The Better Angels of Our Nature

Summary

The Better Angels of Our Nature is a book by Steven Pinker that argues that violence in the world has been in decline over time.

The world is becoming a more peaceful place, and this is due to a number of factors, including the rise of the nation-state, the spread of democracy, and the decline of traditional values (like honor cultures) that support violence. More trade and more democracy lead to more peace and overall more prosperous times. Now, things that we once deemed acceptable, we think of not only as morally wrong, but as evidently false. Pinker further argues that the decline in violence is due to the rise of reason and science, which have helped to reduce the influence of superstition and irrational beliefs. His arguments in general are based on a wide range of historical and sociological data, the book is filled with graphs and numbers, and he makes a compelling case that the world is becoming a better place, even if there is still a lot that could be vastly improved.

Overall, Pinker is trying to disprove the notion of "the good old days" or "the golden times" and is arguing hard against the idea of the noble savage. The picture that Pinker paints of the past is pretty grim–a world that used to be a very dark place, where homicide was common, and people died for the simplest of reasons. Even though the 20th century has seen some of the worst atrocities in human history, it has overall still seen a decline in violence, and a rise in human rights and democracy. Life used to be even more nasty, brutish and short. Pinker places himself firmly along the famous debate between Hobbes and Rousseau, taking the side of Hobbes, arguing that the state of nature is a state of war, and that civilization and the state as a centralizing control over force (Hobbes Leviathan) has brought us peace and prosperity. Contrary to the perception that we live in an increasingly dangerous and violent world, Pinker asserts that humanity is now living in the most peaceful era it has ever experienced. Much of our current perception of the danger can be traced to the way that we now are bombarded by information from news outlets, that make fear their business model.

Pinker also gives an overview over human nature and what is causing violence in the first place. To do so he divides human nature into two groups of traits, our Inner Demons and our Better Angels.

Inner Demons:

• Predation: Violence for gain, such as warfare for resources or robbery.
• Dominance: The drive for power, status, and control, often leading to conflicts.
• Revenge: The instinct for retribution or settling scores.
• Sadism: Enjoyment of causing harm to others, though Pinker argues this is relatively rare.
• Ideology: Beliefs that justify violence, such as nationalism, religious extremism, or revolutionary movements.

Better Angels:

• Self-Control: The ability to restrain violent impulses.
• Empathy: The capacity to understand and feel for others, reducing the likelihood of harming them.
• Moral Sense: Adherence to societal norms and moral values that condemn violence.
• Reason: The ability to reflect, analyze, and avoid violence by considering the consequences and finding peaceful solutions.

The book is a long read, but it's worth it. It's a very interesting and thought-provoking book that will make you think about the world in a different way. To me the closest books to it, were Guns, Germs and Steel by as well as Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Both books, that give sweeping explanations of human history. The Better Angels of Our Nature belongs into the same category.

Key Takeaways:

• Violence has declined over the course of human history, contradicting the belief that the modern world is more violent than the past.
• Factors such as strong governments (the Leviathan), commerce, reason, empathy, and international cooperation have contributed to this decline.
• Human nature is a mix of violent impulses ("inner demons") and peace-promoting forces ("better angels"), and civilization builds upon and strengthens the latter.
• The expansion of empathy, respect for human rights, and reason-based thinking are crucial to reducing violence.
• While violence has declined, it is important to continue supporting the institutions and cultural norms that encourage peace and cooperation.

Detailed Notes

Utopian Leadership selects for monumental narcissism and ruthlessness.

Hence Utopian Leadership tends to produce the worst outcomes in history.

We do not know what happened to the bulk of the populations I voted for in these events. Their fate was simply too unimportant. When they were mentioned at all, they were usually lumped together with the herds of oxen, sheep, and other livestock.

I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely in the case of the tenth.

• Theodore Roosevelt

Today's Holocaust deniers at least feel compelled to deny that the holocaust took place. In earlier centuries the perpetrators of genocide and their sympathizers boasted about it.

A group of men had been eating in silence when one of them slumped over dead. The others fell on his body, still covered in diarrhea, and pried a piece of bread from his fingers. As they divided it, a fierce argument broke out when some of the men felt their share was an imperceptible crumb smaller than the others'.

Book Recommendation: Death by Government - Rudolph Rummel Book Recommendation: Statistics of Democide - Rudolph Rummel

Governments on average cause three times fewer deaths than alternatives to governments.

But the distribution (of genocides) is enormously lopsided, conforming to an 80:4 rule - 80 percent of the deaths were caused by 4 percent of the regimes.

Totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions; in contrast, many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murders.

• Rudolph Rummel

The problem is Power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom.

• Rudolph Rummel

Massacres of the last half-century

• politicide in Indonesia 1965-66
• Chinese cultural revolution 1966-75
• Tutsi Hutu in Burundi 1965-73
• Pakistan Massacres Bangladesh 1971
• North against South Sudan 1956-72
• Idi Amin's Regime Uganda 1972-79
• Cambodian Madness 1975-79
• Vietnam Massacres of boat people1965-75
• Bosnia 1992-95
• Rwanda Genocide 1994
• Darfur Genocide 2003-2008

6 factors that make genocides less/more likely:

• previous history of genocides
• immediate history of political instability
• the presence of a ruling elite
• level of democracy in a country
• openness to trade
• exclusionary ideologies, like Marxism, Islamism, Nazism

The decline of genocide over the last third of a century, then, may be traced to the upswing of some of the factors that drove down interstate and civil wars: stable government, democracy, openness to trade, and humanistic ruling philosophies that elevate the interests of individuals over struggles among groups.

For all the rigor that a logistic regression offers, it is essentially a meat grinder that takes a set of variables as input and extrudes a probability as output.

Hitler read Marx in 1913.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. Aside from the fact that human beings are not eggs, the trouble is that no omelette has emerged from the slaughter.

• Richard Pipes

The ideologies prepared the ground and attracted the men, the absence of democracy gave them the opportunity, but tens of millions of deaths ultimately depended on the decisions of just three individuals. [Hitler, Stalin, Mao]

Pundits and Politicians turned up the rhetoric to eleven, and the word existential (generally modifying threat or crisis) had not seen as much use since the heyday of Sartre and Camus.

In fact in every year but 1995 and 2001, more Americans were killed by lighting, deer, peanut allergies, bed stings, and "ignition or melting of nightwear" than by terrorist attacks.

The discrepancy between the panic generated by terrorism and the deaths generated by terrorism is no accident. Panic is the whole point of terrorism, as the word itself makes clear.

The psychologists suggest that the illusions are a legacy of ancient brain circuitry. They may have been the best guide to allocating vigilance in the prenumerate societies that predominated in human life until the compilation of statistical databases within the past century.

Terrorist groups: SLA - Patty Hearst Provisional Irish Republican Army Ulster Freedom Fighters Red Brigade Baader Meinhof Gang

Book Recommendation: That Obscure Object of Desire - Luis Buñuel Book Recommendation: Why terrorism does not work - Max Abrahms Book Recommendation: How Terrorism ends - Audrey Cronin

No small terrorist organization has ever taken over a state, and 94% fail to achieve any of their strategic aims.

Violence has an international language, but so does decency.

• Audrey Cronin

Ordinarily a human being is unwilling to die, the legacy of half a billion years of natural selection. How have terrorist leaders overcome this obstacle?

Young men in all societies do foolish things to prove their courage and commitment.

The main driver of terrorism might be brotherly love. Similar to how soldiers often fight not for their country but for their fellow soldiers from the platoon.

Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideologic conditions, that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up.

A statistical model, of course, is not a crystal ball.

Book Recommendation: - On Nuclear Terrorism by Mueller Levi

A cocksure certainty that Iran will use nuclear weapons in defiance of sixty-five years of history in which authoritative predictions of inevitable catastrophes were repeatedly proven wrong, could lead to adventures with even greater costs.

The conditions that favored this happy outcome - democracy, prosperity, decent government, peacekeeping, open economies, and the decline of antihuman ideologies - are not, of course, guaranteed to last forever. But not are they likely to vanish overnight.

Of course we live in a dangerous world.

Violent catastrophes may not be astronomically improbable, but they are improbable.