Pinker, Paler, Soldier, Spy

I've written about something for a change!

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Steven Pinker - The Better Angels of Our Nature

This isn't exactly a book review. It isn't part of my Idiot Flaps Odyssey either (which seems to be lying dormant at the moment). I just happened to finish this yesterday and felt like writing about it for the following reasons:

1) It's long, and so I feel like I've achieved something for once
2) Writing about it will help me remember things
3) It's an interesting and important subject
4) I want you to think that I'm clever (though as you'll discover, I will probably demonstrate the opposite)

I'll try not to summarise the book in too much detail, as I'll probably mess things up, and will have Pinker on the phone saying "No, no, no, you've misunderstood everything and you have a ridiculous face. Even evolution can't explain THAT."

But the basic premise is that violence in the world has greatly declined, both in the long and short term.

Despite our notions of the modern world as an very violent place, and our romantic ideas of the past as being an Eden-like wonderland where you can leave your kids unlocked and buy some corn from an elf, the present day is (proportionally) the safest time to be alive.

He looks at many types of violence - war, murder, rape, torture, pushing a friend's face into a gorse bush, animal cruelty, Swingball - and has shown that they have all greatly declined.

Pinker also demonstrates that the commonly accepted belief that the 20th century is the most violent is probably untrue (proportional to population), and that the period since the end of the Second World War has been one of unprecedented peace.

To explain these ideas, Pinker looks at violence through a number of lenses: historical, political, philosophical, economic, biological, psychological, neuroscientific and probably some kind of futuristic space glasses. The discussion is supported by a wide range of statistical evidence. There are lots of graphs and tables, useful case studies and interesting experiments.

Pinker identifies the nature of the change and what has caused it, both in terms of social and political movements, morality and the functioning of the human brain.

So it's a pretty broad remit. Some of the smallest chapter sub-sections could have justified entire books. But Pinker writes fluidly and interestingly, and explains his findings well. Even I, with an attention span shorter than the word 'than', found it easy to follow.

I enjoyed it, and was convinced by most of what he had to say. Violence has declined. Put that in your pipe and smoke it humanely.

But I don't want to jump on his bandwagon just yet. I suspect that I could be easily bamboozled by a clever writer. Though I "studied" philosophy, politics and economics at university, and so should be used to looking at academic writing in a critical way, it's been ages since I had to do it. I reckon an eloquent person could write about why pigs invented the Super Bowl, and I'd believe them.

I don't want to be a chump. I don't want someone to suddenly bring up some point that contradicts his entire thesis, so I'm going to engage my critical faculties.

I've read a bit of commentary and criticism of the book. I've thought hard about the implications of his writing. I've sat in a dark room stroking my chin and folding paper into the shape of a light bulb.

I wear a neon badge on my lapel, and that badge says: RIGOROUS.

Luckily I didn't have to think too far outside the box, because The Guardian did a whole feature on the book, including some reviews and discussions. One review is particularly scathing, though amusingly, the columnist hasn't even read the book, and tries to judge it based on the index. It's an interesting technique. Like judging it based on the font. But as with most of the other criticisms I've seen of the book, the concerns raised seem to be dealt with, in depth, in the book itself.

There are lots of reader comments on these pieces, offering their usual mix of prejudice, self-importance and the simultaneous missing of dozens of points. It's always a mistake to read these comments, I know. There's a curious mindset in some of these people that makes them see changing your mind as a terrible sin. Well, not changing your mind. Changing your mind is a noble crusade. It's changing their mind that's an unforgivable sin. It's a parade of snappy, snide, self-congratulatory hate speech. My comments, on the other hand, are always gracious and productive.

Even given my low expectations, I was surprised at the conviction of so many people who hadn't read the book. They were sure they'd nailed a pithy refutation of the whole argument, even though Pinker had anticipated their glib idiocy and disproved it at length.

I've read several other reviews of the book. Most of them more reasonable than Captain Index. I wanted to be open to arguments against Pinker. I was on the look out for convincing counter-examples, and gaping holes in his argument. But I haven't found any of them yet. Most people who are critical of the book seem to dislike the implications of the central premise. But that doesn't mean that Pinker is necessarily wrong.

I think a lot of people have judged this book based on their preconceptions. And so have I. I'll look at these preconceptions first, and then identify some common objections. After which, I expect to receive my PhD.

What is it about claiming there's a decline in violence that people find so distasteful? No-one wants to admit that things are getting better.

Those on the right find the whole idea ridiculous. The world is clearly going to hell in a handbasket. There was a a vague golden age, not long ago, in which children did what they were told, old women could walk the streets at night, and you wouldn't say boo the goose. You'd call the goose "sir".

Now it's all violent video games and disrespect and suicide bombers performing their own one-woman plays, written with apostrophes in all the wrong places. The job of the conservative is to halt this terrible decline, by returning to nature and family values. The world was better in this non-specific past, even though similar conservatives were complaining about similar things for as long as we can remember.

So saying that violence is declining is anathema. They see violence everywhere, and will believe in this modern evil, no matter how many "facts" you throw at them.

Those on the left are similarly appalled by the idea that we live in a more peaceful world. Injustice is everywhere, people in the third world are suffering, capitalism is causing harm, the West is fighting immoral wars. If violence is declining, it doesn't help their campaigns. They see it as a type of blindness that encourages complacency, and lessens the need for change.

A lot of criticism I've read comes from this latter position. (I haven't read much right-wing reaction to the Pinker book. I doubt the Mail has discussed it in-depth, because it would involve reading a book.)

I've written before about how I hate this glory of the past, and the assumption that the current generation is going down the toilet. The current generation always thinks that theirs is the the most significant, that their young people are stupid and disrespectful, and that modern culture is rubbish. They've thought that for thousands of years, I reckon.

I was pleased to hear about this book, because it supports my view that the past was just as horrible as now, if not more so. I'm biased, then. I just read this because it agreed with me, and then patted myself on the back. It's always good to read a clever person corroborating your world view.

That's why I looked at the counter-arguments. I didn't want my preconceptions to colour my judgement. I want to feel legitimately smug. Blinkered smugness is no fun.
 
What I was mainly looking for was for clever people to tell me if anything was wrong with Pinker's statistical analysis. His graphs are all very convincing, and I don't really understand stats. I tend to assume that if they've been published, they'll probably be quite reliable. (I'm sure this is a dangerous assumption.) I was waiting to read that he's mislabelled the 'x' axis, or reported on a scientific trial done in another dimension. But I haven't seen any of that so far, so I think I'm reasonably safe to trust the numbers.

Pinker has answered a lot of possible objections in an FAQ here, so I won't go over too much of that.

Some of them are interesting, and I can see where they might be concerned. But some people are just idiots. You see things like:

"I read a news story yesterday about a boy killing bees with a hammer. How can Pinker say that violence is in decline?"

or

"My racist aunt is scared to leave the house. Call that peaceful?"

These people make my statistical analysis look like... uh... some kind of... good statistical analysis. (And make my comparisons seem devastatingly apt.) A single recent violent act will define the world. It's that same lack of proportion that leads people to claim that white middle-class men are the most oppressed group in the country, or that climate change is a myth because it's chilly today.

People tend to give their own experiences prominence. And if their own experiences involve watching the news, and TV shows about crime, and films in which a bomb has to defuse another bomb, they will probably have a warped idea of what's happening. But I don't believe my eyes. I believe a GRAPH.

More understandable criticism is of the implications of this study. If you want to discourage illegal wars, it's not useful to have someone talking about how relatively insignificant they are. People are dying and horrible things are happening.

Of course, Pinker thinks they're horrible too. He's not trying to say "Everything's OK! Everyone disband your charities and protest groups!". He's just trying to describe a change that has taken place.

Likewise, when people rightly campaign against the appalling conviction rates for rape, it doesn't help to have him talking about how incidents of rape have decreased.

He's just trying to present the facts. It's just that some of the facts are a little "off-message".

Fear is a tool that can be used by people of all political persuasions. We don't want society to rest on its laurels. We want new and better laurels, and better living standards for laurels (fewer people resting on them and for shorter hours).


But knowing what is contributing to long-term change isn't an impediment to change. If anything, knowing the progress we've made will encourage people. It will let them know that their campaigns, their protests, their policies, their witty placards, actually can do some good. It doesn't mean we have to accept illegal wars and massacres and Jeremy Kyle.

Yes, fear is a tool that people like to use. But the truth is a useful tool too, and one that is more difficult (though not impossible) to misuse.

One of the funniest criticisms of the decline of violence is that there could be a big war tomorrow that ruins Pinker's whole argument (and presumably his shirt). People seem to think he's arguing that everything is going to be fine, that war is over, that stabbings are going the way of the MiniDisc.

But of course, this isn't some teleological, utopian belief. He's not predicting that peace is inevitable, but reporting on the increase in peace that has already happened. He makes a point of stating that wars can still occur, and the conditions that have led to this state of peace could change.

You'd have to be pretty sure of yourself to write a book that guaranteed peace. If I was doing it, I'd hedge my bets. Even if it was just a tiny footnote at the end, which said: "Or, you know, maybe not".

Anyway, that's all the stuff I looked at. I'm reasonably happy with what I've read. If anyone has any convincing arguments that violence is not in decline, please let me know. I'd be happy to hear them. (And, no, punching me in the face is not an argument.)

I'm going to keep believing that I might be wrong, and that Pinker might be a charlatan with a ridiculous haircut. But until I read something conclusive, I'm going to go along with the conclusions in this book. I'd much rather be alive today than fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, or five thousand years ago (or any number of years in between, smart guy).

There. I hope I've shown how thoughtful I am, and that I know what the term 'teleological' means. Do you respect me more now? Does this make up for the months of nonsense, stupid dialogues and childlike drawings of ducks?

Or have I blundered all over the place? I might have made a foolish pig's ear of the whole thing. I might have angered and bored you.

Blogging is a subtle art.

I'll be back soon, with some more funny observations about water and scratching yourself.