{"id":26403,"date":"2025-12-03T16:10:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T00:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=26403"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:34:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T23:34:16","slug":"steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/12\/03\/steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Pinker, THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, post 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Subtitled \u201cWhy Violence Has Declined\u201d<br \/>\n<em>(Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PinkerBetterAngels-1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/PinkerBetterAngels-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Summaries:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 6<\/strong>, <strong>&#8220;The New Peace,&#8221;<\/strong> consider three types of organized violence: among groups citing &#8220;ancient hatreds,&#8221; ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. These too are in decline. The first applies to the world outside the major powers. Genocide arises from stereotyping and Hobbes&#8217; basic trio of motives for conflict: gain, fear, and deterrence. They are often led by Utopian ideologies that figure, for the perfect good, no sacrifice of people is too great: the Bible, Homer, the Puritans, Cromwell, Marx, Hitler. Genocides in the 20th century derived from just three men: Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. Terrorism is overblown; actual numbers are quite small. The point is panic, and most terrorist groups fail in their ostensible goals. We&#8217;ll never win the &#8220;war on terror&#8221; anymore than we&#8217;ll &#8220;rid the world of evil.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There are four further threats: war with Islam (Muslims missed the Enlightenment somehow); nuclear terrorism (again, less likely than many think); Iran; and climate change.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chapter 7<\/strong> describes how violence has been reduced via the various <strong>&#8220;Rights Revolutions,&#8221;<\/strong> which parallel the humanitarian revolution of two centuries earlier. These include civil rights and the decline of lynching and racial pogroms; women&#8217;s rights and the decline of rape and battering; children&#8217;s rights and the decline of infanticide, spanking, etc.; gay rights and the decriminalization of homosexuality; animal rights and the decline of cruelty to animals. This chapter cites a great many familiar events from the past 50 years, weaving them into cohesive patterns. They show that a moral way of life often requires a rejection of instinct, culture, religion, and standard practice, replaced by an ethics of empathy and reason. Progress results in today&#8217;s conservatives being more liberal than yesterday&#8217;s liberals. What brought them all about? Mobility of ideas and people, and the explosion of book publishing, which debunked ignorance and superstition, and resulted in a sort of intellectual agility that enables people to step outside the parochial constraints of their own birth and station.<\/p>\n<p>Posts on this book: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2016\/03\/09\/reading-around-the-bible-1\/\"><em>This page<\/em><\/a> with quotes at the bottom; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/09\/06\/pinker-better-angels-passages-and-outline-from-the-preface\/\">Post 1<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/09\/12\/pinker-better-angels-chapter-1-a-foreign-country\/\">Post 2<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/10\/18\/steven-pinkers-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-chapters-2-and-3\/\">Post 3<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/12\/02\/steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-4\/\">Post 4<\/a>; Post 5; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/12\/04\/steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-6\/\">Post 6<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/12\/03\/steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-7\/\">Post 7<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Ch6, The New Peace, p295<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Despite the downward trend of war among states, pundits these days are as gloomy as ever. Examples. Partly due to market forces among pundits, partly due to human biases that raise alarm about rare events. And partly innumeracy, e.g. not recognizing ten-fold drops in casualties (example Kinsley).<\/li>\n<li>This chapter concerns three types of organized violence: among groups citing \u2018ancient hatreds\u2019; ethnic cleansing (genocide); and terrorism.<\/li>\n<li>These too are all in decline.<\/li>\n<li>First, <strong>war in the rest of the world<\/strong>, outside the major powers. Both data sets and graphs show reductions. We have in fact almost put an end to war, as the 60s folk songs desired. The global homicide rate is 8.8 per 100,000.\n<ul>\n<li>The wars that linger are mostly among the \u2018bottom billion\u2019, in a strip running across central Africa and into SE Asia. War and poverty reinforce each other. Many of these conflicts follow from the withdrawal of colonial rulers. And some involve ideologues with little regard to loss of their citizens, trying simply to outlast their opponents (e.g. Vietnam and China).<\/li>\n<li>8: \u201cA world that is less invigorated by honor, glory, and ideology and more tempted by the pleasures of bourgeois life is a world in which fewer people are killed.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Looking for reasons, see Kant\u2019s triangle of democracy, open economies, and engagement with the international community. P310.\n<ul>\n<li>Many of these countries are bad democracies, or anocracy, rife with corruption, etc. These countries resemble the 14<sup>th<\/sup> century, run by thugs, 312m gangs or Mafiosi.<\/li>\n<li>What helps are peacekeeping forces, which help reassure opposite sides that the other side isn\u2019t cheating or planning an attack.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, p316, many nonstate conflicts haven\u2019t been tracked by historians, and so data is spotty. Such conflicts are \u201ctribal battles, slave raids, pillaging by raiders and horse tribes, pirate attacks, and private wars by noblemen and warlords\u2026\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The effects of war can be starvation and disease. But the oft-cited figure whereby civilian casualties used to be 10%, and are now 90%, is unsupportable<\/li>\n<li>Summary p320. Wars still cause misery, and we shouldn\u2019t see the decrease in numbers as a bright side\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genocide<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Genocide, or \u2018democide\u2019, is killing-by-category, over religious, political, or ethnic grounds. Example of course go back to the Bible, p322; Dostoyevsky; the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966-75.<\/li>\n<li>How could people do these things? P323. Begin with psychology\u2014stereotyping. Not a mental defect, but a kind of categorization indispensable to intelligence, 323b. There <em>are<\/em> statistical trends between groups. The problem is extending the generalization to individuals, especially during conflicts, Hobbes\u2019 trio of motives\u2014gain, fear, deterrence.\n<ul>\n<li>Native Americans; Romans against the Jews; Godfather (kill the children lest they group and come for revenge)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Biological metaphors; \u2018bad blood\u2019, result of evolution of the emotion of disgust (against contaminants etc) 327t, leads both to dehumanization and demonizing.<\/li>\n<li>Summary 328: \u201cThe mind\u2019s habit of essentialism can lump people into categories; its moral emotions can be applied to them in their entirely. The combination can transform Hobbesian competition among individuals or armies into Hobbesian competition among peoples. But genocide has another fateful component. As Solzhenitsyn pointed out, to kill by the millions you need an <em>ideology<\/em>.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Thus, examples: Christianity during the Crusades; Nazism during the holocaust; Marxism with Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.<\/li>\n<li>These are Utopian ideologies that figure, for the perfect good, no sacrifice of people is too great. Such ideologies often hearken back to some vanished agrarian paradise, 329.4 \u2013 \u2018blood and soil\u2019 \u2013 that envisions harmony, purity, and organic wholeness. More examples. Another motive targets commercial activities, concentrated in cities; people\u2019s intuitive economics suspect something about economic middlemen, e.g. moneylenders, thus inviting animus against them, e.g. the Jews.<\/li>\n<li>These visions parallel the apocalyptic visions of traditional religions, e.g. how Marxism mimicked Christian doctrine, p330. How Hitler promised a thousand-year Reich.<\/li>\n<li>Also, leaders of such ideologies tend to be narcissistic and ruthless, e.g. Mao whose crazy ideas for the Great Leap Forward resulted in millions dead of starvation. P331. Thus genocide can be triggered by individuals, and carried out by relatively few. Genocides generally end when those leaders die.<\/li>\n<li>So how has this changed over history? Again, Bible, Homer. Puritans thanked God for wiping out natives. Cromwell, for conquering Ireland.<\/li>\n<li>Through most of history people didn\u2019t think there was anything wrong with genocide. The only good Indian is a dead Indian, e.g. Until after WW II, revelations of the holocaust; the word \u2018genocide\u2019 was coined in 1944. Holocaust deniers at least feel the need to deny genocide, rather than bragging about it. (Progress!)<\/li>\n<li>Attitudes shifted largely because survivors told their stories \u2013 Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi.<\/li>\n<li>Numbers \u2013 it isn\u2019t that genocide is \u2018death by government\u2019; it\u2019s that a few, certain types of governments commit genocides: totalitarian ones: communist, Nazi, fascist, Islamic. In 20<sup>th<\/sup> century most genocides were carried out by Soviets, China, and Nazi Germany, 337t. Chart p338; after WWII, incidents dwarfed in comparison, e.g. Rwanda.<\/li>\n<li>Studies look for risk signs of genocide, p341: history of genocide; political instability; a ruling elite from an ethnic minority; and then three predictors from the theory of the Liberal Peace: democracy; open trade; lack of exclusionary ideology. (e.g. \u201c\u2026forms of nationalism that demonize ethnic or religious rivals\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>Summary, p343, genocides in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century derived from just three men: Stalin, Hitler, and Mao.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Terrorism<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Despite prominence in news, numbers of victims of terrorism are actually quite small \u2013 even the 3000 who died on 9\/11. Compared to other causes of death.<\/li>\n<li>Panic is the point; people react to perceived dangers (cf Kahneman et al, 345.9), which key off fathomability and dread. These can lead to distortions of public policy, e.g. 3 Mile Island. John Kerry pointed out how terrorism shouldn\u2019t take over our lives, and was castigated, and had to apologize.<\/li>\n<li>Terrorism isn\u2019t new; Romans in Judea; Shia Muslims; a cult in India: Zealots, Assassins, Thugs. Anarchists who killed politicians in early 20<sup>th<\/sup><\/li>\n<li>And political violence in the 1960s and 70s, including the SLA, 347b; the IRA in Europe; etc.<\/li>\n<li>Little known fact: terrorist groups mostly fail, and all of them die. Very few achieve their goals. They tend to disband when their leaders die or get bored. Or they escalate their tactics until they lose all sympathy with the general population.<\/li>\n<li>What about Islam? Suicide terrorists? What motivates them?<\/li>\n<li>Explanation of natural selection and kin selection \u2013 someone is willing to die for a cause that promotes survival of their relatives (e.g. \u2018brotherly love\u2019) or those they perceive as their compatriots \u2013 thus the strategies of military commanders to form \u2018bands of brothers\u2019 who would die for each other.<\/li>\n<li>The promise of an afterlife, or other religious motive, isn\u2019t so much a factor. More often it\u2019s the promise of honor bestowed on their surviving families; their glory and esteem.<\/li>\n<li>Any signs Islamist terrorism is burning out? Answer is yes, p358.5. Favorable opinions of terrorist groups, in the Islamic world, have plunged. Statistics show a decrease in terrorist deaths.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ll never win the \u2018war on terror\u2019 any more than we\u2019ll \u2018rid the world of evil\u2019, as GW Bush said. But terrorist groups tend to burn out by themselves, history shows.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Where Angels Fear to Tread<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Now four more threats. There\u2019s no way to predict likelihood of individual events. But for these threats, we can say, \u201cmaybe, but maybe not.\u201d Despite the continued stream of books predicting doom.<\/li>\n<li>First, <strong>war with Islam<\/strong>. The Muslim world is more violent than the West; it\u2019s as if they missed out on the Humanist Revolution, the Enlightenment. Muslims are more prone to superstitions and cultures of honor, p363.<\/li>\n<li>What happened? In the Middle Ages, Islamic civilization was more refined that Christendom; it retained knowledge from the Greeks, and India; thus astronomy, Arabic numbers.<\/li>\n<li>But Islamic culture never had a separation of mosque and state. It acquired Greek philosophy and math, but not its drama and history. \u201cIn chapter 4 I speculated that the Humanitarian Revolution in Europe was catalyzed by a literate cosmopolitanism, \u2026\u201d 365.6. Even in 2010, the Iranian government restricted university students studying humanities, which \u201cpromotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>However, despite the so-called \u2018clash of civilizations\u2019, there is no single Islamic civilization. Many in those countries support progressive policies; many in countries with Sharia law don\u2019t take it literally, any more than Americans do their Bibles, p367t. \u201cReligion thrives on woolly allegory, emotional commitments to texts that no one reads, and other forms of benign hypocrisy.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>And Islamic countries are increasingly exposed to the outside world, via the Internet\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Second, <strong>nuclear terrorism<\/strong>. People tend to overestimate the likelihood of various scenarios \u2013 committing the \u2018conjunction fallacy\u2019 p369. Past predictions have foretold doom within a few years or a decade, and none has come true.<\/li>\n<li>And other WMD\u2019s are rarely used; they\u2019re less effective than ordinary explosives.<\/li>\n<li>Furthermore, the steps to construct a nuclear bomb are so complex, and the components so tightly controlled, that the odds against this are very high.<\/li>\n<li>Third, <strong>Iran<\/strong>. Whose leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [until 2013] does have extremist views, including an apocalyptic war against the West. But a \u2018parsimonious\u2019 explanation is that that Bush\u2019s calling Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the \u2018axis of evil\u2019 is what prompted N Korea, and then Iran, to develop nukes. Anyway the same kind of nuclear standoff \u2013 the certainly of Iran being destroyed if it strikes first \u2013 argues against such a war actually happening.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, <strong>climate change<\/strong> \u2013 could it exacerbate these other factors? Likely not; resource scarcity seldom triggers conflicts.<\/li>\n<li>Summary, 377: new conflicts might always break out; but it\u2019s a mistake to think they are inevitable\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Ch 7, The Rights Revolutions<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Author tells anecdote about organized sports in school; he wasn\u2019t very good, though he did like dodgeball. Which has now been banned! It\u2019s another stage in the current diminishment of tolerance for violence\u2026 which has spread to \u201cvulnerable classes of victims that in earlier eras fell outside the circle of protection, such as racial minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals.\u201d 380.0<\/li>\n<li>Graph p380 shows use of \u201ccivil rights\u201d and other terms since 1960. These revolutions parallel the humanitarian revolution of two centuries earlier, and of the civilizing process, in that cultural norms formed without awareness of their rationale.<\/li>\n<li>Thus the results of these revolutions: \u201cThe code of etiquette bequeathed by this and the other Rights Revolutions is pervasive enough to have acquired a name. We call it political correctness.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Another legacy: we tend to forget past progress; activities are always pushing for the next battle to be won, as if the issue is as urgent as ever\u2026.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Civil Rights and the Decline of Lynching and Racial Pogroms<\/strong>, P382<\/li>\n<li>Americans think of the two decades from 1948: Harry Truman, Rosa Parks, MLK, Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.<\/li>\n<li>But it goes back to the emancipation of Negros 100 years before. In the meantime, a kind of intercommunal violence was carried out by groups like the KKK that entailed lynchings and ethnic riots called pogroms. Such events aren\u2019t planned \u2026 long description p383.<\/li>\n<li>Such violence has a longer history in the US \u2013 against Native Americans in the Trail of Tears; to the internment camps during WWII. 1863 draft riots (<em>Gangs of New York<\/em>). But these all began to decrease in the mid-19<sup>th<\/sup> Graph p384. The song \u2018Strange Fruit\u2019. The last famous lynching was Emmett Till in 1955.<\/li>\n<li>Since 1996 the government has kept counts of \u2018hate crimes\u2019 but these are so low as to be noise against the total murder rate of 17,000\/year in the US.<\/li>\n<li>And there were no lynchings or race riots against Muslims, even after 9\/11 and other events.<\/li>\n<li>Why did these fade? Better governance, and a rise in abhorrence to violence. Whereas earlier legal policies were exclusionary, new ones were written to be anti-exclusionary \u2013 \u2018remedial discrimination\u2019 or \u2018affirmative action\u2019.<\/li>\n<li>So have mindsets of people changed, no longer demonizing other groups. Is the US really racist to the bone? There are always social commentators who say we\u2019ve never had it so bad, p389b. That attitudes have changed is shown by data about questions like, if a black family moved in next door, would you move? Reactions have changed over the decades. And actual beliefs have changed, e.g. that African Americans are by nature lazy or less intelligent than whites. As has religious intolerance; fewer believe theirs is the one true religion that everyone should be converted to. P392.<\/li>\n<li>So has imagery: early films and TV with demeaning portrayals; offensive sports team names, etc.<\/li>\n<li>These remedial actions sometimes defy logic \u2013 how to justify racial preferences if everyone is to be defined by quality? Yet most are reluctant to abandon them. 394t: \u201cThe only defense of this hypocrisy is that it may be a price worth paying for historically unprecedented levels of racial comity (though it\u2019s in the nature of hypocrisy that one cannot say that either).\u201d<\/li>\n<li>This related to an issue discussed in <em>The Blank Slate<\/em> \u2013 what one takes to be innate to human nature\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Women\u2019s Rights and the Decline of Rape and Battering<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>An example of how we can be shocked by how violence we deplore today was perceived in the past. Rape common through history, e.g. Bible, Homer, etc etc; as are proscriptions against it. Examples of how rape was the woman\u2019s fault; rapists can buy their victims, etc. 10<sup>th<\/sup> commandment reduces status of women as something to be owned.<\/li>\n<li>As laws became codified, the burden of put on the women.<\/li>\n<li>We can understand the logic of rape via the genetic interests shaped by evolution, and the economics of human sexuality. There may even be an evolutionary advantage \u2013 not that this excuses it in any way, 396.4.<\/li>\n<li>The second party to rape is the woman\u2019s family, esp father, brother, husband, who have a stake in protecting her sexuality from rival males. 397.2 \u201cIn no society are women and in-laws obsessed with the virginity of grooms.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Thus laws and customs treat women as property.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s in the woman\u2019s interest to control her own sexuality (\u201cAs always, this reproductive spreadsheet is not something that a woman calculates\u2026\u201d 398.4)<\/li>\n<li>Our current attitudes are shaped by the principle of autonomy, that all individuals have a right to their bodies. This idea began in 1700 when ownership of women was compared to slavery, 399t, then to the 19<sup>th<\/sup> amendment in 1848, and then to a 1975 bestseller by Susan Brownmiller. A reaction against the male-centric view that human nature desires instant gratification \u2013 e.g. Kubrick\u2019s <em>A Clockwork Orange<\/em> \u2013 an idea not shared by women.<\/li>\n<li>Pop culture now reflects this attitude; the one thing you can\u2019t put into video games, it seems, is rape.<\/li>\n<li>Data: rates have fallen since the 1970s, by 80%, more so than other crimes. We are all increasingly feminist, despite supposed backlashes, as with surveys about whether women should obey husbands, not work, and so on.<\/li>\n<li>Psychology of rape revealed by comparison of porn (for men) and erotica (for women) \u2013 \u201cMen fantasize about copulating with bodies; women fantasize about making love to people\u201d 405.6<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s PC to claim rape is about power\u2026 405-6<\/li>\n<li>Wife-battering \u2013 domestic violence. A kind of \u2018mate-guarding\u2019, how men control the freedom of their partners. In fact, both sexes commit violence against each other. Data shows declines.<\/li>\n<li>Rest of world: much worse. P413. Yet author predicts things will get better, 414.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Children\u2019s Rights and the Decline of Infanticide, Spanking, Child Abuse, and Bullying.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Moses, Oedipus, many others were children left outside to the elements, who later became mythological heroes \u2013 makes for a good story, and evidence of how frequently infants have been abandoned or killed throughout history. In all cultures, 415.7<\/li>\n<li>But why would anyone kill a child? A study reached conclusions \u201cwhen faced with a variety of stressful situations\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Solution is \u2018history theory\u2019, how mothers avoid the sunk-cost fallacy by deciding whether to commit to the additional investment of raising a child considering their other children, her circumstances, and so on. 416-7: \u201cThe forecast may be based on bad signs in the infant, such as being deformed or unresponsive, or bad signs for successful motherhood, such as being burdened with older children, beset by war or famine \u2026 [etc]\u201d<\/li>\n<li>A \u2018natural affection\u2019 for a newborn is not automatic; in fact post-partum depression may be a kind of evaluation period for determining whether to invest in the child. Thus many societies bestow personhood on an infant only after a few weeks or a month.<\/li>\n<li>Still, we see this as abhorrent, as with other practices: child sacrifice, etc, or killing an infant just because it\u2019s a girl.<\/li>\n<li>Female infanticide is a puzzle. Some Asian societies are beset by a shortage of women. Ideally a population should maintain a 50\/50 ratio.<\/li>\n<li>Trivers proposed the idea that sons can outperform daughters in terms of offspring, in the long run, except when circumstances are poor; and this would predict that sons would be favored in good times, daughters in bad times. But in fact, no societies anywhere kill their sons.<\/li>\n<li>It\u2019s a free rider problem considering the population of sons and daughters, p421m. It is true that in warring tribes girls are sacrificed because more warrior sons may be desired. In advanced societies there are economic reasons, as in India and China.<\/li>\n<li>Today, infanticide isn\u2019t condoned and is very rare. This came about through criminalization, in the Bible despite exceptions, from the idea that all lives are owned by God, not their parents, to the point of becoming a taboo.<\/li>\n<li>Still, some have argued that infanticide is less heinous than murder of an older child or adult, a controversial notion; still, de facto distinctions are often made to treat former cases differently from latter ones.<\/li>\n<li>This taboo was cemented by reactions to the Holocaust, the slippery slope of deciding some classes of people are not fit to live. 424.7: \u201cBut like all taboos, the human life taboo is incompatible with certain features of reality, and fierce debates in bioethics today hinge on\u2026 \u201c<\/li>\n<li>For example, that humans like to have sex even in circumstances when raising children is not feasible, 424.9, and \u201cIn the absence of contraception, abortion, or an elaborate system of social welfare, many children will be born without suitable caregivers to bring them to adulthood. Taboo or no taboo, many of those newborns will end up dead.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Yet for a millennium and a half, despite prohibitions, infanticide was common, examples in Middle Ages, later ways of discreetly disposing of a child, as in Dickens.<\/li>\n<li>The reduction by today came via affluence, and technology, in the form of contraception and abortion. And the high valuation of children.<\/li>\n<li>427, a couple pages about <strong>abortion<\/strong>. Despite some predictions, the presence of abortion in recent decades has not led to a slippery slope of the cheapening of human life via euthanasia and so on. Rather it\u2019s useful to understand how people conceive of abortion \u2013 modern sensibilities focus on moral worth in terms of consciousness, not e.g. the beating of a heart. 427.4 \u201cThe change is a part of the turning away from religious and custom and toward science and secular philosophy as a source of moral illumination.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>And the distaste even for legal abortion has led to a decline in them, especially in Soviet countries. Again, mostly because of contraception.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Child-raising<\/strong> in past centuries as presumed that children are depraved and must have evil beaten out of them, p429. Thus children were raised harshly, frequently beaten or otherwise harshly treated.<\/li>\n<li>Why would parents do that? Trivers explained the parent-offspring conflict; parents must spread attention around, while for a child it\u2019s all about him or her alone.<\/li>\n<li>What changed? The early religious belief in innate depravity and original sin, 432.0, gave way to John Locke, in 1693, who proposed the notion that how children were raised would affect what kind of adults they became (i.e. they were blank slates). Thus sayings by Milton, Pope, Wordsworth. Then Rousseau, with the romantic notion of original innocence \u2013 children aren\u2019t yet able to reason, and should be allowed to enjoy the innocence of youth.<\/li>\n<li>These ideas evolved into the notion of valuing children even to the point of taking them away from abusive parents, as in 1874 case in NY.<\/li>\n<li>And then Dr. Spock in 1946 discouraged mothers from spanking children, advice that was reinforced by others to the point that spanking is outlawed in some countries, even corporal punishment in schools. Ever since 1950\u2026 \u201cOther than in fundamentalist Christian groups\u2026\u201d 435.2<\/li>\n<li>Surveys of parents about spanking children show higher acceptance in red states, lower in blue states.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe prohibition of spanking represents a stunning change from millennia in which parents were considered to own their children, and the way they treated them was considered no one else\u2019s business. But it is consistent with other intrusions of the state into the family, such as compulsory schooling, mandatory vaccination, the removal of children from abusive homes\u2026 [etc] In one frame of mind, this meddling is a totalitarian imposition of state power into the intimate sphere of the family. But in another, it is part of the historical current toward a recognition of the autonomy of individuals. Children are people\u2026\u201d p437.6<\/li>\n<li>And so <strong>child abuse<\/strong> is now much less tolerated, and evidently in decline despite problems with self-reporting parents. \u201cIn fact over the past two decades the lives of children and adolescents improved in just about every way you can measure.\u201d 440.5 And 439.5 \u201cBut starting in the 1980s, a growing number of opinion leaders, celebrities, and writers of television dramas began to call attention to child abuse\u2026\u201d [[ fascinating to acknowledge how TV is a kind of common culture that can affect actual culture \u2013 and to see how some see such themes as the concerns of liberal elites. In this age of the internet, has this commonality been fragmented to pieces? ]]<\/li>\n<li>And <strong>bullying<\/strong>. Examples of movies and comics that depict bullies. Now bullying is targeted for elimination, perhaps accidentally by rumors of what motivated the Columbine shooters. The moral case against it is ironclad: children shouldn\u2019t be able to get away with behavior proscribed in adults.<\/li>\n<li>So children\u2019s lives are far better. Yet efforts to protect children from violence are veering into the realm of <strong>sacrament and taboo<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Thus the so-called <strong>Nurture Assumption<\/strong> \u2013 that a parent can take control of a child\u2019s life and mold them however they like. This isn\u2019t true; children are socialized by their peer groups, not their parents; it takes a village, p443.6. Despite which, the idea has led to helicopter parents, to extreme reactions to minor violations in school, to whitewashing old movies. Now some children aren\u2019t allowed to play outside, let alone to walk to school; mothers have been vilified. 444b nice summary para.<\/li>\n<li>And fear of kidnapping by predators has led to photos of missing children on milk cartons, amber alerts, and much else. Despite the data: such incidents are extremely rare. Life is a series of trade-offs, and some precautions result in harm that would otherwise not occur\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Gay Rights, the Decline of Gay-Bashing, and the Decriminalization of Homosexuality<\/strong>. P447<\/li>\n<li>Case of Alan Turing, who saved Western Civilization but who was arrested and committed suicide\u2026 for having sex with a man.<\/li>\n<li>Since Leviticus there has been animus to gay people, and violence, despite there being nothing in it for the aggressor.<\/li>\n<li>Same-sex behavior is understandable in some situations (ships, prisons, etc., 448m), but how to explain the orientation? It\u2019s PC to say it\u2019s nature, not nurture. Which however, many traditional societies disapprove of it (\u201cThese beliefs may be products of the cross-wiring between disgust and morality that leads people to confuse visceral revulsion with objective sinfulness.\u201d 449.5)<\/li>\n<li>The Enlightenment led to questioning visceral impulses and religious dogma. Jeremy Bentham proposed in 1785 that no harm is done and so homosexuality is not immoral; it began legalized in France and some other countries, and in the US since 1960. Still, there are countries that punish it by death, 450.<\/li>\n<li>The US trend was triggered by Stonewall, and how the rise of AIDS led celebrities to reveal themselves; gay themes appeared in TV and movies; more Americans became accepting\u2014liberals more often than conservatives [of course].<\/li>\n<li>Trends in tolerance especially among the young\u2014to whom is often doesn\u2019t matter whether it\u2019s natural or chosen. 453t.<\/li>\n<li>Hate-crime laws have led to prosecution of violence against homosexuals, though it not clear if rates of murders and assaults \u2013 already quite low, as rates \u2013 have declined in the past two decades. In any event, government violence against gays has decreased in many parts of the world\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Animals Rights and the Decline of Cruelty to Animals<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Author describes experiment he was told to do in grad school \u2013 leaving a rat overnight to press a lever to avoid a shock. The rat died.<\/li>\n<li>Since the 1980s, strict regulations have governed how lab animals are treated.<\/li>\n<li>This right movement is different than the others, because it\u2019s based only on ethical principles, not on reciprocation.<\/li>\n<li>Of course humans have killed animals throughout history for their meat. For 2 million years, perhaps. And had no reason to treat them decently. Same was true for pets.<\/li>\n<li>The Bible, of course, states that animals exist for human purposes, Genesis; and how God is pleased by roasting beef, p458. Greece and Rome weren\u2019t much better; Aquinas also judged that animals existed purely for man\u2019s use. Early modern philosophers presumed that animals had no souls, thus felt no pain; Descartes; modern neuroscience disagrees.<\/li>\n<li>Animals were dissected live, p459.0, .8. Agriculture treated them little better.<\/li>\n<li>Various motives for treating animals better emerged, though seldom for animals\u2019 benefit. Some were uncomfortable with eating meat, considering meat-eating with the disgust end of the disgust-purity continuum, 461t.<\/li>\n<li>Other issues involved blood sports, 461b, Jewish dietary laws, 462t, more about the feelings of the observer.<\/li>\n<li>Vegetarianism was named after Pythagoras until the 1840s; but the Nazis were also vegetarians, 462b.<\/li>\n<li>Arguments for animal rights emerged in the 18<sup>th<\/sup> and 19<sup>th<\/sup> Science: Descartes; Voltaire; Jeremy Bentham\u2019s insistence that animals do suffer; Darwin\u2019s theory made that make sense. These ideas waned in the early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, until the 1970s, with books by Ruth Harrison and Peter Singer \u2013 <em>Animal Liberation<\/em>; <em>The Expanding Circle<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Changes came in several ways:\n<ul>\n<li>Protection of lab animals;<\/li>\n<li>The outlawing of blood sports, even bullfighting in most places; the decrease of hunting; release fishing; movie advisories about \u2018no animals were harmed\u2026.\u2019<\/li>\n<li>Demand for meat remains \u2013 few are vegetarians \u2013 but there is increased demand for chicken, etc.; everyplace has vegetarian options these days; hopes for cultured meat; vegetarians has tripled, though, since 1985; and animals treated more humanely [free range chickens etc]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>How far will these trends go? It\u2019s unlikely meat-hunger will go completely away. And it\u2019s na\u00efve to think the values of humans will be matched to those of animals.<\/li>\n<li>But: 474.8, \u201cShould we arrange for the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, or even genetically engineer them into herbivores?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Whence the Rights Revolution?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>All these movements have occurred over the past 50 years \u2013 even though in many ways they go against human nature 475.3, and have been ratified into law by the Abrahamic religions 475.5.<\/li>\n<li>Thus, 475.6, \u201cthe Rights Revolutions show that a moral way of life often requires a decisive rejection of instinct, culture, religion, and standard practice. In their place is an ethics that is inspired by empathy and reason and stated in the language of rights.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>These have been liberal revolutions, distributed along a gradient that runs from Western Europe, US blue states, US red states, then to democracies of Latin America and Asian, then authoritarian countries, then Africa and most of the Islamic world, 475b.<\/li>\n<li>476t, \u201cIn every issue touched by the Rights Revolutions [examples] \u2026 the attitudes of conservatives have followed the trajectory of liberals, with the result that today\u2019s conservatives are more liberal than yesterday\u2019s liberals.\u201d [[ excellent point that I\u2019ve made myself ]]<\/li>\n<li>What brought these about? What exogenous factors? Democratic governments, in part.<\/li>\n<li>Best candidate for single cause: \u201cthe technologies that made ideas and people increasingly mobile.\u201d 477.4, with summary of electronics and travel advances. And the explosion in book publishing \u2013 see 477.6<\/li>\n<li>How did this work? Because the spread of ideas resulted in the \u201cdebunking of ignorance and superstition\u201d p477.7. Also, the exposure to the viewpoints of people unlike oneself \u2013 the reports in books about the Holocaust, etc etc. And third, the existence of \u201clarge catchment area of innovations\u201d 478.6, as Diamond showed in <em>Guns Germs and Steel<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>478.3: \u201cIt is also an intellectual agility \u2013 literally a kind of intelligence \u2013 which encourages one to step outside the parochial constraints of one\u2019s birth and station, to consider hypothetical worlds, and to reflect back on the habits, impulses, and institutions and govern one\u2019s beliefs and values.\u201d [[ science fiction !!! ]]<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Moral progress may parallel such technological progress; big example p479-80 about Martin Luther King, who grew up on the Bible, read theologians who challenged it, read the classic and modern philosophers, and heard Mordecai Johnson and learned about Gandhi \u2013 then choosing Gandhi\u2019s strategy over Jesus\u2019, about non-violence. King\u2019s historical 1963 speech inspired the other rights movements, and their remarkable lack of violence they employed or provoked, compared to other historical shifts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This ends six chapters documenting the historical decline of violence.<\/li>\n<li>Next: psychology. How to understand the moral universe with science.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Subtitled \u201cWhy Violence Has Declined\u201d (Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.) Summaries: Chapter 6, &#8220;The New Peace,&#8221; consider three types of organized violence: among groups citing &#8220;ancient hatreds,&#8221; ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. These &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/12\/03\/steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-post-5\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes","category-steven-pinker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26403"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26521,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26403\/revisions\/26521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}