Julius Skrrvin
I be winkin' through the scope
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-01-22/india/30652668_1_steven-pinker-wmds-violence
JAIPUR: We live in violent, turbulent times-perhaps the most dangerous in human history, right? Wrong. At least that's what Steven Pinker would argue. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, the Harvard professor of cognitive psychology and author of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined' on Saturday held a packed audience at the Jaipur Literary Festival spellbound with his argument that, in fact, we have the good fortune to be living in the most peaceful period in human history.
That claim may have seemed bizarre at first, but not once Pinker started listing one interesting statistic after another. He pointed out that death caused by violence as a percentage of all deaths has declined dramatically over the centuries. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. Similarly, the murder rate of medieval Europe was over 30 times what it is today. And there are more chances of Americans dying in a bathtub (one in 950,000) than in a terror attack (one in 3.5 million), according to a paper published by John Mueller and Mark Stewart.
A subject as vast as the history of violence can't really be summarized in one session, but Pinker zipped along. First, he listed six trends causing a decrease in violence. These include our evolution from hunter-gatherers to settled civilizations (Pacification); the emergence of kingdoms with centralized authority ("They like to keep subjects alive not out of humanitarian consideration but because they needed them as slaves and for taxes"), the emergence of Enlightenment philosophy and its respect for the individual (the Humanitarian Revolution); the absence of direct war between the two superpowers (the Long Peace); the trend of wars to be more infrequent, and less violent times ("in medieval times, you had the 100 years' war, now wars rarely last more than a fortnight") and finally, the Rights Revolution, which has reduced violence against women, gays, minorities etc.
He also pointed out that the number of males killed by women has reported a sharp decline over the years, "so men benefited greatly from the women's rights revolution".
Major forces for peace cited by Pinker included 'gentle commerce' ("The US and China may have differences over trade, but they make all our stuff and we owe them too much money, so I don't think we'll ever actually get into a war") and the expanding circle of empathy as we are exposed to more and more of other people's cultures, art, literature etc.
The world may have got more rational, but there are still people resorting to terror. What if a small group used a nuclear weapon, TOI asked Pinker when we later caught up with him for an exclusive interview. Pinker didn't rule out the possibility, but thought it was unlikely.
Would he have supported the war against Iraq, assuming it did have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)? He mused over the hypothesis before replying, "If there was evidence they had WMDs and were about to use them, then, a preemptive strike might have been justified. But just possessing such weapons, with no clear violations of international law, doesn't do so."
Did the handling of Iraq hold lessons for today's Iran crisis? "Certainly. The reason the United States is not so likely to invade Iran is precisely because of the lessons learned from Iraq. And conversely, the Iranian push towards nuclear capability is calculated to deter invasions like the kind deposing Saddam Husain."
But considering how many countries still have their fingers on the nuclear trigger, how can more peace-loving politicians be ensured? Feminists will love the answer: "There's a statistical truth here-men commit 12 times as many homicides than women, 75% men admit to the occasional homicidal thought, which means 25% are lying! Men consume more violent entertainment, have more violent fantasies. Most of the world's bloodiest mass murderers, Hitler to Stalin, were men. A woman head of state is more likely to look at the costs and benefits of violence. Societies that empower women are less violent in every way."
We were quick to cite Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher as women who successfully led their countries in wartime. "I doubt very much you'd have had those wars (Bangladesh, 1971 and the Falklands, 1982) if both the sides involved had been led by women, instead of just one," retorted Pinker. "Besides, there are still too few women at the top, so they feel compelled to play by men's rules."
But if violence is shrinking, why do we think the opposite? Could modern media be a factor? "Absolutely," said Pinker. "The 9/11 strikes left an indelible impact on our minds, but in relative terms, the scale of casualties actually wasn't all that high. Research shows peoples' estimates depend on how easily they recall examples from memory-it's called 'the availability bias'. If there are events you see in full colour beamed onto your television or computer, they will impact your perception of how frequent those events are-misleading us into thinking how common violence is."
