The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
Author: - ISBN: B005SA64YS - Language: English - Format: PDF, EPUB
DESCRIPTION
We've all had the experience of reading about a bloody war or shocking crime and asking, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, the best-selling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. In fact, we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species' existence.
Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: the genocides in the Old Testament and crucifixions in the New; the gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm; the British monarchs who beheaded their relatives and the American founders who dueled with their rivals; the nonchalant treatment in popular culture of wife-beating, child abuse, and the extermination of native peoples. Now the decline in these brutal practices can be quantified.
With the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps, Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then suddenly were targeted for abolition. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the numbers they did a few decades ago. Rape, battering, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse, cruelty to animals - all substantially down.How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? Was it reading novels, cultivating table manners, fearing the police, or turning their energies to making money? Should the nuclear bomb get the Nobel Peace Prize for preventing World War III? Does rock and roll deserve the blame for the doubling o...
DETAILS
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 36 hours and 43 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: October 4, 2011
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005SA64YS
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287 Reviews The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined Kindle edition by Steven Pinker Download it once and read it on your Kindle device PC The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined Steven Pinker on Amazon com FREE shipping on qualifying offers A provocative history of violence The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined is a 2011 book by Steven Pinker Pinker debates why violence has declined with Economist Download as Download The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker narrated by Arthur Morey digital audio book Get the Audible Audio Edition of Your files are available instantly with our unique real time technology The smallest step in file sharing Drop to Download eBook The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined ISBN 1455839582 by Steven Pinker for freeRecent files download the better angels of our nature why violence has declined file name the better angels of our nature why violence has declined rarFile Size The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined rar 920 10 Kb The Better Angels of The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined Audiobook rapidshare megaupload hotfile The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined The Better Angels of Our Nature Tags Steven Pinker Why Violence Has Declined get eSkeptic Download the free PDF
This is a huge book, but as Pinker says, it is a huge subject. He organizes himself by lists. First, there are six significant trends which have led to a decrease in violence.
1. Our evolution from hunter gatherers into settled civilizations, which he calls the Pacification Process.
2. The consolidation of small kingdoms and duchies into large kingdoms with centralized authority and commerce, which he calls the Civilizing Process.
3. The emergence of Enlightenment philosophy, and it's respect for the individual through what he calls the Humanitarian Revolution.
4. Since World War II, violence has been suppressed, first by the overwhelming force of the two parties in the Cold War, and more recently by the American hegemony. Pinker calls this the Long Peace.
5. The general trend, even apart from the Cold War, of wars to be more infrequent, and less violent, however autocratic and anti-democratic the governments may be. Call this the New Peace.
6. Lastly, the growth of peace and domestic societies, and with it the diminishing level of violence through small things like schoolyard fights, bullying, and picking on gays and minorities. He titles this the Rights Revolution.
Pinker then goes on to examine the traditional explanations of violence, the traditional explanations of human nature which account for violence. There is practical violence, which you might call necessary violence. Then there are dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideologically driven violence. Opposing these are what he calls the better angels of human nature, empathy, self-control, our moral sense, and reason. Many of these characteristics are shared with our primate brethren, the chimpanzees on down, but some of them are uniquely human.
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