The Better Angels of Our Nature - Why Violence Has Declined

This is a tightly reasoned, carefully documented case argued by one of the most brilliant intellects of our time. The case for both reason and optimsm about the trajectory of human history could not be more forcefully made. Very highly recommended.

Mandatory reading. I've gifted this book many times. Whenever I hear the predictable whine of how dangerous our world has become and the unleashing of personal anxieties, I can't help but quote from this book.

Less CNN and Fox feeding our demons, and more Steven Pinker feeding our angels I say.

With respect to violence, as the author argues, things are getting better, not worse. Taking the long view (evolutionary and historical) leads to this unmistakable conclusion. Social scientists will appreciate the author's analytic reasoning--the consideration of both his favored and alternative hypotheses and use of scholarly studies and the available data to test them. There is plenty more work to do to fully sort out causal linkages. I'd think that much of the decline of violence is due to the increasing domestication of males over time (that perhaps began with the discovery of fire and cooking) and the ongoing cultural changes that have enhanced female agency (women's control over their own lives). The author's exploration of Kant's ideas are very interesting.

Excellent read... entertaining, enlightening, and endearing. Pinker dives into the raw grit of human experience and brings up treasuries of vital information. This book offers so many great thoughts, to chew on. It's a feast for the famished.

Viewed from today, the world of the mid-twentieth century is an almost unrecognizable place, where animals weren't thought to be able to experience pain, the concept of marital rape was a non sequitur, and being Black or gay was to live in constant fear. And that's just 50 years ago; the ability and ingenuity of humans to inflict suffering on each other throughout our recorded history is almost inconceivable to someone with a modern set of values. The murder rate of the medieval era, for example, was hundreds of times what it is now, even higher than the casualty rate of WWII, often thought of as the bloodiest time in history.

The good news, though, is that we seem to be learning how to be better. We have reached a point where the worldwide homicide rate (per 100K people) is single digits, not three, and battle death rates are *fractions* of single digits; where the idea of denying someone basic human rights because of their age, color, gender, or beliefs seems appalling; where even animals have more rights than the majority of humans for most of our species' existence. It is a rare book that can make me feel better about my fellow human beings, who so often seem to revel in wallowing in stupidity and wastefulness, but this one did.

The only ding I would put on this book was the author's long digression into brain anatomy toward the end, which seemed pretty irrelevant to the rest of it, almost undercutting his overarching points. But that's a minor quibble.

This book is very analytical and well thought out. That being said, it is a bit on the long side. Pinker probably could had been able to make his point in a somewhat shorter book (sometimes you feel he's gone off track).

Also, I almost never have to use a dictionary, but reading this book I had to look up words time and again. Kind of annoying.

One of the most important books I have ever read. In our time, People line up sulking about the world coming to an end. Pinker's extensive research is a real eye-opener on the opposite, and his way of writing is right out entertaining. Highly recommended.

I haven't finished reading this book because it slows down after a bit, but overall, it's been a pretty interesting read. I am an anthropologist student, so I already knew a lot of the content, and I still learned quite a bit.

Pinker resumes liberal optimism where it was abandoned at the start of WWI, and maintains that the steady progress of civilization will bring us a better and less violent world. You have a couple of hard facts to explain away before you can draw that conclusion. First, you have to disregard WWI and WWII as freak events, minor deviations on the path towards a peaceful future. Second, you have to explain why crime increased in developed countries between the late 1950’s and the early 1990’s: a 35 year long exception to the general trend of declining murder rates.
Pinker does an impressive and very honest job of analyzing and presenting vast amounts of empirical data on violence in human cultures. He is an old fashioned generalist, able to combine data from social history, anthropology, sociology and psychology with few glitches. However, I'm far from convinced that present day liberal, developed societies present the culmination of human history. We may be on the verge of another cataclysm. Romantic militarism may have gone out of fashion during the 20th century. Who can tell that liberal values, such as human rights, respect for minorities, law and order etc may be more than a temporary fashion? Will they survive the 21st century?

This is really two books. The first half makes the case that violence has dramatically declined over human history. The second half trys to explain why and how. The book is long and some what tedious, but worth the effort.

Is mankind fundamentally good or evil? Are we getting more or less violent as a species? What drives us towards violence - or towards peace?

These are just a few of the subjects Pinker touches upon in his immense book, using statistics, biology, psychology, and history to answer some of the questions that historians, philosophers, politicians, and college students have argued about for ages.

Required reading for any discussion of violence or the direction of our culture. Very engaging and easy to read review of the history and the science of violence. If you can't be optimistic after this book, you didn't pay attention.

Excellent detailed look at human violence and its path to modern day. The author contends that we live in a far less violent age, especially in the western world, despite the recent history of genocide. After reading just the summary of the considerable body of evidence he has amassed, it is possible to feel more optimistic about modern life. Particularly interesting is his canvassing of the factors in human settlement and 'civilisation' that have created the conditions that require us to live together more peacefully than in earlier ages.

A thoughtful and hopeful analysis of trends that make it possible for people and nations to live together without violence. Wonderfully presented. It keeps you reading and discovering. Very few "long drawn out" spots.

Whilst could be a deal shorter (fair bit of repetition), a really interesting fact-based account of the drastic reduction in violence over the course of human history and possible explanations for what caused it. Very readable, and pretty uplifting - still a long way to go but reasons for optimism!

Steven Pinker is an excellent thinker and communicator, but I was a little wary of this tome when I cracked it open (or hit 'play' as I listened to this all on audiobook). His thesis - declared in the title and argued well in the intro - had me convinced early on and I wondered how he could possibly expound for hundreds of pages. But the reward is in the details. His research and analysis of the 'civilizing' process, his data-driven insights into the history of war, and his examination of the psychology of violence (among other things) left me with some tasty bits of knowledge that continue to stick with me and even prove useful from time to time. For instance, football actually makes a lot of sense to me now and I'm glad it exists.

I would encourage anyone who is a fan of Pinker or this topic to give this a chance and push through as I did - there's a lot of good stuff here.

This book will bring perspective of the irrationality of fear that our society is consumed by. If people were to read one book I would suggest this one. It is a long read but goes quickly as it is fascinating and well researched.

Essential read. Today's media would have you believe our world is devolving into violent chaos. However, looking at reality, you realize we are as a species becoming more civilized, caring, and overall nonviolent.

The subject matter is crazy great in its own right, but this book has substantial asides about history, psychology, social interactions, and so much more. It helped me to better understand the people in the region where I live. In short, I think this book actually made me a better person.

This book puts great math and rigor behind a really really important question ... are humans becoming more or less violent over history. If we watch the news and see today's latest horror of human evil, and feel it as if it happened to someone near us we'd probably think these are the worst of times. But the history and math tell a much more optimistic story and one that's really important to understand in terms of our whole approach to the world and history. With that said, Pinker's snark regarding religion is unhelpful and rather misses the Church's role in the fruit that Pinker so thoroughly documents. (See Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age" for a much more helpful approach to a related questions). Additionally, the book is about 2/3ds longer than it needed to be. A good editor and distillation would have been quite welcome. Still, 4 stars for doing the heavy lifting on a really important question and explaining it well.

In this book, Pinker stands conventional wisdom on its head, presenting the very welcome if counter-intuitive notion that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Using statistics, he convinces us that, overall, violence is decreasing among mankind. If we're concerned about the Central African Republic and Mali, he reassures us that western Europe (and even the U.S) are at all-time lows in homicide rates. If we fear nuclear annihilation, he reassures us that the unique peace that broke out after WWII in Europe shows no signs of disintegrating. (Of course, the book came out before certain recent activities in the Crimea.) If we are perturbed by a constant diet of violence in TV shows, movies and video games, he shows us that, in the developed world, the imagination is where violence is increasingly sequestered.

He uses statistics to demonstrate that, at least compared to the bad old days, when the rate of deaths by homicide, primarily through raiding warfare, averaged around 15% across primitive hunter-gatherer societies, even the extreme mass murders of the 20th century only eliminated 1% of the (admittedly much larger) population. But he also shows us how violence has changed qualitatively from pre-Enlightment societies.

Even in the societies we consider to constitute the roots of our civilization, ancient Greece and Israel, violence was endemic. He points out the bloodymindedness of the Old Testament:

"With a designated list of other enemies (Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites), the genocide has to be total: `Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them . . . as the Lord thy God has commanded thee."15

Ranging over the hunter-gatherer past, through the Middle Ages and approaching fairly modern times, mutilation of the enemy, murder of enemy infants, routine rape, routine torture of prisoners, as well as such cruel and unusual punishments as drawing and quartering, flogging and chopping off of hands were the norm across many societies. Public executions for the amusement and instruction of the populace were also common. The list of man's inhumanity to man and the visceral pleasure he took in it is revolting to read. Fortunately we seem to have become much more squeamish. These practices have been outlawed in the western world today. Not only that, in the West, at least, we seem to be approaching zero tolerance for violence. Consider war deaths. Hannibal left more than 50,000 Roman dead on the battlefield of Cannae, and in the Civil War nearly 8,000 were killed in the Battle of Gettysburg alone. But in the early part of the 21st century, the fact that 4,486 American soldiers lost their lives in Iraq over a period of years became a cause celebre.

The first changes to our brutality seem to have come with Christianity's revolutionary concept of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. (A simple little rule that it is still extremely hard to practice on a daily basis.) Pinker points out, however, that the religion centers on a bizarre cult of sacrifice and crucifixion, as well as that millions have died in the name of Christianity, most notably in the Crusades, the Inquisition and the European Religious Wars of the 17th century. The development of feudal polities into states, which were able to monopolize violence and apply it judiciously, was another critical development. But a key change was the invention of the printing press in the late 15th century, which enabled the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment, with their sense of the basic equality of all human beings. Pinker points out that the consequent rise of literature and its ability to put one in the mind of another individual has done a tremendous amount to free us from parochial, prejudicial values. Pinker also gives major credit to commerce and its ability to foster win-win transactions among individuals, groups and states.

Evolutionary biology, psychology, neuro-physiology, you name it. Pinker leaves no stone unturned in the discussion of our taming. But for the recent new consciousness of the unacceptability of aggression, he gives credit to the rights' revolutions of the past few decades: civil rights, womens' rights, gay rights and animals rights. Although he comes down hard on the sixties as an era of violence (and, indeed, crime rates soared then) he does not seem to acknowledge that the very loosening of the stranglehold of authoritarian and conservative religion on society characteristic of that era was what allowed individual rights to come to the fore.

Perhaps paramount among these developments was women's rights. Pinker points out that it is only with the increasing participation of women in the public realm that the peace and other rights' movements came into their own. After all, the theme that violence is primarily a male phenomenon recurs throughout the pages of the book. Pinker also attributes our civilizing to the spread of abstract reasoning, a newfound ability to be more dispassionate, which is a function of widespread education. Pinker touches on the paradox of human morality, which can lead us to condemn the values of the "other", but can also cause us to stand up and insist on their right to vote, not to be enslaved, and to equal opportunity.

I, for one, am relieved to be disabused of the notion of the noble savage. Not that contemporary existence is by any means the last word in lifestyles. There are skills, lore, and herbal practices from tribes embedded in their natural environments (as well as other past societies) that can be useful to us today. Indeed, many of today's benign child-raising practices seem to have come from both the European colonialists and contemporary anthropologists' observation of the extended nurturing (holding, carrying, and long periods of breast-feeding) and minimal discipline of children in primitive societies.

And although Pinker touts the obvious advantages of modern existence, with its lower rates of death in childbirth, its miraculous medical practice, its lengthening of the human lifespan, as well as modern agriculture and its saving of brute human labor, he does not address any of the downsides--the abuse of pharmaceuticals, which leach into our environment, the geometric explosion of population as a consequence of modern agriculture and modern medicine (with its accompany squandering of resources), let alone the potential devastation of climate change. Now that we are empowered to make rational decisions to minimize killing each other, isn't it time to take that rational faculty and use it to curb and shape our society for the long-term survival of the entire human race?

That being said, I wouldn't have missed this book for the world. It's vastly reassuring on the subject of the perfectibility of human nature. It's also a gold-mine for the intellectually curious, providing a considered review of the literature on violence in history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, evolutionary biology and brain science. In spite of its length, it was a book I did not want to end, and I was grateful to the author that he addressed so many questions in such a thorough and satisfying manner. Thank you, Steven Pinker.

This book answers possibly the most important question of humanity. Are we getting less violent.
And if so, why?
Debunking myths, political correctness, and sentimentalist ideologies, Pinker shows us that we really do have a REASON to be optimistic about our species and our societies.

Incredibly important and full of facts to reinforce the author's points. While reviewing humanity's darker aspects is necessary, Better Angels is full of hope regarding how far we've come, and some suggestions on why our situation has improved, which implies how we might go about securing further improvement. Recommended read!

This is a huge book in several senses. Breakthrough insights that change your view of the world. Better still -- it's mostly good news! Pinker presents the evidence showing that levels of violence have steadily decreased through the millennia, through recent centuries, and in recent decades. "Violence" here includes almost everything you can think of, from world wars and genocides to spanking kids and dogs. He looks at the motives and causes (inner demons, so to speak), and then looks at the "better angels" within us -- and provided by modern society and culture -- that fuel the decline in violence. Among these topics: the rise of trade, the rise of literature, communication and information, concepts of empathy and self-control, morality and reason. It's a very long book and few angles go unexplored.

Excellent! Deals with a wide variety of different topics with amazing breadth and depth, often challenging our preconceived notions. Very long and detailed, requires an effort, but it is absolutely worth it. A delightful learning experience

I was utterly blown away, definitely in the top 10 books I have read ... ever. He makes his points relentlessly with tons of data followed up solid analysis. Then just when you think he might have missed something, nope here comes a look from another angle, there is just no escape. I must say its also one of the most uplifting books I've come across in a long time. Given how everything you seem to hear is claiming society is going to hell in a hand basket its refreshing to see arguments that at least in the area of violence we really do seem to be heading in the right direction.

While some of the chapters can seem wordy and the author rambling, the overall message and presentation is clear and enjoyable to read. A great book to help you keep your sanity in today's mass media driven society.

I learned a lot with this book about history, human psicology, sociology and other topics. For me it will be a useful reference to come back in the future. It is a book for re-reading several times. It has really good data and analysis.

We hear so much news every day about violence and bad things happening that it is hard to believe it is actually declining. But, Pinker has, in this book, shown how things really are much less violent than in the distant (and not so distant) past.

Pinker my draw some wrong conclusions, but he gave me a lot of evidence that violence really has declined over the ages. What really grabs me is that our REACTION to violence, at least in the Western world, has changed significantly. Pinker gives reasons for this. I highly recommend the book as a mental antidote to what we hear almost daily about school & shopping mall shootings.

A truly masterful, convincing and spectacularly inter-disciplinary proof of The hypothesis that civilization and the enlightenment are responsible for the decline of violence in history. As mind-boggling are the data - both quantitative and qualitative, so comprehensive is the complex argument for the hypothesis. The refreshing insights from evolutionary psychology are most welcome and enjoyable in a world increasingly jaded by political correctness, received opinion and cynicism. Well done and thank you.

In the face of what feels like constant violence and ongoing denigration of our institutions, the author uses history and statistics to show violence has declined greatly over the centuries and we are in a period of relative peace and safety. He discusses the elements that have led to this decline in violence like the growth of large governments and the expansion of education and the availability of books. It is a long book, but always interesting and very hopeful.

This book demonstrates clearly how violence in society has declined overall throughout human history and continues to decline today. It explains the temporary rise in criminal statistics in the 1960s through the 1980s and how that aberation has corrected itself and the overall decline in violent crime continues to go down not just in the United States (which is NOT the least violent country in the world) but on a global basis, even with all the wars and gennocides that have occured and continue to occur. If you look at violence in 100 year chunks it declines overall and has for all of recorded history. He discussess the many factors that play into violence and it's decline.

The book is well written and engaging. The only problem is that it is too long and beats each point into the ground with excessive repitition of examples.

I believe this is a must read book which succinctly captures and explains with facts and data how and why the world is becoming less violent. I highly recommend it. I believe it offers a way forward for helping those societies who struggle to move beyond fundamentalism and violence...as a minimum I would consider it as a textbook for all schoolchildren of the world. Great piece of work.