Steven Pinker@Tufts: The Better Angels of Our Nature
In his latest book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, Steven Pinker - a Harvard College professor and a recognized experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author - posits the idea that the amount of violence in our world today is actually far less than in previous eras, and that the rate of violence itself has decreased dramatically.
Now, I haven’t read Steven Pinker’s book. But I did hear him speak in an hour and a half lecture at Tufts University just now as the keynote address for this year’s EPIIC Symposium, a five day event bringing together the world’s leading thinkers and actors to debate and discuss a certain globally relevant theme. This year’s theme is Conflict in the 21st Century, and centers around the technological advancements in weaponry and the intersections of science, technology (including social media and the internet) and conflict.
I can’t attest to the quality of the statistics that Pinker pulled from, and since I haven’t read his book I’m not sure whether he has already answered some of my questions. But in what he presented tonight in a sort of summary of his argument, I saw several clear, dangerous, and clearly dangerous fallacies.
First, almost all of the data and statistics and graphs that Pinker used were collected from the West. They weren’t Eurocentric, because they included the US and Canada. But they weren’t even statistics of the “developed world” versus “developing world” - because the stats didn’t include countries like, say, Brazil. I mean, if you’re including some of smaller, poorer Eastern European nations in your statistics as part of the developed world, you would most likely include Brazil, or maybe even China. Which he didn’t. That’s why I’m calling it Western-centric.
It makes me wonder whether he’s simply saying that violence in the West as a whole has gone down. Or if, perhaps, the West has exported its violence, now perpetrated indirectly through corporate sponsorships of violent and oppressive regimes and non-state actors, and/or well, other violent and oppressive corporations.
He talked about the abolition of slavery as a huge contributing factor to the decrease in violence. Really? What about modern day slaves? Sex slavery - and yes, it is slavery, you can go research it if you don’t believe me - has been on the increase over the past few decades!
He pointed to statistics about rape decreasing in the United States as evidence that rape and violence against women were on the decrease. Um, wrong. First off, much of the violence against women - as in, domestic violence and/or rape/sexual assault - is not even reported in many cases. According to the American Medical Association, rape is the most under-reported violent crime. Secondly, using data from the US to prove a decrease in rape globally is absolutely flawed. It is in this century that rape has been widely deployed as a weapon of war in the DR Congo, in Darfur, and other parts of the world. Globally, rape, sexual abuse, and sexual violence have most definitely not been decreasing.
There were numerous other arguments and statements that he made which I would love to pick on but don’t have the time or space to. He pointed out the centralization of states that, in his opinion, decreases violence. Well, if we’re looking at history, the Mughal Empire was a very loose hegemony - quite the opposite of strongly centralized - and yet it was a very cosmopolitan and, for its time, a very peaceful place to be. He also said that the “civilizing of nations” has contributed to greater peace. Combined with his statistics that only including Western countries, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what he means by “civilized.” Colonial mindset, anyone? And one last note - graphing the amount of violence over 1900s up until this decade, with high points at WWI and WWII, is not a reputable comparison of violence. Obviously WWI and WWII were extraordinarily violent. Doesn’t mean the rest of the century was, too.
Pinker’s argument felt like one of those completely inapplicable-to-reality “high intellectual” theories posited merely for the fact that they are controversial. Frankly, I think Pinker’s talk and his “evidence” was rife with flaws and that his argument represents the worst of privileged, insular, Western-centric thinking that I was shocked to hear from a professor at our nation’s most prestigious institution of higher learning.
Bottom line: Steven Pinker, I don’t believe you.
