Violence is decreasing per capita (Thomas P.M. Barnett

Violence is decreasing per capita

ARTICLE: A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, by Steven Pinker

Nice article on a point I've been making in my brief going back to 1996: the further you go back in history, the more per capita violence you find--pure and simple.

This is a good examination of that grand historical trend. I'm not sure I buy the notion that we soft scientists needed some biologist to clue us in. After all, Pinker's conclusions are based on data from "soft" fields like poli sci that have been compiled for decades. People just like absolute numbers more than relative ones.

Still, every bit helps when you fight the hype.

Thanks to Nathan Machula for sending this.

Posted by Thomas P.M. Barnett on April 4, 2007 10:38 AM | Permalink |

Comments (2)

Pinker is very cool. Glad you like him. He also wonders into language very close to yours, now and again... From my notes on The Blank Slate:

it is extraordinarily dangerous to have enough missiles to destroy an enemy but not enough to destroy him after he has attacked those missiles." ... Also necessary for vengeance to work as a deterrent is that the willingness to pursue it be made public, because the whold point of deterrence is to give would-be attackers second thoughts beforehand... This mentality is foreign to those of us who can get Leviathan to show up by dialing 911, but that option is not always available."

Posted by Dan tdaxp | April 4, 2007 2:41 PM

Actually Pinker is a cognitive scientist not a biologist. The way the human mind works at a macro and a micro level alone an in the context of a society is very much in his realm of expertise.

Posted by Jeff | April 5, 2007 9:43 AM

Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

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