But he makes the case with data and trend lines indicating that despite the horrors of our modern ageterrorism, genocide, everyday mayhemwe are actually killing and maiming less frequently than in earlier history. Pinker takes a very long view, drawing on history and psychology to examine a very hopeful trend. He begins by looking at six historical trends that have led to advancements from hunting to agriculture to commerce and governance, resulting in greater prosperity and ease. In the arena of psychology, he explores five inner demons and how they have been fueled and calmed by historical factors. Finally, he examines four better angelsforces, including empathy, self-control, morality, and reason, that have historically kept us from eliminating our species. This long, well-researched, comprehensive tour-de-force provides a helpful look at the human condition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)