Life

TV review: You may not believe it but the world is becoming less violent

Billy Foley

Billy Foley

Billy has almost 30 years’ experience in journalism after leaving DCU with a BAJ. He has worked at the Irish Independent, Evening Herald and Sunday Independent in Dublin, the Cork-based Evening Echo and the New Zealand Herald. He joined the Irish News in 2000, working as a reporter and then Deputy News Editor. He has been News Editor since 2007

Professor Steven Pinker, author of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined'. (C) WGBH - Photographer: Jason Longo
Professor Steven Pinker, author of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined'. (C) WGBH - Photographer: Jason Longo Professor Steven Pinker, author of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined'. (C) WGBH - Photographer: Jason Longo

The Violence Paradox, BBC 4, Tuesday

The Second World War was the most devastating conflict in the history of humanity.

Sixty-six million people lost their lives in six years, nuclear bombs eviscerated cities and around six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

At the battle of Stalingrad alone (one of the turning points in the war), almost two million are estimated to have perished in unimaginable suffering as two megalomaniacs fought for supremacy without consideration of the cost to their people.

So how can Professor Steven Pinker say that homicidal violence has been on the decline when the events of the Second World War are in living memory?

Because Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard, has the hard data.

And remarkably it shows that humans, particularly males, the originators of almost all violence, are becoming more peaceable.

This is the Violence Paradox. Human conflict is all over the news in a world more connected than ever before but Pinker believes we may be living in the most peaceful period in human existence.

It’s a stunning proposal and made for two hours of brilliant television.

The examination (based on Pinker's book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined') begins in 9,700 BC in the plains of what is now Kenya and one of the world’s first known organised battles. Violence was endemic in the prehistoric era and continued for millennia.

But after the Middle Ages homicide began to fall, with rates of killing in Europe cut in half every 100 years.

This is despite some abhorrent practices being normalised during this time. Slavery, infanticide, burning at the stake, torture and witch hunts were at one time acceptable activities.

So, what happened? Pinker identifies a couple of reasons, which may well coincide with the Renaissance and later the Enlightenment.

Firstly, there was the establishment of governments and the rule of law. Even when these governments were despotic and ruled through violence, it created order.

The idea of equality appears to also have been a powerful one. The gradual acceptance that all human life is in some sense equally valued.

Pinker also cites the development of the printing press and the later reading of fiction, which it is believed propagated, through the characters of novels, the notion of empathy.

There may also be a biological explanation. A study of human skulls shows men’s faces have become shorter and wider over time.

This mirrors the finding of a study of foxes in the 1950s which were bred to be suitable as pets. The most naturally docile foxes were bred together and over time the less violent “domesticated” foxes also showed physical change. Their faces were shorter from chin to forehead and wider from ear to ear.

Humans may have become “self-domesticated” the theory holds.

And he also has an answer for the Second World War. While it killed the greatest number of people of any conflict, proportionally it was not the worst. WWII, which killed 66 million out of a world population of 2.3 billion (2.9 percent), ranks just eight in the all-time list.

The Mongol Conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries killed an estimated 40 million, around 10 per cent of the then population.

But there is also a warning. All it would take is one serious war event between nuclear powered armies to reverse this trend.

The major powers have not had a direct war since Korea in 1953, albeit there are concerns about North Korea, Iran, Kashmir and a possible conflict between the US and China over Taiwan.

Nonetheless, the remarkable trend if one of lessening violence and Pinker believes we can continue to decrease it.

“We’ve done something right, let’s figure out what it is and keep doing it,” he concludes.