The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
by Steven Pinker · 24 Sep 2012 · 1,351pp · 385,579 words
Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Preface Chapter 1 - A FOREIGN COUNTRY Chapter 2 - THE PACIFICATION PROCESS Chapter 3 - THE CIVILIZING PROCESS Chapter 4 - THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION Chapter 5 - THE LONG PEACE Chapter 6 - THE NEW PEACE Chapter 7 - THE RIGHTS REVOLUTIONS Chapter 8 - INNER DEMONS Chapter 9 - BETTER ANGELS Chapter
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dueling, judicial torture, superstitious killing, sadistic punishment, and cruelty to animals, together with the first stirrings of systematic pacifism. Historians sometimes call this transition the Humanitarian Revolution. The fourth major transition took place after the end of World War II. The two-thirds of a century since then have been witness to
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without having their skulls split.” Maybe the time has even come when I can use a knife to push peas onto my fork. 4 THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. —Voltaire The world contains a lot of strange museums. There is the
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be called humanism or human rights, and its sudden impact on Western life in the second half of the 18th century may be called the Humanitarian Revolution. Today the Enlightenment is often mentioned with a sneer. “Critical theorists” on the left blame it for the disasters of the 20th century; theoconservatives
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a cascade of Rights Revolutions in the ensuing decades (chapter 7). As we shall see, the declarations were more than feel-good verbiage; the Humanitarian Revolution initiated the abolition of many barbaric practices that had been unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But the custom that most dramatically
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increased valuation of the well-being of other people, we shall see, was a common thread in the abandonment of other barbaric practices during the Humanitarian Revolution. SUPERSTITIOUS KILLING: VIOLENCE AGAINST BLASPHEMERS, HERETICS, AND APOSTATES Human sacrifice and witch-burnings are just two examples of the harm that can result from
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in the crib and began to predominate only in our lifetimes, they originated in the grand change in thoughts and sensibilities that make up the Humanitarian Revolution, so I will introduce them here. DESPOTISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE A government, according to the famous characterization by the sociologist Max Weber, is an
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the belittling of war but to the spread of democracy, the expansion of trade and commerce, and the growth of international organizations. WHENCE THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION? We have seen that in the span of just over a century, cruel practices that had been a part of civilization for millennia were suddenly
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’ prisons were also shut down by acts of legislators who had been influenced by moral agitators and the public debates they began. In explaining the Humanitarian Revolution, then, we don’t have to decide between unspoken norms and explicit moral argumentation. Each affects the other. As sensibilities change, thinkers who question
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could remember them, became so unimaginable that they were no longer brought up for debate. The most sweeping change in everyday sensibilities left by the Humanitarian Revolution is the reaction to suffering in other living things. People today are far from morally immaculate. They may covet nice objects, fantasize about sex with
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of saying that people stopped doing cruel things because they got less cruel. What changed in people’s environment that could have set off the Humanitarian Revolution? The Civilizing Process is one candidate. Recall that Elias suggested that during the transition to modernity people not only exercised more self-control but also
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novels in general, or epistolary novels in particular, were the critical genre in expanding empathy, the explosion of reading may have contributed to the Humanitarian Revolution by getting people into the habit of straying from their parochial vantage points. And it may have contributed in a second way: by creating a
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harder time being conceived and amalgamated, and so the rise of cosmopolitanism in the 17th and 18th centuries deserves part of the credit for the Humanitarian Revolution. Bringing people and ideas together, of course, does not determine how those ideas will evolve. The rise of the Republic of Letters and the
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they will be forced in certain directions regardless of their material surroundings. I think this process of moral discovery was a significant cause of the Humanitarian Revolution. I am prepared to take this line of explanation a step further. The reason so many violent institutions succumbed within so short a span of
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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
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. . . , its conflicts still ranked among the least horrific in European history.”105 As we saw in chapter 4, this tranquillity was a part of the Humanitarian Revolution connected with the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, and the dawn of classical liberalism. The calming of religious fervor meant that wars were no longer
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speak, write, and assemble without being dragged off to jail. The laws and practices of many Muslim countries seem to have missed out on the Humanitarian Revolution. According to Amnesty International, almost three-quarters of Muslim countries execute their criminals, compared to a third of non-Muslim countries, and many use cruel
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recent crimes of commission and acquiescence.255 Why did Islam blow its lead and fail to have an Age of Reason, an Enlightenment, and a Humanitarian Revolution? Some historians point to bellicose passages in the Koran, but compared to our own genocidal scriptures, they are nothing that some clever exegesis and
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of the movements took note of the success of its predecessors and adopted some of their tactics, rhetoric, and most significantly, moral rationale. During the Humanitarian Revolution two centuries earlier, a cascade of reforms tumbled out in quick succession, instigated by intellectual reflection on entrenched customs, and connected by a humanism that
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books containing each term in the year 2000, with a moving average of five years. The Rights Revolutions replayed some of the themes of the Humanitarian Revolution, but they also replayed one feature of the Civilizing Process. During the transition to modernity, people did not fully appreciate that they were undergoing changes
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increasingly unisex. The universalizing of the generic citizen’s vantage point, driven by reason and analogy, was an engine of moral progress during the Humanitarian Revolution of the 18th century, and it resumed that impetus during the Rights Revolutions of the 20th. It’s no coincidence that the expansion of the
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should govern our treatment of animals: not whether they can reason or talk, but whether they can suffer. By the early 19th century, the Humanitarian Revolution had been extended from humans to other sentient beings, first targeting the most conspicuous form of sadism toward animals, blood sports, followed by the abuse
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you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. Another causal pathway is an increase in invitations to adopt the viewpoints of people unlike oneself. The Humanitarian Revolution had its Clarissa, Pamela, and Julie, its Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Oliver Twist, its eyewitness reports of people being broken, burned, or flogged.
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using a sword. As we have seen, government vengeance itself can go to excess, as in the cruel punishments and profligate executions before the Humanitarian Revolution and the excessive incarceration in the United States today. Criminal punishment is often harsher than what would be needed as a finely tuned incentive designed
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motives draw harsher sentences, but difficult-to-detect or highly publicized infractions do not. The reforms advocated by the utilitarian economist Cesare Beccaria during the Humanitarian Revolution, which led to the abolition of cruel punishments, were designed to reorient criminal justice away from the raw impulse to make a bad person suffer
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and 5 of whether journalism, memoir, fiction, history, and other technologies of vicarious experience have expanded our collective sense of sympathy and helped drive the Humanitarian Revolution, the Long Peace, the New Peace, and the Rights Revolutions. Though Batson doesn’t always distinguish the two versions of the empathy-altruism hypothesis, his
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women’s predicament as a part of their cultural and religious heritage. These experiments give us some reason to believe that the chronology of the Humanitarian Revolution, in which popular novels preceded historical reform, may not have been entirely coincidental: exercises in perspective-taking do help to expand people’s circle
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be explained by natural selection, even with the new understanding of how recently it has acted. The abolition of slavery and cruel punishments during the Humanitarian Revolution; the reduction of violence against minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals during the Rights Revolutions; and the plummeting of war and genocide during the
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to reduce the aggregate amount of violence.195 What, then, are the historical changes in moral psychology that encouraged reductions in violence such as the Humanitarian Revolution, the Long Peace, and the Rights Revolutions? The direction of the change in prevailing models is clear enough. “Over the last three centuries throughout
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reason might be expected to reduce the rate of violence. The chronological sequence in which the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason preceded the Humanitarian Revolution reminds us of one big reason, the one captured in Voltaire’s quip that absurdities lead to atrocities. A debunking of hogwash—such as
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explored in the psychological chapters (8 and 9). That is, I will look for common threads in the Pacification Process, 671 the Civilizing Process, the Humanitarian Revolution, the Long Peace, the New Peace, and the Rights Revolutions. Each should represent a way in which predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, or ideology has
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in the 17th century, technological advances in publishing and transportation created a Republic of Letters and a Reading Revolution in which the seeds of the Humanitarian Revolution took root (chapter 4). More people read books, including fiction that led them to inhabit the minds of other people, and satire that led
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even more aware of others unlike themselves (chapters 5 and 7). Just as the Republic of Letters and the Reading Revolution helped to kindle the Humanitarian Revolution of the 18th century, the Global Village and the electronics revolution may have helped along the Long Peace, New Peace, and Rights Revolutions of
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“Positive trends recorded in U.S. data on teenagers,” New York Times, Jul. 13, 2007. 182. Informalization and third nature: Wouters, 2007. Chapter 4: The Humanitarian Revolution 1. Torture museum: http://www.torturamuseum.com/this.html. 2. Coffee table books on torture: Held, 1986; Puppi, 1990. 3. Medieval torture: Held, 1986; Levinson
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2008. 147. Skepticism as the origin of modern thought: Popkin, 1979. 148. Interchangeability of perspectives as the basis for morality: Nagel, 1970; Singer, 1981. 149. Humanitarian revolutions in Asia: Bourgon, 2003; Sen, 2000. See also Kurlansky, 2006. 150. Tragic vision of human condition: Burke, 1790/1967; Sowell, 1987. 151. Readiness for democracy
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of and suburbs violence in civil defense civilization emergence of civilizing offensive Civilizing Process commerce decivilization in 1960s, and Enlightenment etiquette European homicide decline and Humanitarian Revolution introduction of concept and Leviathan in medieval Europe recivilization in 1990s, reduction in frequency of war and Rights Revolutions and self-control and sexuality and
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see also anger; compassion; disgust; empathy; fear; forgiveness; guilt; sympathy empathy and the brain circle of and Civilizing Process and counterempathy dark side of and Humanitarian Revolution introduction of concept and literacy and Pacifist’s Dilemma parochial nature of and revenge modulation sadism deterred by use of term see also mentalizing; sympathy
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character traits of polygynous in prehistory primate ancestors of sexually dimorphic sexual reproduction of violent tendencies of Human Genome Project humanism and Enlightenment humanitarian aid Humanitarian Revolution attempts to explain blood and soil capital punishment civilization and enlightenment and Civilizing Process cruel punishments despotism and political violence empathy and regard for human
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of universal and violence see also human beings human rights: and capital punishment and corporal punishment of children and criminalization of homosexuality Helsinki Accords and Humanitarian Revolution vs. nationalism principle of and social contract Universal Declaration Human Rights Watch human sacrifice Human Security Report Project (HSRP) human trafficking human universals Hume,
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Concerning Education Two Treatises on Government Lodge, David Loewenstein, George London Blitz Long, William Long Peace chemical weapons democratic peace disarmament great power wars and Humanitarian Revolution introduction of concept Kantian Peace Liberal Peace nuclear peace numbers related to violence in 20th century Lorenz, Konrad loss aversion Lott, Trent Luard, Evan Luria
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circle of; see also Expanding Circle, theory of; human rights Rights Revolutions animal rights children’s rights civil rights and Enlightenment humanism gay rights and Humanitarian Revolution introduction of concept and technologies use of terms women’s rights Rindermann, Heiner risk perception, see fear Rivers, Eugene Rizzolatti, Giacomo Robbers Cave study Roberts
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Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Preface Chapter 1 - A FOREIGN COUNTRY Chapter 2 - THE PACIFICATION PROCESS Chapter 3 - THE CIVILIZING PROCESS Chapter 4 - THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION Chapter 5 - THE LONG PEACE Chapter 6 - THE NEW PEACE Chapter 7 - THE RIGHTS REVOLUTIONS Chapter 8 - INNER DEMONS Chapter 9 - BETTER ANGELS Chapter
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Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Epigraph Preface Chapter 1 - A FOREIGN COUNTRY Chapter 2 - THE PACIFICATION PROCESS Chapter 3 - THE CIVILIZING PROCESS Chapter 4 - THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION Chapter 5 - THE LONG PEACE Chapter 6 - THE NEW PEACE Chapter 7 - THE RIGHTS REVOLUTIONS Chapter 8 - INNER DEMONS Chapter 9 - BETTER ANGELS Chapter
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker · 13 Feb 2018 · 1,034pp · 241,773 words
poaching, and sadistic punishments such as flogging, amputation, impalement, disembowelment, breaking on the wheel, and burning at the stake. The Enlightenment is sometimes called the Humanitarian Revolution, because it led to the abolition of barbaric practices that had been commonplace across civilizations for millennia.12 If the abolition of slavery and cruel
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homicide and other violent crimes which followed upon the entrenchment of the rule of law and norms of self-control in early modern Europe. The Humanitarian Revolution is another name for the Enlightenment-era abolition of slavery, religious persecution, and cruel punishments. The Long Peace is the historians’ term for the decline
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as humane as such a gruesome practice could pretend to be. After World War II, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights inaugurated a second humanitarian revolution, capital punishment was abolished altogether in country after country, and in Europe today it lingers only in Belarus. The abolition of capital punishment has gone
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& Haberman 1998. 10. Expanding circle of sympathy: Nagel 1970; Pinker 2011; Shermer 2015; Singer 1981/2010. 11. Cosmopolitanism: Appiah 2006; Pagden 2013; Pinker 2011. 12. Humanitarian Revolution: Hunt 2007; Pinker 2011. 13. Progress as a mystical force: Berlin 1979; Nisbet 1980/2009. 14. Authoritarian High Modernism: Scott 1998. 15. Authoritarian High Modernism
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; theism and theistic morality; Universal Declaration of Human Rights humanistic environmentalism. See ecomodernism Humanist Manifesto III (2003), 410–411 Humanist movement, 410–412, 487nn1–3 Humanitarian Revolution, 11, 43 humanities digital humanities, 408 disdain for science not typical of, 389–90 downsizing of programs of, 405–6 Second Culture policing of, 408
The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World
by Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro · 11 Sep 2017 · 850pp · 224,533 words
spared civilians at this point is a matter much debated among historians. Some attribute the new rules to moral progress—either as part of the humanitarian revolution of the Enlightenment, which began to regard all human life as valuable, or the specific desire not to revisit the horrors of previous wars.75
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. R. Potter and G. R. Elton, Vol. 7: The Old Regime, 1713–63, ed. J. O. Lindsay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 165. On the humanitarian revolution and Enlightenment humanism, see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), 129–92. 76. Bell, The
Open: The Story of Human Progress
by Johan Norberg · 14 Sep 2020 · 505pp · 138,917 words
in the UK, the American economy was more than twice as large as the British, and about to take over its global political role. The humanitarian revolution Other countries also started growing rapidly as they picked up open values and institutions similar to those in Britain and the US, and the technologies
More From Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources – and What Happens Next
by Andrew McAfee · 30 Sep 2019 · 372pp · 94,153 words
person to suffer and flourish… call[s] on our moral concern.” As Pinker writes in his book Enlightenment Now, “The Enlightenment is sometimes called the Humanitarian Revolution, because it led to the abolition of barbaric practices [such as slavery] that had been commonplace across civilizations for millennia.” This
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humanitarian revolution has been hugely successful; around the world most people now believe that “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” as Abraham Lincoln put it
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of a person”: Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Penguin, 2018), Kindle, location 408. “sometimes called the Humanitarian Revolution”: Ibid., preview location 4117. “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”: Abraham Lincoln, letter to Albert G. Hodges, April 14, 1864, Abraham Lincoln Online