- Joined
- Sep 6, 2008
- Messages
- 3,285
With some people spending more time indoors I'm curious what our little community is reading.
I am just finishing up Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature". I am a big fan of Pinker's work.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, Pinker argues that violence, including tribal warfare, homicide, cruel punishments, child abuse, animal cruelty, domestic violence, lynching, pogroms, and international and civil wars, has decreased over multiple scales of time and magnitude. Pinker considers it unlikely that human nature has changed. In his view, it is more likely that human nature comprises inclinations toward violence and those that counteract them, the "better angels of our nature". He outlines six 'major historical declines of violence' that all have their own socio/cultural/economic causes.
I am just finishing up Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature". I am a big fan of Pinker's work.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, published in 2011, Pinker argues that violence, including tribal warfare, homicide, cruel punishments, child abuse, animal cruelty, domestic violence, lynching, pogroms, and international and civil wars, has decreased over multiple scales of time and magnitude. Pinker considers it unlikely that human nature has changed. In his view, it is more likely that human nature comprises inclinations toward violence and those that counteract them, the "better angels of our nature". He outlines six 'major historical declines of violence' that all have their own socio/cultural/economic causes.