One of these days I'm going to sit down and make a list of the Top 100 nonfiction books that everyone absolutely must read if they really want to understand the world we live in. And, when I do, this book by the noted experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker will definitely make the Top Ten. In fact, I'm even tempted to say that this might very well be the most important book of the 21st century thus far.
Okay, I'll admit that I might be just a little bit biased in this assessment, because this book deals, in large part, with my two main areas of study as a political scientist: international relations, with a focus on war and international security, and comparative politics, with a focus on political development and modernization. In fact, this book bridges these two topics by showing how modernization has helped make the world more peaceful. (And if you don't believe that the world is a lot more peaceful today than it was at any time in the past, you really do need to read this book.) When I was in grad school (where I studied under John A. Vasquez and James Lee Ray, two of the world's leading experts on war and peace, both of whom are cited in Pinker's book) my main focus was on the scientific study of international militarized conflict, using quantitative methods such as statistical analysis and game theory in order to better understand why nations go to war and what it takes to maintain the peace. This particular subfield of international relations (which is sometimes referred to as "peace science") aims to identify historical patterns and trends in international conflict, to find variables that correlate well with war (or with peace), to assess the probability that an international crisis will escalate to the use of military force, and to evaluate foreign policy alternatives to see which are more likely to provoke war and which are more likely to promote peace. Although peace science is usually viewed as a subfield of international relations (which is itself a subfield of political science), it is really an interdisciplinary field that draws on a number of different academic disciplines, from political science, to sociology, to psychology, to econometrics, to mathematics, to systems engineering and beyond (in fact, the generally recognized "founder" of the field, Lewis Fry Richardson, was a physicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and psychologist). And peace scientists no longer limit themselves to studying international conflict alone, but are now applying their methods to the study of civil wars, ethnic conflict, terrorism, and other forms of politically-motivated or "group-on-group" violence. Over the past few decades, peace science has discovered a number of things about what leads to war and what keeps the peace. Unfortunately, the general public is largely unaware of these discoveries because they haven't been well publicized -- at least not until now. In this book, Steven Pinker tries to bring some of the key findings of peace science research to the public's attention.
Although a number of excellent scholarly works have been written by researchers in the field of peace science, most of these are aimed specifically at an academic audience that is accustomed to reading and interpreting quantitative research. These texts tend to be highly technical and rather dry; and most of them presume that the reader already has a strong background in the fundamentals of the subject. So they are unlikely to be of much interest to lay readers. And even the few books on the subject that are written so as to be reasonably accessible to non-specialists still tend to be written in the academic style of the scholar, rather than the more relaxed style of the popular writer; so they're unlikely to find their way to the top of any bestseller list. But this book is different. It was written specifically for a general audience rather than for professors and grad students; so it tries to keep the tone light and informal, avoiding the arcane language of statistics in favor of simple descriptions and visual illustrations. You don't need to know what a "chi-square" or a "Pearson's r" is in order to understand the research findings summarized in this book. All you need is university-level English literacy and the ability to follow a trend line on a graph. That's one reason why, if I had to recommend just one book for anyone interested in finding out the most important lessons we've learned from the scientific study of war and peace, this is the book I'd have to recommend -- not because it's the best, or the most comprehensive, or the most in-depth; but because it's the most accessible. (Of course, I intend this as no slight to any of my colleagues and former professors who have written their own books on the subject -- in particular my dissertation advisor, John A. Vasquez, whose seminal work, "The War Puzzle", which has recently been revised and updated as "The War Puzzle Revisited", is one of the best books ever written on the causes of war, and is worth reading even if you have no background in international relations. Yet, I still feel that Pinker's book is more accessible to lay readers.)
You might find it a bit strange that I would recommend a book by Steven Pinker as your introduction to peace science. After all, Pinker is not generally recognized as a "peace scientist" in the strictest sense of the term -- i.e. he has not devoted his career to studying the causes of war. Rather, he is a world-famous experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist who is best known for his work on how the mind works and, especially, how it processes language. His previous books (which are well worth reading, by the way) have all focused on these subjects. This new book is Pinker's first foray into the field of peace science. But he does an excellent job of summarizing what peace science has discovered about war and peace in language that is clear and easy to understand; and he manages to put the findings of peace science into a larger context of what is known about violence in general -- a topic that is perhaps best explored by a psychologist such as Pinker. Perhaps more importantly, Pinker is an excellent writer who is able to present scientific findings to a general audience in a way that makes sense, but without in any way "dumbing down" the material. Unlike many other academic writers, Pinker's writing style is engaging and entertaining -- his tone is conversational rather than professorial -- and yet he is careful to give proper citations for every substantive point he makes (he includes 41 pages of end notes, and 33 pages of bibliography). I should also note that Pinker is very thorough in his analysis. This is a very lengthy tome, running for nearly 700 pages (not counting the front matter, end notes, bibliography, etc.). It may take you a while to read; but it's worth every minute; and, if you're anything like me, you'll actually enjoy it.
Since my background is in peace science, my review has thus far focused on what Pinker has to say about war. But that's just one part of what this book is about. This is really a book about violence -- all types of violence, both large scale and small -- and war is just organized violence on an extremely large scale. War is arguably the most important form of violence; but it's not the only form. As it is usually understood, "violence" can include anything from full-scale war, to limited military action, to genocide, to ethnic conflict, to government oppression and human rights abuses, to religious persecution, to slavery, to terrorism, to lynching and other hate crimes, to murder, to capital punishment, to torture, to rape, to spousal and child abuse, to assault, to dueling, to bullying, to animal cruelty, to the spanking of naughty children. Scholars who study international conflict tend to focus on the unique geopolitical factors that lead nations to send soldiers into battle -- factors that are not relevant to our understanding of violence committed on smaller scales. But might it be possible that the root causes of large scale violence are to be found in the very same pathologies of human nature and human culture that give rise to honor killings, witch hunts, blood sports, hazing rituals, and even bar fights? Pinker believes that it is; and he marshals a considerable body of evidence to support that view.
He argues that all acts of violence, regardless of their scale, begin with decisions made by individuals; and, like all decisions, the decision to use violence is the product of cognitive processes that take place in our brains. And understanding how these cognitive processes work is Steven Pinker's particular area of expertise. Based on this understanding, Pinker is able to show how our brains make the decision of whether or not to use violence, and what factors influence this decision. There are a number of factors that work to push us towards using violence, and a number of other factors that work to restrain us from using violence. Some of these factors are internal (or internalized), such as our natural instincts for self-preservation, our moral values, and our capacity for empathy, self-control, and rational thought. Other factors are external, such as the norms of the society we live in, the constraints imposed on our behavior by various social institutions, and the specific demands of the situation we happen to find ourselves in at any given time. A violent act is the end result of a complex cognitive process -- most of which takes place below the level of our conscious awareness -- which takes all of these internal and external factors into account. That's why violence is not a constant. Sometimes people are violent; sometimes they're not. An individual might use violence under certain circumstances but not under others. Some people are more prone to violence than are others. Some places experience more violence than do others. And some historical periods have been more violent than have others. Violence is variable. It waxes and wanes in response to various influences. Understanding these influences is the key to understanding violence of all kinds, and how to bring it under control.
Violence will always be a part of the human experience; but it need not be its defining feature. We'll never completely eliminate violence from our world -- there will always be occasional muggings, rapes, murders, human rights violations, acts of terrorism, and even wars -- but we can reduce these things to the point where people need not live in constant fear for their safety. And we've already made a lot of progress in this direction. Using a wealth of statistical evidence, Pinker shows that we are living in what is perhaps the least violent period in the history of the human race. All forms of violence -- everything from war, to genocide, to religious persecution, to murder, to rape, to capital punishment, to torture, to animal cruelty, to the spanking of children -- are at historically low levels; and most of them have been in a state of nearly constant decline for centuries (with a few temporary setbacks in the 20th century). This may be hard for many people to believe, since our popular culture and the 24-hour news media are constantly bombarding us with images of violence, and since most people have a rather poor grasp of history; but if you take an objective look at the level of violence we see in the world today compared to the level of violence our ancestors lived with in centuries past, it becomes quite clear that we are now living in a golden age of relative peace and security that our great great great great great grandparents could never have imagined.
What is the cause of this decline in violence? This is the main question that Pinker tries to answer in this book. I won't attempt to summarize his findings here -- it's better if you read Pinker's argument, and the evidence he presents in support of it, for yourself. But I will say that it has a lot to do with my second field of study: political development and modernization. The world is becoming less violent as it modernizes and becomes more politically developed. This also helps to explain why some parts of the world are much more violent than others, even today, since political development has not been uniform around the globe. The least developed countries tend to be the most violent, and the most developed tend to be the least violent. You might suspect that this is simply a matter of economics -- i.e. that violence is a byproduct of poverty, so richer countries would tend to be less violent than poorer countries -- but it's actually a lot more complicated than that. (After all, the United States is a very rich country; but it's a lot more violent than Canada, Western Europe, and other parts of the First World.) So the real explanation has more to do with politics and culture than with economics. I'm not going to try to summarize in a few sentences what Pinker spent nearly 700 pages trying to explain -- you really do need to read the book for yourself -- but I will note that Pinker's theory is consistent with what we know about political development and modernization, and is certainly consistent with my own personal views on the subject. I think that Pinker's explanation for why violence has declined over time is essentially correct, and needs to be taken seriously.
If you want to understand the historical decline of violence you really must read Pinker's book. I would recommend it to almost anyone. However, I ought to point out that there are things in this book that some people may find disturbing or offensive. For one thing, in order to fully convince the reader that the world is much less violent today than at any time in the past, Pinker catalogues, in gruesome detail, forms of brutality that were quite commonplace at one time, but that are simply unimaginable today. He describes sadistic methods of torture and public execution that were once deemed perfectly just and proper, but that utterly shock the conscience of the modern reader. He discusses military tactics that were considered perfectly normal centuries ago, but that would be condemned as war crimes or acts of genocide today. He even talks about various acts of animal cruelty that our ancestors would have viewed as entirely unremarkable, such as the common pastime of torturing cats to death, which was a popular form of public entertainment in Medieval Europe. The book also includes very frank discussions of rape, domestic violence, and abuse, which may not be suitable for some readers, who may find some of this material disturbing, or perhaps even triggering. Some readers may even be offended by some of the things that Pinker has to say. He is not a fan of "political correctness", and refuses to censor himself or to sweep inconvenient truths under the rug simply to appease those who might not like what he has to say. He is willing to challenge the conventional wisdom if it is not supported by adequate evidence; and he even has the temerity to debunk some of the popular myths about violence that routinely get cited as "facts" in the media, in public discussions about violence, and even (sadly) in academic literature. Pinker's objective in this book is to set the facts straight, even if he has to ruffle a few feathers in the process. He has some harsh words for religion, which are bound to offend some believers. While he does not condemn religion wholesale in the manner of the so-called "New Atheists" like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, he does strongly criticize the ancient moral codes that many of the world's major religions are built on. Pinker draws our attention to the many barbaric passages in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) that, for example, command God's "chosen people" to slaughter every man, woman, and child in the cities they conquer; that prescribe death by stoning as the appropriate punishment for all manner of petty offenses and unconventional sexual proclivities; and that even permit men to own slaves and to obtain wives and concubines by abducting and raping foreign women. Pinker is careful to point out that most modern Jews and Christians ignore these troublesome passages, and utterly reject them as guides to moral behavior in the modern world. He insists that his purpose in highlighting the flaws in the biblical conception of morality is not to cast aspersions on modern-day believers, but simply to illustrate how far we've come in our understanding of right and wrong -- particularly when it comes to the use of violence and how we treat other human beings -- since the Hebrew Bible was written. But he does call our attention to the dangers of trying to base one's morality on these ancient texts, which reflect pre-modern values that most people today -- including most contemporary Christians and Jews -- would find not only abhorrent, but ungodly. So, some believers will likely take offense at Pinker's comments, especially if they're not accustomed to viewing their faith traditions and their scriptures with a critical eye. But you can't please everyone; so it's better just to speak the truth as you see it, and not worry about who might take offense. That's what Pinker does; and I have to admire him for it.
Anyway, this is one of the best books I've read in years. I highly recommend it.
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2012
- Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2011
Top reviews from other countries
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- Wallenius JaakkoReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2011
Has violence really declined dramatically?
- John R. BatesReviewed in Australia on December 22, 2024
Probably one of the most important books I've ever read
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Geraldo KorndorferReviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2025
O autor continua a defender essa opinião depois dos primeiros 25 anos do século 21?
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