Steven Pinker, THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, post 6

Subtitled “Why Violence Has Declined”
(Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.)

Summary:

Chapter 8 concerns five forces that drive violence: Predation, Dominance, Revenge, Sadism, and Ideology. Humans are not innately aggressive, except in certain circumstances that trigger violence. So a dark side does exist (the human mind is not a blank slate, as Pinker established in an earlier book), but it’s not an ever-present mounting urge. A Moralization Gap describes how humans, subject to self-serving biases, create competing narratives of perpetrator and victim, depending on point of view, and how perpetrators often feel themselves to be victim; i.e. there’s no such thing as pure evil. For each of the five forces, Pinker identifies what drives them, and social developments in the 20th century have ameliorated them.

Comments:

I note several ideas I’ve absorbed and occasionally cite.

• The observation that many people love to watch violence, especially on TV and in movies. And that this, ironically, gives many people, especially conservatives who are prone to alarm, the idea that crime is running rampant across the nation.
• The notion of ‘pure evil’ as a childish oversimplification of a complex world, especially evident once you read accounts by ‘evildoers’ about how they think *they* are the victims, e.g. of assault on the purity of their race or nation. Or wokeness.
• There’s a running theme here of the psychological biases of humans, which of course reflects the author’s two earlier books, HOW THE MIND WORKS and THE BLANK SLATE.
• And of the tendency of humans to be tribal and to arrange themselves in dominance hierarchies
• The broad recognition that the second half of the 20th century was an age of psychology — the ideologies of Freud and behaviorism giving way to genetic rationales for behaviors, and clinical studies to uncover the biases and tendencies of human nature.
• And in general, the 20th century forces that have somewhat overcome these instincts are those considered progressive, or by conservatives, woke. The intermixing of cultures around the world, the recognition of science, the spread of knowledge and experience through books. The retreat from fundamentalist ideologies, including religious ones. An open society in which no one is punished for airing dissenting views.
• Alas, some of these forces seem to be in retreat…

Earlier:
This page with quotes at the bottom; Post 1; Post 2; Post 3; Post 4; Post 5.

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Chapter 8: Inner Demons

• We need to explain both violence, and its decline. This goes to whether humans are basically good, or bad, or some multiplex combination.

• The Dark Side
• First to establish that the dark side exists – that most of us *are* wired for violence.
• Evidence: the ‘terrible twos’, after which toddlers become less aggressive. And our ‘inner lives’ – how often many of us imagine killing another person, and how we so enjoy depictions of violence in religious texts, myths, movies, comics, etc, 484-485.
• It’s notable that actual violent incidents are very small compared to depictions; perhaps our interest is to understand how it works, just in case, 485.6; similar argument for illicit sex. 485.7 “Symons suggests that higher consciousness itself is designed for low-frequency, high-impact events.”
• Our own brains are “swollen and warped” versions of the brains of other mammals. We have a ‘rage circuit’ which can be triggered.
• But if that’s so, why the frequency of soldiers hesitating to fight in war? Similar pattern in brawls – they’re mostly bluff. Perhaps due to discretion, the understanding that personal harm or family retaliation may follow. Most human violence is cowardly, 487.7; when such issues aren’t present, men can explode into ‘rampages’…

• The Moralization Gap and the Myth of Pure Evil p488
• Author’s book The Blank Slate explored the modern denial of this dark side of human nature.
• Evil people don’t think of themselves as evil. Experiments identify two competing narratives: that of the perpetrator, and that the victim. Both sides tell stories that distort the truth, p489. Call this the Moralization Gap.
• These are because of self-serving biases—“The drive to present the self in a positive light was one of the major findings of 20^th-century social psychology.” 490.4. Effects of this drive include cognitive dissonance, and the Lake Woebegon effect.
• These are the prices of being social animals, 490b. Trivers; other books 490m. The glimmer of hope is that by understanding this effect people might be able to recognize that we are not always right, 492.6ff
• Given this psychological understanding, we can look at history differently. Each side in a conflict sincerely believes it is in the right – examples 492-493. Victims remember long-term events; perpetrators excuse themselves and want to move on, 493. Japan overlooks WWII; the American view of WWII overlooks various causes. Criminals rationalize, often claiming themselves as victims. “Evildoers always think they are acting morally” 494b.
• To understand this, as a scholar, is often to take the side of the perpetrator, as opposed to the moralist, who takes the side of the victim, and demonizing the other side as pure evil. This myth of pure evil shows up in religions and popular fiction, 496m. To understand it risks being accused of ‘making excuses’ or ‘blaming the victim’. Hannah Arendt understood the ‘banality of evil’.

• Organs of Violence, p497
• It’s a myth that violence in humans is merely ‘animalistic’, despite words like beastly and brutish. For one thing, predatory violence is very different than aggression, as can be seen in a housecat.
• Detailed description of a rat’s brain, and then of a human brain… how different areas control different kinds of response. We understand how certain areas work because of famous cases like Phineas Gage.
• How moral deliberation works; e.g. hiding from Nazis in the cellar, do you strangle the crying baby to save the others?
• There are five categories of violence as explored here: predatory; dominance; revenge; sadism; and ideology.

• Predation, p509
• In which violence is simply a means to an end, e.g. hunting for food or sport. It can include casual violence against humans, cases that people think are evidence of pure evil, 510m. The question is why isn’t such violence more common?
• Two forces are at work: first, the reaction when the target fights back, violence turns to anger…
• Second, people are prone to positive illusions, whereby they exaggerate their own talents and abilities, 511b – 512. Why should this be so? Perhaps some slight delusions about oneself make one more believable to potential allies, while straight-out lying would be more likely detected, 512.5: “It would be better for the species if no one exaggerated, but our brains were not selected for the benefit of the species, and no individual can afford to be the only honest one in a community of self-enhancers.”
• Thus many military actions are led by general overconfident of their likelihood of victory. Example: Bush and Iraq war, in which the flow of information that might have clued the military leaders they were over-extended was cut off – ‘unknown knowns’, 514b, which Rumsfeld missed.

• Dominance, p515
• Much violence erupts from trivial altercations that threaten the perceived dominance hierarchy, which depends on information, on common knowledge of everyone’s position and status.
• Men are more concerned with status, and men are more violent, 517.5. High status men have more women – 517.9 – 518.
• Testosterone isn’t exactly a cause of aggression; it seems T prepares one for a challenge of dominance, 518.
• Despite modern myth, it’s not low self-esteem that causes violence – rather, *high* self-esteem, e.g. tyrants who are narcissists, psychopaths, or with borderland personality disorder (see definitions 520b).
• Another factor is group identity – how we can feel proud of our group even when no one alive is actually to credit for the group’s achievement. People assign groups the qualities of individuals, with traits for praise or blame. Thus sports and politics – sports even when the players keep changing (cheering for the teams’ clothes). We align with groups even when distinctions among them are trivial or arbitrary. Toddlers exhibit racist attitudes naturally – these things have to be unlearned, not learned. [[ as I’ve long thought ]] 523t.
• p523: How two psychologists propose that “people, to varying degrees, harbor a motive they call social dominance, through a more intuitive term is tribalism: the desire that social groups be organized into a hierarchy, generally with one’s own group dominant over the others. A social dominance orientation, they show, inclines people to a sweeping array of opinions and values, including patriotism, racism, fate, karma, caste, national destiny, militarism, toughness on crime, and defensives of existing arrangements of authority and inequality. An orientation away from social dominance, in contract, inclines people to humanism, socialism, feminism, universal rights, political progressivism, and the egalitarian and pacifist themes in the Christian Bible.”
• Thus race itself isn’t so important; people have divided themselves into groups long before the various races came together.
• Nationalism welds three things: the tendency toward tribalism; the concept of a group sharing some quality; and government. Add narcissism, and you get cultures prone to go to war for perceived slights or feelings of disrespect from the rest of the world (these days: Russia, the Islamic world). Some countries, like Holland and Switzerland, gave up such preeminence games; others never considered it (Canada, New Zealand).
• Ethnic groups often coexist without violence, even if they don’t like each other.
• If men are more obsessed with dominance, would the world be a better place if women were in charge? 526.3. With qualifications, yes. They are certainly less inclined to war.
• 528: “Dominance is an adaptation to anarchy, and it serves no purpose in a society that has undergone a civilizing process or in an international system regulated by agreements and norms. Anything that deflates the concept of dominance is likely to drive down the frequency of fights between individuals and wars between groups.”
• Two forces in mid/late 20^th century: the exposure and ridicule of manliness, honor, prestige, and glory in movies and popular culture. And the influence of biological science on literary culture, i.e. understanding of testosterone and the decline in books of words like glorious and honorable.

• Revenge, p529
• Throughout history: Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, other cultures. And it’s a major cause of violence – e.g. bin Laden’s statement about 9/11 being in revenge. And most student fantasies of violence were about revenge.
• Studies show how common the urge is…
• And it has a function: deterrence. The evolution of cooperation can be illustrated by the Prisoner’s Dilemma, p533, and refinements to the Tit for Tat strategy; repeated runs show that Tit for Tat is equivalent to the theory of reciprocal altruism. It’s not a disease; playing out the strategy illustrates various personality traits: nice; clear; retaliatory; forgiving.
• Forgiving is especially important, in variations like Generous TforT and Contrite TforT. It adjusts for periodic misunderstandings. But interactions must be ongoing for forgiveness to be effective. Why gossip is effective. Other games, like Public Goods or Tragedy of the Commons, lead to problem situations unless free riders can be punished.
• Does revenge work? Yes; so long as the avenger has a reputation for willingness to take revenge, and as long as the target knows why he’s targeted.
• Why is it needed so often? It maps to the Moralization Gap, and tends to escalate with the Leviathan to cut it off and administrate ‘justice’, which is partly a matter of citizens’ ‘revenge’ against a perpetrator, as well as deterrence.
• The ‘dimmer switch’ on escalating revenge is that we tend to forgive kin and friends, or with people we have to learn to live with. Thus the idea of apology – which must be made sincerely lest be seen as a ploy.
• And in fact governments in recent decades have increasingly apologized for past behaviors. P543.
• These can lead to reconciliations between former enemies, but four elements are required: truth-telling, adjustments of social identities (military becomes police, e.g.), incomplete justice – at some point amnesty must be allowed, since every perceived injustice on both sides can never be fully accounted for – and social gestures to underscore the new order.
• Example of Israel and Palestine—a Shakespearean tragedy, or Chekovian? At least with the latter, everyone is still alive.

• Sadism, p547
• Surely the worst qualitative depravity. Sadism, i.e. torture, can arise in five circumstances: instrumental violence (torturing a prisoner for information); as punishment; as entertainment; during rampages; and by serial killers (as distinguished from mass murderers).
• And there are four motives that bring it about: morbid fascination with the vulnerability of living things (the attraction of horror films e.g.); dominance; revenge; and sexual sadism.
• Males are more aggressive than females, and thus more likely to be violent in sex. Some testimonies of torture include erotic reactions.
• What brakes sadists? First, empathy for others; then cultural taboo; and of course the visceral revulsion of hurting another person.
• Then what triggers it? Rampages; psychopathy. It’s an acquired taste, like drug addiction, that is often unpleasant at first, like other paradoxical pleasures 555b, that can become addicting.
• So it’s a potential in human nature that can be prevented only by blocking the first steps that lead to it. P556.

• Ideology, p556
• “The infinite good it promises prevents its true believers from cutting a deal. It allows any number of eggs to be broken to make the utopian omelet. And it renders opponents of the ideology infinitely evil and hence deserving of infinite punishment.” 556.8
• Longer summary 557t… “Let these ingredients brew in the mind of a narcissist with a lack of empathy, a need for admiration, and fantasies of unlimited success…”
• This happens even though the ideals of many of these are ludicrous –557m, burning witches, etc.
• Ideologies happen through various kinds of groupthink. Polarization of thought; people are influenced by those around them. The Stanley Milgram experiment.
• 7: “People take their cues on how to behave from other people. This is a major conclusion of the golden age of social psychology…” (meaning the 1960s). The Stanford prison experiment; explains Abu Ghraib. People are inclined to conform. Similar experiments show rates are down, but “a majority of people will still hurt a stranger against their own inclinations if they see it as part of a legitimate project in their society.” 560.6
• Conformity isn’t entirely irrational, but it can be pathological, as when an early standard gets locked into place against better alternatives (QWERTY, Microsoft s/w); bestsellers. Various terms for ‘going with the crowd’. Also ‘spirals of silence’ where people go along because they think everyone else wants the same thing, or despite the evidence of their senses.
• Such conformity must come with some kind of enforcement, lest objectors point out false beliefs. Experiments show how mixes of true believers with skeptics widely scattered can eventually saturate a society; the way to avoid this would be through open societies with free of speech and movement and well-developed channels of communication, 564t.
• Experiments demonstrate how people will agree to a false consensus, e.g. a bad wine, or evaluations of academic garbage.
• Yet, how do these effects lead to violence? Through the Moralization Gap. People rationalize situations, to reduce cognitive dissonance.
• Through euphemism, gradualism, displacement of responsibility (I was only following orders), distancing (literally; not killing up close), and derogation of victims.
• There’s no cure, but the best vaccine is “an open society in which people and ideas move freely and no one is punished for airing dissenting views, including those that seem heretical to polite consensus” p569.2

• Pure Evil, Inner Demons, and the Decline of Violence, p569
• “The alternative to the myth of pure evil is that most of the harm that people visit on one another comes from motives that are found in every normal person.”
• “The second half of the 20^th century was an age of psychology.”
• Summary of entire chapter: last para on p570:

“People, especially men, are overconfident in their prospects for success; when they fight each other, the outcome is likely to be bloodier than any of them thought. People, especially men, strive for dominance for themselves and their groups; when contests of dominance are joined, they are unlikely to sort the parties by merit and are likely to be a net loss for everyone. People seek revenge by an accounting that exaggerates their innocence and their adversary’s malice; when two sides seek perfect justice, they condemn themselves and their heirs to strife. People can not only overcome their revulsion to hands-on violence but acquire a taste for it; if they indulge it in private, or in cahoots with their peers, they can become sadists. And people can avow a belief they don’t hold because they think everyone else avows it; such beliefs can sweep through a closed society and bring it under the spell of a collective delusion.”