Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (43 page)
The first mistake, they said, was to start from the consciousness of an individual mind. The disembodied individual reasoner, ripped from his culture and its history, is a figment of the Enlightenment thinker’s imagination. A person is not a locus of abstract cogitation—a brain on a stick—but a body with emotions and a part of the fabric of nature.
The second mistake was to posit a universal human nature and a universally valid system of reasoning. People are embedded in a culture and find meaning in its myths, symbols, and epics. Truth does not reside in propositions in the sky, there for everyone to see, but is situated in narratives and archetypes that are particular to the history of a place and give meaning to the lives of its inhabitants.
In this way of thinking, for a rational analyst to criticize traditional beliefs or customs is to miss the point. Only if one enters into the experience of those who live by those beliefs can one truly understand them. The Bible, for example, can be appreciated only by reproducing the experience of ancient shepherds in the Judaean hills. Every culture has a unique
Schwerpunkt
, a center of gravity, and unless we try to occupy it, we cannot comprehend its meaning and value.
156
Cosmopolitanism, far from being a virtue, is a “shedding of all that makes one most human, most oneself.”
157
Universality, objectivity, and rationality are out; romanticism, vitalism, intuition, and irrationalism are in. Herder summed up the
Sturm und Drang
(storm and impulse) movement he helped to inspire: “I am not here to think, but to be, feel, live! . . . Heart! Warmth! Blood! Humanity! Life!” 158
Schwerpunkt
, a center of gravity, and unless we try to occupy it, we cannot comprehend its meaning and value.
156
Cosmopolitanism, far from being a virtue, is a “shedding of all that makes one most human, most oneself.”
157
Universality, objectivity, and rationality are out; romanticism, vitalism, intuition, and irrationalism are in. Herder summed up the
Sturm und Drang
(storm and impulse) movement he helped to inspire: “I am not here to think, but to be, feel, live! . . . Heart! Warmth! Blood! Humanity! Life!” 158
A child of the counter-Enlightenment, then, does not pursue a goal because it is objectively true or virtuous, but because it is a unique product of one’s creativity. The wellspring of creativity may be in one’s own true self, as the Romantic painters and writers insisted, or it may be in some kind of transcendent entity: a cosmic spirit, a divine flame. Berlin elaborates:
Others again identified the creative self with a super-personal “organism” of which they saw themselves as elements or members—nation, or church, or culture, or class, or history itself, a mighty force of which they conceived their earthly selves as emanations. Aggressive nationalism, self-identification with the interests of the class, the culture or the race, or the forces of progress—with the wave of the future-directed dynamism of history, something that at once explains and justifies acts which might be abhorred or despised if committed from calculation of selfish advantage or some other mundane motive—this family of political and moral conceptions is so many expressions of a doctrine of self-realization based on defiant rejection of the central theses of the Enlightenment, according to which what is true, or right, or good, or beautiful, can be shown to be valid for all men by the correct application of objective methods of discovery and interpretation, open to anyone to use and verify.
159
The counter-Enlightenment also rejected the assumption that violence was a problem to be solved. Struggle and bloodshed are inherent in the natural order, and cannot be eliminated without draining life of its vitality and subverting the destiny of mankind. As Herder put it, “Men desire harmony, but nature knows better what is good for the species: it desires strife.”
160
The glorification of the struggle in “nature red in tooth and claw” (as Tennyson had put it) was a pervasive theme in 19th-century art and writing. Later it would be retrofitted with a scientific patina in the form of “social Darwinism,” though the connection with Darwin is anachronistic and unjust:
The Origin of Species
was published in 1859, long after romantic struggleism had become a popular philosophy, and Darwin himself was a thoroughgoing liberal humanist.
161
160
The glorification of the struggle in “nature red in tooth and claw” (as Tennyson had put it) was a pervasive theme in 19th-century art and writing. Later it would be retrofitted with a scientific patina in the form of “social Darwinism,” though the connection with Darwin is anachronistic and unjust:
The Origin of Species
was published in 1859, long after romantic struggleism had become a popular philosophy, and Darwin himself was a thoroughgoing liberal humanist.
161
The counter-Enlightenment was the wellspring of a family of romantic movements that gained strength during the 19th century. Some of them influenced the arts and gave us sublime music and poetry. Others became political ideologies and led to horrendous reversals in the trend of declining violence. One of these ideologies was a form of militant nationalism that came to be known as “blood and soil”—the notion that an ethnic group and the land from which it originated form an organic whole with unique moral qualities, and that its grandeur and glory are more precious than the lives and happiness of its individual members. Another was romantic militarism, the idea that (as Mueller has summarized it) “war is noble, uplifting, virtuous, glorious, heroic, exciting, beautiful, holy, thrilling.”
162
A third was Marxist socialism, in which history is a glorious struggle between classes, culminating in the subjugation of the bourgeoisie and the supremacy of the proletariat. And a fourth was National Socialism, in which history is a glorious struggle between races, culminating in the subjugation of inferior races and the supremacy of the Aryans.
162
A third was Marxist socialism, in which history is a glorious struggle between classes, culminating in the subjugation of the bourgeoisie and the supremacy of the proletariat. And a fourth was National Socialism, in which history is a glorious struggle between races, culminating in the subjugation of inferior races and the supremacy of the Aryans.
The Humanitarian Revolution was a milestone in the historical reduction of violence and is one of humanity’s proudest achievements. Superstitious killing, cruel punishments, frivolous executions, and chattel slavery may not have been obliterated from the face of the earth, but they have certainly been pushed to the margins. And despotism and major war, which had cast their shadow on humanity since the beginning of civilization, began to show cracks. The philosophy of Enlightenment humanism that united these developments got a toehold in the West and bided its time until more violent ideologies tragically ran their course.
5
THE LONG PEACE
War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention.
—Henry Maine
I
n the early 1950s, two eminent British scholars reflected on the history of war and ventured predictions on what the world should expect in the years to come. One of them was Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), perhaps the most famous historian of the 20th century. Toynbee had served in the British Foreign Office during both world wars, had represented the government at the peace conferences following each one, and had been chronicling the rise and fall of twenty-six civilizations in his monumental twelve-volume work
A Study of History.
The patterns of history, as he saw them in 1950, did not leave him optimistic:
n the early 1950s, two eminent British scholars reflected on the history of war and ventured predictions on what the world should expect in the years to come. One of them was Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), perhaps the most famous historian of the 20th century. Toynbee had served in the British Foreign Office during both world wars, had represented the government at the peace conferences following each one, and had been chronicling the rise and fall of twenty-six civilizations in his monumental twelve-volume work
A Study of History.
The patterns of history, as he saw them in 1950, did not leave him optimistic:
In our recent Western history war has been following war in an ascending order of intensity; and today it is already apparent that the War of 1939–45 was not the climax of this crescendo movement.
1
Writing in the shadow of World War II and at the dawn of the Cold War and the nuclear age, Toynbee could certainly be forgiven for his bleak prognostication. Many other distinguished commentators were equally pessimistic, and predictions of an imminent doomsday continued for another three decades.
2
2
The other scholar’s qualifications could not be more different. Lewis Fry Richardson (1881–1953) was a physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and applied mathematician. His main claim to fame had been devising numerical techniques for predicting the weather, decades before there were computers powerful enough to implement them.
3
Richardson’s own prediction about the future came not from erudition about great civilizations but from statistical analysis of a dataset of hundreds of violent conflicts spanning more than a century. Richardson was more circumspect than Toynbee, and more optimistic.
3
Richardson’s own prediction about the future came not from erudition about great civilizations but from statistical analysis of a dataset of hundreds of violent conflicts spanning more than a century. Richardson was more circumspect than Toynbee, and more optimistic.
The occurrence of two world wars in the present century is apt to leave us with the vague belief that the world has become more warlike. But this belief needs logical scrutiny. A long future may perhaps be coming without a third world war in it.
4
Richardson chose statistics over impressions to defy the common understanding that global nuclear war was a certainty. More than half a century later, we know that the eminent historian was wrong and the obscure physicist was right.
This chapter is about the full story behind Richardson’s prescience: the trends in war between major nations, culminating in the unexpected good news that the apparent crescendo of war did not continue to a new climax. During the last two decades, the world’s attention has shifted to other kinds of conflict, including wars in smaller countries, civil wars, genocides, and terrorism; they will be covered in the following chapter.
STATISTICS AND NARRATIVESThe 20th century would seem to be an insult to the very suggestion that violence has declined over the course of history. Commonly labeled the most violent century in history, its first half saw a cascade of world wars, civil wars, and genocides that Matthew White has called the Hemoclysm, the blood-flood.
5
The Hemoclysm was not just an unfathomable tragedy in its human toll but an upheaval in humanity’s understanding of its historical movement. The Enlightenment hope for progress led by science and reason gave way to a sheaf of grim diagnoses: the recrudescence of a death instinct, the trial of modernity, an indictment of Western civilization, man’s Faustian bargain with science and technology.
6
5
The Hemoclysm was not just an unfathomable tragedy in its human toll but an upheaval in humanity’s understanding of its historical movement. The Enlightenment hope for progress led by science and reason gave way to a sheaf of grim diagnoses: the recrudescence of a death instinct, the trial of modernity, an indictment of Western civilization, man’s Faustian bargain with science and technology.
6
But a century is made up of a hundred years, not fifty. The second half of the 20th century saw a historically unprecedented avoidance of war between the great powers which the historian John Gaddis has called the Long Peace, followed by the equally astonishing fizzling out of the Cold War.
7
How can we make sense of the multiple personalities of this twisted century? And what can we conclude about the prospects for war and peace in the present one?
7
How can we make sense of the multiple personalities of this twisted century? And what can we conclude about the prospects for war and peace in the present one?
The competing predictions of Toynbee the historian and Richardson the physicist represent complementary ways of understanding the flow of events in time. Traditional history is a narrative of the past. But if we are to heed George Santayana’s advisory to remember the past so as not to repeat it, we need to discern
patterns
in the past, so we can know what to generalize to the predicaments of the present. Inducing generalizable patterns from a finite set of observations is the stock in trade of the scientist, and some of the lessons of pattern extraction in science may be applied to the data of history.
patterns
in the past, so we can know what to generalize to the predicaments of the present. Inducing generalizable patterns from a finite set of observations is the stock in trade of the scientist, and some of the lessons of pattern extraction in science may be applied to the data of history.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that World War II was the most destructive event in history. (Or if you prefer, suppose that the entire Hemoclysm deserves that designation, if you consider the two world wars and their associated genocides to be a single protracted historical episode.) What does that tell us about long-term trends in war and peace?
The answer is: nothing. The most destructive event in history had to take place in
some
century, and it could be embedded in any of a large number of very different long-term trends. Toynbee assumed that World War II was a step in an escalating staircase, as in the left panel in figure 5–1. Almost as gloomy is the common suggestion that epochs of war are cyclical, as in the right panel of figure 5–1. Like many depressing prospects, both models have spawned some black humor. I am often asked if I’ve heard the one about the man who fell off the roof of an office building and shouted to the workers on each floor, “So far so good!” I have also been told (several times) about the turkey who, on the eve of Thanksgiving, remarked on the extraordinary 364-day era of peace between farmers and turkeys he is lucky enough to be living in.
8
some
century, and it could be embedded in any of a large number of very different long-term trends. Toynbee assumed that World War II was a step in an escalating staircase, as in the left panel in figure 5–1. Almost as gloomy is the common suggestion that epochs of war are cyclical, as in the right panel of figure 5–1. Like many depressing prospects, both models have spawned some black humor. I am often asked if I’ve heard the one about the man who fell off the roof of an office building and shouted to the workers on each floor, “So far so good!” I have also been told (several times) about the turkey who, on the eve of Thanksgiving, remarked on the extraordinary 364-day era of peace between farmers and turkeys he is lucky enough to be living in.
8
But are the processes of history really as deterministic as the law of gravity or the cycling of the planet? Mathematicians tells us that an infinite number of curves can be drawn through any finite set of points. Figure 5–2 shows two other curves which situate the same episode in very different narratives.
The left panel depicts the radical possibility that World War II was a statistical fluke—that it was neither a step in an escalating series nor a harbinger of things to come, and not part of a trend at all. At first the suggestion seems preposterous. How could a random unfolding of events in time result in so many catastrophes being bunched together in just a decade: the brutal invasions by Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Imperial Japan; the Holocaust; Stalin’s purge; the Gulag; and two atomic explosions (to say nothing of World War I and the wars and genocides of the preceding two decades)? Also, the usual wars we find in history books tend to have death tolls in the tens or hundreds of thousands or, very rarely, in the millions. If wars really broke out at random, shouldn’t a war that led to the deaths of 55 million people be astronomically improbable? Richardson showed that both these intuitions are cognitive illusions. When the iron dice begin to roll (as the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg put it on the eve of World War I), the unlucky outcomes can be far worse than our primitive imaginations foresee.
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