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Violence - Does a more peaceful world make you fighting mad?
  • http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-stats_n_1026723.html

    The trend of a less violent world has been with us now for some time. Why? Do these facts seem to fly in the face of your personal experience?

    Edit: it would be really great if you would read the articles cited before responding.
    I've only read reviews of this book yet, but look forward to reading it:
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228340.100-steven-pinker-humans-are-less-violent-than-ever.html?full=true
    http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2011/1020/The-Better-Angels-of-Our-Nature-Why-Violence-Has-Declined
  • 46 Replies sorted by
  • Here's an interesting graph.
    war declining.jpg
    550 x 296 - 25K
  • I already explained this.
    Energy availability and cost had been low.
    Resources and food availability had been good.
    Now trend changed and energy, food and resources per capita started to decrease.
    So, wars will be more violent and more frequent.
  • Energy costs will likely stay low. The sun will continue to shine. Lead will be removed from more schools, etc. Food production will continue to increase.

    This seems to be a long term trend, and seems to be accelerating if anything.

    Edit: and did you even read the three papers cited in those 4 minutes!?
  • "Pinker says one of the main reasons for the drop in violence is that we are smarter. IQ tests show that the average teenager is smarter with each generation. The tests are constantly adjusted to keep average at 100, and a teenager who now would score a 100 would have scored a 118 in 1950 and a 130 in 1910. So this year's average kid would have been a near-genius a century ago."
  • To be fair, I didn't read much of the way through these pieces you linked to (which is dangerous for making a comment). But what striking is that these statistics don't seem to account for the fact that the overall population in the world has increased dramatically. So, yes, perhaps in terms of a percentage of population the world is less "violent" if that is measured in terms of violent incidents (heavily nuclear armed world anyone?). But I would think that part of what matters is the absolute number of people dying as a result of war. By that measure, certainly the 20th century is the bloodiest in all of history.
  • Those points are addressed in the links. I think it would be worth finishing the text.
  • My point about absolute numbers--my main point actually--isn't addressed. I later found that the Scientific American review makes the same point: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bookreview-steven-pinker-the-better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined
  • @cosmio_bullo I read a physiology paper a few years - I'll try and find it again - talking about this measured rise in IQ. It's been the focus of a far bit of study, because if the increases measure were correct than our grand parents generation would seem mentally retarded to us, which they clearly aren't.

    There were about seven or eight areas in which increases are recorded, but IIRC the main theory behind it is that our education system now teaches us to process and categorise information in a way that favours higher IQ scores.

    I've wondered about repeatedly sitting IQ tests - would practice and exposure increase my score? Could I get the highest IQ score in the world? :)

    On a related note: Given limited space, and increasing availability of increasingly destructive weaponry (often wielded by individuals), is it possible we might see an evolutionary selection towards pacifism? I.e. If this doesn't happen we wipe ourselves out.
  • @qwerty123 - I'm confused by the relevance of absolute numbers. The issue, to me, is whether your daughter, my mother, or any individual will be harmed by violence. The odds of that are now much lower than seemingly ever before. Yes, there are more people on this world, but the odds of any one person being killed or hurt from violence from another person is much diminished. Moreover, if I'm reading the data correctly, even though there are now 7 billion of us compared to the 1 billion or so a century ago, the absolute numbers have STILL dropped way down, even taking into account the very violent 20th century. That's how very sharply violence has dropped off. So it's a win no matter how you measure it.

    What matters in life? My short list would be that:
    People are fed/warm.
    Illness is fought effectively.
    People find meaning and creativity through work and activity.
    Violence is curbed.

    Isn't it worth celebrating just a moment that at least aspects of life - life that's not easy for anyone - improve over time?
  • @cosimo_bullo I agree that it's a very good thing that the chances of suffering and dying for any one individual born into the world (not knowing exactly where he / she will live) have lowered. And it is worth celebrating. So, from a personal perspective, we've improved at least for the time being.

    I'm unsure whether the absolute numbers have dropped. They certainly haven't dropped on a per century basis I'd wager.

    Absolute numbers are important. Here's a toy example: take a city in which 1 out of a 100 people will die as a result of war. Now take a different city in which 100 out of 10,000 people will die. Clearly there is at least *one way* in which the second city is worse than the first: more people died!

    Or put it another way: take two possible worlds. Both pose the same risk to you in terms of dying from violence. But the one world just has way way way more deaths than the other (in absolute numbers). Other things equal, I'd much prefer the world with fewer deaths. I'm guessing most of us would.


  • @qwerty123 - Thank you for such a thoughtful response (a rarity on the web!). I'll look more into the century vs century question when I have a little time (I'm writing this as things render on an edit I'm doing today). But wouldn't it be amazing if in fact the 20th century, bad as it was, was in fact gentler than most of human history!? Would shine a light on just how bad things have been throughout most of our experience!
  • i posted this on another thread, it should be informative, a masterclass recorded, via the edge.com:

    violence is in historical decreasing, and we are living in the most peaceful time in the entire human history

    http://blip.tv/play/hvFkgsvxBwA.html

    statistics and this masterclass says so
  • Many people laugh at what i'm about to say, but i think we will see an end of all war pretty soon. People have just had it and more and more begin to understand that war only uses their patriotic emotions for corporate profit. This consciousness is rapidly growing, and i doubt if in a few years time anyone will even want to go to war. Compare the US now and 10 years ago and you'll see support for the wars has inversed.
  • @johnnym
    nope,
    (and i´m not laughing, i´m just being realistic and not thinking as an idealist)
    wars will go on
    beacuse the people has never been able to choose,
    is the people with power following an interest the ones that makes the call,
    war is just an awful way of making politics,
    but it is a profitable way, nonetheless (in political terms),

    only if we live in a real democracy perhaps wars will cease their existance, but, we do not live in a real democracy,

    and my definition of democracy, is a definition made by a chilean filmmaker,
    the real democracy is a system in wich everyone can say L'État, c'est moi
    (The state, it is I; an iconic phrase by Louis XIV of france)

    so until that happens,
    and that probably will never exist (at least in my lifetime)
    i would say that wars will go on
  • Global trade wars have already started.

    Resource wars... of course.

    Global warming or cooling theory is growing the global tension instead of global cooperation.

    Globally facism and nationalism are rising.

    More radical movements in both islam and christianity.

    I'm afraid that we are likely to witness more
    wars... including domestic ones. I see the book as a contrarian sign.
  • "Global trade wars have already started."

    There have been trade wars since time immomorial. How are the current trade wars contributing to peace or contributing to violence?

    "Resource wars... of course."

    The earth is really big. Global climate change may be a real problem, but the resources to feed/cloth/house all are here.

    "Global warming or cooling theory is growing the global tension instead of global cooperation."

    I think global climate change - whether a huge problem or not -might be said to be the one thing most bringing people together at this point in human history. It is the borderless rallying cry.

    "Globally facism and nationalism are rising."

    I'd like to see any evidence of this compared and contrasted with the size of the current population. I'd say the walls are eroding because of technology and the ability to travel/share experiences in distant places.

    "More radical movements in both islam and christianity."

    No offence, but Christianity must be at a low ebb... go back to the crusades for the love of god... that was radical fanaticism! Islam is finally waking up, joining the rest of us as individuals.

    "I'm afraid that we are likely to witness more
    wars... including domestic ones."

    The research says no and seems to show the opposite. Other than a gut feeling, what leads you to this theory. I'm genuinely curious! I'm going to include a chart that I found just shocking.


    war declining.jpg
    550 x 296 - 25K
  • I guess it comes down to how 'violence' is defined. Today there exists a violence that is much more diffuse. It's like having lethal cancer compared to being shot in the head.
    It often isn't directly physical but can result in physical harm. For example take the financial markets and it's recent trend to gamble on prices of staple food like corn, tofu, wheat - the effect is that while a few people make huge profits, millions of people are pushed into poverty, hunger or even death.

    There are many phenomena today which I think are a new quality of violence, but they're anonymous and happen through complex systems and are harder to detect when, where, what and who.

    Henry Ford once said:
    'It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.'

    Rich versus poor is our next global war?!
  • @cosimo_bullo

    Thanks. Those links affirm my conclusion (which i also shared above) that it's getting better all the time. In fact, we are doing better than ever (although still not good if you ask me) and this current state coupled with the rapid changes that are taking place these past years (culminating into OWS) could shape a entirely different world pretty soon. (Such rapid and radical change has happened before in Europe in 1989.)

    Also, talking to many people around the age of 20, i don't see any of them going to war at all. They're nothing like the idealistic kids that embarked on boats to fight the Nazis or Japan in 1940 or even the Iraq war 10 years ago. I think this trend will continue although this is just my personal observation.

    If we are cumbersome about the future, it's because we watch too much "news" and because most of the wrongdoing that has been going on forever, now comes to light, yet this doesn't mean the situation is getting worse, quite the contrary!
  • @stip
    you are defining structural violence:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence

    @johnnym
    as you said, you can´t see people wanting to go to war, but as i said earlier, is not up to them (us) to decide that
  • @lolo

    yes it is up to us. We are no useless victims.
  • @stip - your points are really interesting, but I don't think it's fair to move the goalposts at this stage of the conversation. I'm talking about a predefined set of things called violence and measurable as violence: Rape, Murder, Beatings, etc.

    You're talking about something equally valid, but that cannot possibly be measured in the same way (at least not for now). And that all said, the fact that corporations may be colluding against the weak/poor at this point in time cannot compare with previous time of slavery, lack of rights for many (all women until very recently), and the like: these things are also hard to measure and not a part of this study (or this current conversation we're having).

    I would ask you personally to read this article as it hits a major issue on the head for me. Why we can't seem to accept our modern day improvements (and there may be good reasons we don't, it turns out)

    http://www.vancouversun.com/Attached+pessimism/5555511/story.html

    For what it's worth, I felt, I believe, much like you for much of my life.

  • @johnnym
    nope, is not up to us,
    not in this status quo,
    we live in a chuk testa democracy...

    and i´m not saying that we are useless..
    what i´m saying is that going to war is a political decision, and normal people do not have any real political power to make those decisions.
    you may call a mass movement something with a little of political power, but that power can be defined as the power to annoy those with real political power,
    therefore you can defined that the little political power of a mass movement is no real political power

    normal people do not choose anything in real political terms,
    chuck testa democracy...

    and if you do want to change the status quo, most likely real violence will rise.
  • cosimo_bullo,
    I too think that mankind clearly improved in the last 2000 years. 'human rights', an international court of justice. It will take a lot of time but I do think we're on a good way. That's why I think that 'structural violence' (thx lolo) will become more severe in these times as globalisation feeds it and it needs to be adressed like conventional violence because it's just as dangerous.
  • @stip - I think it's a good idea to start another thread on structural violence'. It is a good topic to explore but should not be lumped in here, as it diminishes, for me, the ability to talk about a specifically measurable thing, this huge decrease in classic violence.