The Global Decline in Violence

russ_watters

We've occasionally discussed this, but I hadn't seen this talk before:



Basic point: we live in the most peaceful time in human history....But our media and even school system tries to convince us otherwise. Lots of good stats. And discussion: "Why are so many people so wrong about something so important?"

MPKU

Weird, I was just thinking about this earlier. It's obviously a step in the right direction, for science and just for life in general. We will worry less and less about the violence issue and be able to focus more on 'important' aspects of life.

I did have a counter thought watching the video though.. as human-human violence has declined, has human-nonhuman species violence increased, overall? Of course, on average, humans are more sympathetic towards the suffering of other species (animals/trees) through groups (PETA, Green Movement, etc.) however, it's not seeming to stop our mass-slaughtering of animals and destruction of the world, which could certainly be considered as violence. As human-human violence declines, it seems to be necessary that we find easier ways to satisfy everyone, and we found that solution by ravaging the land and its other inhabitants. Just some food for thought.

russ_watters

By definition, a "hunter-gatherer" does nothing but pillage the land, so I would say that no, "human-nonhuman species violence" has not gotten worse, if "worse" is even an applicable description.

MPKU

Hunter gathers did not place animals in slaughtering factories from birth which they have no chance or escaping, nor did they clear-cut forests, set off atomic bombs, nor did they drill into the Earth to extract natural gases to use for energy resulting in the change of the composition of Earth's atmosphere, etc. Also, we are no longer hunter-gathers.

The only point I'm trying to make is violence isn't necessarily exclusive to human interaction.

256bits

The global environmental impact of world human population might be considered to have a one to one correspondance with population growth. But that would only be true, if it is at all, if society did not progress technologically as well as by other methods. Addressing what the earth would look like with a hunter-gatherer population of 7 billion, might be one way to compare present society with the past.

256bits

I do not think the speaker adressed the fact that nowadays most wants and desires of individuals are met without too much difficulty, except of course, that does come with the problem of choosing from what seems an endless assortment of goods and services.
As long as there is ample quantity and quality of food at the grocery store, or the fact that I can feel warm in my dwelling by just moving a dial, what need do I have of violence? I feel physically threatened by nothing nor nobody.

I think MPKU touched upon something when he stated "
If the instant satisifaction becomes problematic by ( worldwide ) shortages or non-availability then my neighbor might not be so friendly and willing to share, and might just want to be a little violent to protect his possessions or to aquire what is needed for his family, group, clan, nation.

Case in point: the roman empire had one real reason to invade and conquer the islands of Great Britain - control of supply from the mining operations of gold, tin, copper, silver, and other materials necessary to satisfy the demands of the population back home in Rome.

mheslep

For what it is worth, I saw a report the other day pointing out a large increase in assaults that are survived; i.e. what would formerly have been homicides now end up as survivable assaults, thanks to modern medical care. In other words some violence is being re-categorized by technology.

ImaLooser

I'm too lazy to listen to it. One big factor would be demographics. Violence is usually perpetrated by men from 14 to 25, and now there are proportionally fewer of them. There was a big crime drop in the USA in the 1990's for this reason.

With the invention of modern weapons war is no longer profitable to the nation as a whole, and instead is almost always a net loss even to the winner. With profit gone war has dropped off radically. Nowadays in modern countries special interest groups profit from war at the expense of the nation in general, so the wars are much smaller.

As to why people have such a warped and pessimistic view of the world, a lot of it is that violence sells. No one ever sold a newspaper with headline "MILLIONS LIVING CONTENTED LIVES." The US in particular is saturated with images of violence, but little actual violence.

I study a lot of history and it is very clear that the world is much better off than 100 or even 50 years ago. I talk to people about this and they are stunned. They just never thought of it that way. Reading about England 200 years ago, it's like Hell.

ImaLooser

You may put it that way, but I find it misleading. In Indonesia the hunter-gatherers are densely populated enough that they can't pick up and leave if they trash their own land. They are stuck where they are for life, so they must live in a sustainable way. So I guess you could call that sustainable pillage.

Czcibor

Concerning your question:
-Idealized past - people don't know how it looked like, past crime rate is not part of curriculum (there might be however, a hint when we learn about wars in Europe, both after Napoleonic wars, and especially after WW2 one might notice that this "hobby" seem to slowly fail out favour)
-Better access to information - a century ago one African tribe could exterminate another tribe, and no-one in Europe would know about it, nowadays there would be horde of journalist soon.
-Not calculating statistics for rare events, but merely checking - "Did I hear about committed murder in last week? Yes? Oh, no the crime is up." without checking how far it was from place that one live.

Johninch

If we are talking statistics of crime, let’s talk about statistics of what people think about it too.

How man people are wrong? How many people really think that the world has not gotten more peaceful?

Of course we all deplore violence and commit less violence than in previous ages. Pinker explains this development very well, but nothing of what he said was any news to me. He just presented it in a very clear way.

Everybody hopes that we continue on this improving path. I personally don’t know anybody who thinks we are going backwards.

Can anybody here give a link to a survey on people’s opinion about the trend of violence over recent centuries?

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Czcibor

I could find only a prediction for future:

http://www.people-press.org/1999/10/...ll-of-promise/

A pessimistic one. ;)

Ryan_m_b

I agree and would add that from a personal perspective some of the perception of violence in the UK is down to a conflict between what the public think violence is (mugging, murder, rape etc) and what the law classifies it as (all those plus a variety of non physical acts like threatening behaviour and even possession of an illegal firearm) which doesn't help when violent crime stats come out.

Having said that in a world of decreasing violence it's not surprising that the rare events of violence get more intense media coverage. The knock on effect being that when violent crimes do happen and are reported they seem more severe and scary.

vappole

Violence might be declining as a ratio on the population, but the world is becoming more and more populated. There are more human slaves today than there have ever been in history. I will not even go into human to animal violence, because the numbers there are simply staggering, due to the increasing popularity of the meat-based diet in the last few decades. In evolved countries the standard of what is acceptable violence and what is not might be increasing, which might partly explain why we still perceive a lot of violence (i.e. if a couple of centuries ago it might have been considered ok to decapitate a person in public, today it would be considered horrendous by most civilized cultures). Moreover whereas physical violence might have gotten more under control thanks to more protecting laws, mental violence is ever difficult to detect and in my opinion may actually be increasing.

I think violence is a basic property of human nature: I don't think it is decreasing, rather it is mutating in different forms, which are today perhaps more acceptable. It is in my opinion possible that someone from the past would consider horrible some of the actions that are acceptable in the present, and vice-versa.

Johninch

What do you want to say with that? I would put it to you that violence (including the fear of violence and consequential suffering) is a problem which affects or can affect all of us individually. It has nothing to do with absolute global numbers. Consider the two worlds: a) 1 billion inhabitants with annual violence cases of 100 million per year (10%), and (b) 10 billion inhabitants with annual violence cases of 200 million per year (2%). Do you know anybody who would prefer to live in world a)?

Pinker says it is a "common understanding" that the world has become a more dangerous place. This is the basis for his interesting talk, but there is no evidence that the majority of people think this. It’s a straw man argument.

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michael13

Hi,

the hypothesis of global decline in violence is claimed to be proven
on wrong assumptions and uncertain historical estimates from previous
unproven reports.

A fine example of bad science.

In fact the artificial definition of "violence" by King and the funny "time" binning
would even show that Hitlers Germany was only a little more violent than
what we have today.

But, the more important cheating is to take funny time averages.
Everybody in his right mind and who wants to be objective can see how
war is a great partner of the views promoted by king

just this for example ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hsDn2kNriI

or the potential to destroy us all with a fingertip
not yet used! correct but the weapons are just waiting ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

michael13

sorry the name is Steven Pinker not King