The Better Angels of Our Nature

Xavier Savage
Nov 27, 2019
4 min read

Why should I read The Better Angels of Our Nature

The better angels of our nature breaks down whether or not we have grown more or less violent over the years.

If there indeed has been a mass reduction of violence, what has been the cause of such a reduction?

All humans have the capacity for violence

When I was first asked to check out Steven Pinker’s work I started with his oldest material and worked my way forward, while they do provide some insight, I wouldn’t say its any new or revolutionary information.

He does however in this book make some interesting points. Some things should go without saying like humans having the capacity to kill, because all animals must have that capacity.

But in order to evolve as a species we had to curve that inclination to develop civilization.

What we will discuss:

Six trends of declining violence
Five inner demons
Our Better angels

Six trends of declining violence

One The Pacification Process:

As we began maturing around 5,000 years ago, we’ve grown less violent as time passed. It would not make much since to raid, wage war and feud with neighboring villages or countries.

Trade was much more advantageous and less risky, than a violent event that would result in needless deaths.

The better our ancestors understood, horticulture, and agriculture, there became less and less of a need for violence to occur.

Two The Civilizing Process:

The more we began to recognize centralized authority figures in the middle ages and 20th century, the less and less need again for violence to occur was brought about.

With an even better understanding and development of infrastructure, we were able to thrive a lot better.

Three The Humanitarian Revolution

The system of pacifism, really began to take off in the 18th and 18th century. I consider pacifism a mask used by the powers to be to still do evil but appear to be doing good.

The first movements, to abolish slavery, cruelty to animals, sadistic punishments, superstitious killings, torture, and even dueling were all established during that time frame.

Now I call pacifism a mask, because this still occurs in a more underhanded form, in my opinion, but their appears to be less and less of it in modern society.

Four The Long Peace:

After world war two with much of the world colonized by the powers to be, who spent the last couple hundred years fighting over it.

Violence has undoubtedly decreased, in part to the worlds resources being in one super power hands or another.

And in my opinion the fact that everyone has nuclear weapons. In order to completely annihilate one super power, would mean killing your own country men as well, because of the sheer, nuclear fallout that would occur.

So in some ways our better angels really refer to us being locked in a stalemate.

Five The New Peace:

Pinker calls this trend “more tenuous,” but “since the end of the Cold War in 1989, organized conflicts of all kinds – civil wars, genocides, repression by autocratic governments, and terrorist attacks – have declined throughout the world.”

Six The Rights Revolutions:

The postwar period has seen, Pinker argues, “a growing revulsion against aggression on smaller scales, including violence against ethnic minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals. These spin-offs from the concept of human rights—civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, and animal rights—were asserted in a cascade of movements from the late 1950s to the present day.”

Five inner demons

Pinker rejects what he calls the “Hydraulic Theory of Violence”.

The idea “that humans harbor an inner drive toward aggression (a death instinct or thirst for blood), which builds up inside us and must periodically be discharged.

Nothing could be further from contemporary scientific understanding of the psychology of violence.” Instead, he argues, research suggests that “aggression is not a single motive, let alone a mounting urge. It is the output of several psychological systems that differ in their environmental triggers, their internal logic, their neurological basis, and their social distribution.” He examines five such systems:

Predatory or Practical Violence: violence “deployed as a practical means to an end”
Dominance: the “urge for authority, prestige, glory, and power.” Pinker argues that dominance motivations can occur within individuals and coalitions of “racial, ethnic, religious, or national groups”
Revenge: the “moralistic urge toward retribution, punishment, and justice”
Sadism: the “deliberate infliction of pain for no purpose but to enjoy a person’s suffering…
Ideology: a “shared belief system, usually involving a vision of utopia, that justifies unlimited violence in pursuit of unlimited good.”

Our better angels

Pinker examines four motives that “can orient [humans] away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism.” He identifies:

Empathy: which “prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own.”
Self-Control: which “allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses and to inhibit them accordingly.”
The Moral Sense: which “sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture.” These sometimes decrease violence but can also increase it “when the norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical.”
Reason: which “allows us to extract ourselves from our parochial vantage points.”

In this chapter Pinker also examines and partially rejects the idea that humans have evolved in the biological sense to become less violent.