Dr. Steven Pinker states, that there is an obvious decrease of violence in all spheres of human life that is observed throughout the history. This decline of violence is gradual, and has been dropping until nowadays, when our time is named the most peaceful in the history (Pinker, 2013). Yet, this shrinking of violence has not been constant, has not reached zero point and the period of peace is not guaranteed to stay. His main arguments are documented signs of humans becoming less violent. That is decreasing of number of wars, number of deaths per war, shrinking the length of wars, lowering of the number of genocides, people becoming more international, intelligent and tolerant, giving up no capital punishments and tortures, establishing central government and a system that punishes for violence.
He describes six major declines of violence:
The Pacification process (people lived in the state of nature and slowly developed government systems);
The Civilizing process (introducing of states, kingdoms);
The Humanitarian revolution (connected mostly with the Enlightenment Age, when the education level had risen that most of the superstitions (like witchcraft) were dropped.);
The Long Peace (period after World Wars, with very little amounts of warfare and civil wars and no use of nuclear weapons);
The New Peace (spreading of the peace around the globe);
The Rights Revolution (the age, when most of ethnic minorities got their rights and privileges in countries; the race tolerance rise, slavery was totally dropped; women got their rights and the discrimination was stated as illegal);
Dr. Pinker paints an impressive an optimistic picture of humans getting more peaceful over the time of their existence. Though, the violence could not be entirely purified from human nature (the child age one may notice as the most violent age of a person (Pinker, 2013)), the number of it lowered down greatly. Although, this state of peace is not historically usual, it persists for a century or so and this looks promising.
The arguments of this phenomenon, given in the lecture are very convincing to me, giving the fact that most of the graphs showed are based on documented data. The decrease in violence can be observed everywhere: no more spanking of children in schools, more caring attitude towards animals and the world’s move towards the international communication.
Many different little things are vital to understanding of the changes in human nature. Giving up on the capital punishment means that the old concept “an eye for an eye” is no longer actual and needed. The other thing is dropping the rate of world wars with some minor activity in the social warfare. Yet the deaths in the social wars become few with the time. In addition, introducing the rights of every individual being equal no matter of their race, religion, sex, sexual preferences.
I cannot but agree with the point that humans became more civilized in their nature. The introduction of government lead to annihilating of the need to revenge, that is one of the reasons of violence.
Still, people are enjoying of witnessing vicarious violence. That is watching movies (action packed, with a lot of violence and sometimes gore moments), hockey, video games (that include violence), various dramas and other content (Pinker, 2013). But I believe that those examples are that “allowed evil”, which helps to feed the violence inside humans and not to let it go out.
The lecture is exiting and involving; it brings up the desire to do my best to preserve the era of peace.
References
Pinker, St., (2013). The better angels of our nature: a history of violence and humanity. [Video Lecture]. Retrieved 28 August, 2016 from:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=o5X2-i_poNU>
