What Steven Pinker Can Teach Us About Violence

What Steven Pinker Can Teach Us About Violence

An essay by Ronald Borst

A renowned writer, scholar, and educator- Steven Pinker writes in his book The Better Angels Of Our Nature , Why Violence Has Declined, that “…did you know there were five wars and four atrocities before World War I that killed more people than that war?”(pg. 194)  The statement points to perceptions of violent death, that are inconsistent with reality. Is the reality too brutal? Too vicious to acknowledge? Or are humans comfortable with the reality that violence is an inherent part of us, is it “in our blood”, as the saying goes?

Pinker from the get-go, engages the reader in statistics and shows the perceptions of increasing violence to be somewhat wrong, if not indeed entirely wrong. But Pinker points to something else, a diagram called the "Violence Triangle", and it involves three players. Bystander, aggressor, and victim- entangled in conflict. Unlike the old system of a two-party game(monarchy), we now have leviathan/government mediator. And hence, a controlling sort of entity, that relies on its credibility to keep order.

In this book, Pinker seems to point towards a belief that violence is declining, and that generally will continue to do so. Pinker displays pessimistic and optimistic reviews of futures involving violence, specifically violent death. But what can a super-educated(Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard Professor) guy like Pinker tell the everyday man? How can Pinker continue this message, not to college kids and Kindle freaks, but rather to our children? When does Pinker’s enlightenment explanations become virtues that resonate deep in American fabric?

The idea is to combine the leadership qualities of the charismatic and wise, with the values of enlightenment theory. To adorn government not with power and control, instead set in motion a government keen on robust and healthy citizens as a whole. What Pinker asks the reader to digest, is that the leviathan in general, has to be studied as a random anomaly that produces common conflicts. The question then, is to ask:

What can this book, and the Enlightenment, teach us about conflict. Better yet, what can be done to encourage the theory of less violence, at a younger age? And how can the processes of Pinker’s “decline” in violence, the mechanics of respect and empathy, be a creed of leviathan(government). And be a desire of the people.

On page 207 Pinker talks about the Nazi tactics of militant nationalism, and I find the passage to be a mirror image of America at this moment. Polarized and ready to kill for their beliefs. Pinker goes on to discuss The Great War(I), and its effect on the future. On pages 207-8, the text portrays a world scene where World War II would not have happened. But let’s examine the psychology of the statement “…nobody except Hitler wanted war…”, a summarized quote from historian F. H. Hinsley. Why would so many people follow a man like Hitler? Why would so many follow anyone who preached oppression?

Which leads to questions of the longevity of say women's suffrage or civil rights. Why has it taken so long and not be entirely done progressing to a simple nirvana of understanding? Hitler's theories of elite and race, permeated the American 1960's, and fifty years later, we see racism widespread via social media. Pinker so far has not addressed this(I am not there yet...), but in discussing Hitler, Pinker pointed to critical thinkers as responsible for the world we live in today. I agree.

Rather than discuss statistics like poverty and unemployment, let’s examine the social constructs of the powerful bully. The playground bully, can manipulate friendships, much like, say pro-slavery in 1860. The playground bully can dictate social atmosphere and manipulate advantageously. An older brother or a racist father, could teach a little brother or neighbor to be racist. Or intimidate him into racism. Same with the southerner's neighbor, as the peer pressure of the time could get one killed. This is in essence what society has done to Norbert Elias’(The Civilizing Process) fascinating writings on manners and self control. The commoner has gradually accepted leviathan pressure, and the elite has exploited leviathan by way of force. At a cost to manners.

Pinker stresses that the "Civilizing Process" is generally part of the equation, and that even in times of strife and unbalance(Gold Rush, California), statistics show a dramatic drop in homicide after an initial spike. And that may be the government's ability to govern out west as time went on, so to speak.

The balance of power is essentially what can create the egalitarian ends we seek. Leviathan is needed, of course, but social growth is just as important.

To assault the social pressures of leviathan, Pinker assesses that we do not have enough information(pg. 216), and that is correct, but we do know the power/law distributions are striking in the statistics of violence. And because we know that fact, we can assault the idea of power as a tool of violence, in the world and here in this room.

On page 19, Pinker talks about “loss aversion”, and the relevance to discussions of violence is obvious. Fallacy in America is front page news. It is more than arbitrary rules, the fallacies have become part of our breath. We wake up with it and go to bed with it. In love with a fallacy that gays are contagious, blacks are criminals, global warming is not real, etc…

Pinker mentions the social defense of toughness and “not backing down”, as leading to this sense of purpose or duty. This very fact is what we are here for, this essay, can provide methods and tactics for changing social perceptions about empathy and mutual, unbridled respect.

What Pinker suggests is that we deconstruct our perceptions, and focus on the causes of conflict. Pinker asks a phenomenal question, “What destroys more lives, the large number of small wars, or the small number of large wars?”(pg. 220)  And good points are made, the most discussion-worthy is the influence of power in war and in violence.

What I am getting at here is the propensity for power to be violent in the face of using that power to achieve certain independent goals. The lobby is a good example. In a look at the Grand Old Party’s(GOP) manipulation of public opinion, the show Frontline ran an in-depth look at global warming and the power of money persuasion. The October broadcast is archived at pbs.org, and is eye-opening. And it is another example of "created perceptions" and "bought science", typical of the leviathan in today's America. The show was titled, 'Climate Of Doubt.'

The question we are still asking, whether we can overcome this kind of bought government. And can we do it through education? And can it lead to social constructs being crushed? Which, in my opinion, is what the book is saying to me. Depend on educated and enlightened men to continue to carry that torch, so to speak. Education at the entry level, teaching enlightenment theory, is the key.

The violence that Pinker equates with power, I tend to not ignore here, but rather look at the bully, and the focus is more on the oppressive nature of power. My question, in that respect, is this: Where the current status of our world stands(?), and since violence has come down over long periods of time, but the current conditions we face do not present challenges in a micro sense, even though it would seem so, with all the attention in America about guns, why such violence in the absence of guns? The playground bully used to steal your lunch money, but now kids who have no idea how to take another's lunch money, simply steal guns and kill. The leviathan (bully) has not made it cool to be the bully. No, the bully instead, has made it necessary to use deadly force. And that idea alone has empowered bullies who otherwise would not be so. In that arena, as Pinker has suggested, power has the largest hand in the violence and subsequential death or deaths.

That power and violence, in my opinion, does the bulk of its damage not in deaths such as wars and school shootings. No, it does its most damage to society while socially accepted or misunderstood. Social media has exposed this, in the form of racism, ignorance, and medieval ideals. In the wake of such Twittering nonsense, I would suggest that Pinker take aim on the social non-boundaries of limited critical thought. My reasoning here is this: If society condemns, for example, the atrocities in Syria or police brutality in America, and yet does nothing and acts as if the burden of change falls upon someone else, then somebody like Tim McVeigh has little choice but to act on his convictions. Of course we know that McVeigh's actions are hideous, what I ask is that society understand and accept why he did what he did in Oklahoma City. Empathy, and acknowledging the leviathan "monopoly on death", might be the keys to further advancing The Enlightenment.

Pinker suggests that this fact has always existed, obviously, and that it always will. That a struggle between "interests" will always exist, as will temptations to exploit one's power. And that is also true. Critical thought has escaped far too many, and what education can do, is simply put: enlighten minds. The best way to encourage Pinker's progressive and ambitious predictions, is to educate youth early on. And to hammer those values into the ideology of America.

On page 245, Pinker suggests that certain writers, educators, philanthropists, and business leaders, all had a hand in balancing the attacks on humanity in the early 20^th century, which is exactly my point:

If those educated social leaders, can change the onslaught of Nazi-ish ideology, then so be it that our educated, both elite and common, can instill values in education, that create social change that continues the enlightenment process.

The book by Pinker, is only half read, and that is suspect. I will have to go back and re-read some stuff for clarity. But the idea is to acknowledge the reduction, over long periods of time, of deadly violence. The book so far, tends to focus on death as a result and consequence of violence, and the powerful reasons of violent death, but up to now, has not considered a broader, more open-sourced method to less violence. That may be in part to the focus on death.

My point is education. Social awareness can help, as in the civil rights movement, or gay rights, but until our education process condemns organizations such as the KKK, the future is at risk. Until our educators lead the masses to critical thought, men may have to toil in mediocrity for centuries…

The reasons for this are some that Pinker discusses. In describing the events leading up to World War I, Pinker misses a key point, and that is this: Critical thought happens when men are inspired to improve their surroundings, and most importantly, the surroundings of their fellow men. Rosa Parks knew this, and she felt it. It is easy for us all to talk about justice in men, it is another to practice it. But practice it we must.

The way to enlighten the masses further, and to continue the historical trend of less violence, is to change the way we think and to alter the social environments we teach.

In the end, only education, can change perceptions, and only the educated can change reality.

The Better Angels Of Our Nature by Steven Pinker