The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Paperback – Illustrated, September 25, 2012

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.

Jim Newman, Louise's spouse, here.There is a tendency for generations to envision aporia, endgame, or final justice. FL Watkins claimed that while we were the first generation physically able to sterilize the world through nuclear annihilation many societies could visualize the utter collapse of their world as they knew it. Bounded by geology or geography or all-inclusive culture or even dispersed by diaspora the end of the world was near and total in finality. Many of my friends bemoan often the horrible increase of violence today, They fear kidnapping, rape, and murder as if it were imminent and lock their kids inside or trade them odd car to car, door to door.Pinker demonstrates with some 200 charts and graphs and nearly 800 pages of text we are in a decrease of violence. Violence has been declining for the last several thousand years. Tribal warfare was 9 times greater than 20th century violence. The murder rate in medieval Europe was 30 times greater than today. It's working! I am relieved and optimistic. I was born with the polarity of nuclear discovery. Nuclear power could eliminate all hunger and energy needs, forever. Nuclear bombs could sterilize the earth, in an hour.For all of our modern fear of increasing kidnapping, rape, murder and war now is the best time to live. Late in the book in the subchapter "Reflections" Pinker notes "A loathing of modernity is one of the great constants of contemporary social criticism. Whether the nostalgia is for small-town intimacy, ecological sustainability, communitarian solidarity, family values, religious faith, primitive communism, or harmony with the rhythms of nature, everyone longs to turn back the clock. What has technology given us they say, but alienation, despoliation, social pathology, the loss of meaning, and a consumer culture that is destroying the planet to give us McMansions, SUVs, and Reality Television?"Yet, there is less violence. Even more. We have had a world food surplus. The workplace is so rich we have OSHA laws and unions are being negated; 40 hr work weeks and mandatory safety equipment for the smallest of particulate matter. We have a black president named Obama. Yes, the financial crisis is a zoo but no one has killed Obama or John Stewart. Is violence a sign of well being? If no one were killed but everyone were oppressed?The last sentimental card drawn after many debates has been the profusion of violence in modern times. The lack of well being rooted in the physicality of violence. Yet, violence by any measure has gone down considerably. Writers who have noted the decrease in violence express puzzlement as to why. Tempting to reach for a nebulous divinity, cosmic author, almost magic, or higher power as Robert Wright and Stephen Payne infer. Rather, Stephen asserts "forces of modernity--reason, science, humanism, individual rights" are the cause for this peripatetic but nevertheless positive trajectory towards peace.The beginning spends considerable time demonstrating the violence of the past. For most historians it doesn't take much critical examination to get that rape, murder, slavery, kidnapping, and physical abuse were plentiful as found in the archaeology and literature of the past whether biblical, greco-roman, medieval chivalry, or even hunter-gatherer societies.Hunter-gatherer societies in particular raise sentiment to a high fever. It is tempting to extrapolate the journals of the early Spaniards eulogizing specific HG cultures like the Coastal California, Florida, and Japanese areas where resources remained plentiful and various tribes, Chumash, Ohlone, and PreCalusa lived the good life. Though they traded off death by warfare with, for example, grizzly attacks, the biggest killer of California Coastal Native Americans. HG societies having found internal peace may still be plagued by other contingencies of their environment and ideology. Tempting too to extrapolate the low hours required by HG societies to sustain themselves, 2-4 hrs per day versus the 10-12 of modern man. Would you trade a life duration of 40 versus 70 if you only had to work 2-4 hrs per day?But these examples do not scale or universalize easily and their exceptionalism is notable as means of supporting potential benefits but also require geographic, geologic, and cultural boundaries not likely to ever be seen again. Alfred Krober notes in the over 1,000 tribes of California tribes cultural mores range from slavery to freedom, money to barter, peace to full warfare, stability to nomadism. This hodge podge of cultures serves as excellent idea sources but not as scalable models easily obtained by modern society. The Society of Primitive Technology and works by Norm Kidder and Pegg Mathewson as well as myself have shown the ease of living off the land but that is irrelevant to the contingencies of living together.While there are good examples of a less intensive life style with a surplus of free time for gaming, story-telling, and time consuming functional art work it is no guarantee against violence. For years I listened to the debate about Anasazi and cliff dwellers. Whether those painful cliff climbs were for defense or some perverse kind of architecture. It has been with great difficulty that even trained anthropologists could accept such ritualized violence. We deeply want to believe in an Eden, primitive purity, at some time or that humans are basically peaceful but easily corrupted. Consider the rejection of Lorenz's Territorial Imperative or Adler's will to power. Such a dream is a balm to the everyday violence we experience and see as our own and worse than all before.Hobbes exaggerated the solitary tooth and fang aspect of the precivilized world but as Pinker quotes Hobbes commenting on the logic of violence of one intelligent species to another "So that in the nature of man, we find three principles of quarrel. First competition; secondly diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; and the third for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second to defend them; the third. for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name."Hobbes' solution is that a tyrant of the most vicious sort is better than precivilized life. He completely misses the boat for democracy and commerce but nails the problem on its head. Reputation is the most critical aspect most undervalued as a human motivator. It is not resource depletion so much that encourages internal warfare but the unabated zeal for reputation and status as a means of ensuring competitive and defensive success over time. While R. Buckminster Fuller said boredom breeds creativity it is not true unless within a structure of accomplishment. Boredom leads to negative group dynamics. Time needs to be filled with activity or humans turn to each other for entertainment and it is often cruel, Machiavellian at best, to preserve or enhance reputation.Jim Riggs ran an aboriginal living skills program where individuals learn HG material culture and then survive on the land. It is a twisted unreal game as the skills involved take time years for expertise and the environment is bleak. Nevertheless there is considerable leisure time. I have met a number of these students, some Phd anthropologists, and the complaint I heard the most was not being hungry, not being tired, but the difficulty of group dynamics.In the end the greatest difficulty of living together is interpersonal relationship. Jared Diamond writes of an annual meeting between tribes and notes an exceptionally difficult time when a wronged member repeatedly, yearly, raises anger of a past wrong to his family. For the sake of reputation of a single member the only intertribal meeting for a year is hijacked. Other members, peacemakers, assuage the wrong feeling but with difficulty.Resource rich tribes of the Pacific Northwest arrived at a culture of totem and potlatch one upmanship where status was based on the impoverishment of families by giving away everything and more. No longer the hunter coming home and sharing the meat but a drive to wanton excess no different than the missionaries in Mexico/Central America plundering all resource and capital to destitution to render ever larger missions in an absurd competition. The former no longer having anything to do with egalitarianism and the latter having nothing to do with God's word.Pinker notes Laura Betzig who has shown that "complex societies tend to fall under the control of despots; leaders who are guaranteed to get their way in conflicts, who can kill with impunity, and who have large harems of women at their disposal." Pinker adds "People were less likely to become victims of homicide or casualties of war, but they were now under the thumbs of tyrants, clerics, and kleptomaniacs." Not until the enlightenment, democracy, and individual rights will there be a cultural ideology that lowers the desire for violence.Glossing over several dense chapters discussing the flow of violence Pinker resets his path in "Inner Demons". Sadism, Masochism, ostracizing, excommunication, all contribute to violence yet seem to be part of the nature of man. It is tempting to either say someone is evil or they are the victim of their passions. Neither is correct. A keen insight is revenge.In various experiments and games revenge does have an advantage but only at cost. "Revenge can work as a deterrent only if the avenger has a reputation for being willing to avenge and a willingness to carry it out even when it is costly." The other side of reputation is just punishment.Pinker quotes Daly and Wilson "The enormous volume of mystico-religious bafflegab about atonement and penance and divine justice and the like is the attribution to higher, detached authority of what is actually a mundane pragmatic matter; discouraging self-interested competitive acts by reducing their profitability to nil." The danger is the escalation of revenge. Innocence is exaggerated as is their adversary's malice.Too often we punish more and more severely way past the pragmatic end of prevention. The way out "The desire for revenge is most easily modulated when the perpetrator falls within our natural circle of empathy. We are apt to forgive our kin and close friends for trespasses that would be unforgivable in others. And when our circle of empathy expands...our circle of of forgivability expands with it"Men strive for dominance. People are overconfident of their success. In contests of dominance parties are no longer sorted by merit. People can overcome the revulsion of violence but seek it and privatize it as in S & M games and worse. "And people can avow a belief they don't hold purely because they think everyone else avows it; such beliefs can sweep through a closed society and bring it under the spell of collective delusion."The chapter "Better Angels" is a pleasure to read. It is the optimist's antidote. The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist is afraid that it is true. What is it that has allowed us to reject violence? What are the underlying forces of democracy, commerce, and individual rights that make them work?Empathy, sympathy, understanding, and compassion all encourage the expanding circle of self. The facile mantra of oneness is annoying but its merit is the desire for inclusion. Pinker rightly notes "What really has expanded is not so much a circle of empathy as a circle of rights--a commitment that other living things, no matter how distant or dissimilar, be safe from harm or exploitation."Peter Singer does not use empathy or emotion to expand the circle of self; Singer coined the phrase. Reason is sufficient. It is reason that expands the circle beyond self, family, nation, and species and not rubbing shoulders or the imagining of rubbing shoulders. It makes sense to include others.Commerce encourages empathy, or at least sex and drinking together. The trade routes of the world are littered with Romeo and Juliet stories. Business cuts through class and preference. Trade encourages integration. Physical contact encourages acceptance of varying views. People will engage in commerce as an excuse to socialize. Integration works but is not initially accepted except by a big carrot like commerce.Self control. "Economists have noted that when people are left to their own devices, they save far too little for their retirement, as if they expected to die in a few years. " Pinker spends considerable time supporting Elias that self-control and violence are related. Furthermore that practicing self-control and impulse-control lowers violence. This is mostly a futuristic chapter with ideas and plans best stated "It's also possible that people can learn strategies of self control, enjoy the feeling of mastery over their impulses, and transfer their newfound tricks of discipline from one part of their behavioral repertoire over another." Apparently we have room for improvement here.The historic difficulty is the compulsion to prioritize present needs over future needs. In the past delaying gratification removed motivation to action now for immediate survival. Now, delaying gratification benefits future states. It is as if the extent of reputation has extended far into the future. Grandparents, oral tradition, writing, and governance are all means of allowing the individual to extend the perception of life into the future. Overall, Pinker calls this the Civilizing Process. Who would have guessed that we would live beyond the reproductive phase?Moral process. Pinker quotes Fiske and Tetlock "Over the last three centuries throughout the world there has been a rapidly accelerating tendency of social systems as a whole to move from Communal Sharing to Authority Ranking to Equality Matching to Market Pricing" Further Pinker writes "The trend towards social liberalism, then is a trend away from communal and authoritarian values and towards values based on equality, fairness, autonomy, and legally enforced rights." Haidt has researched this and many chafe that conservatives are authority, purity, and loyalty based but the up side is that conservatives no longer invoke authority, tradition, or religion to justify racism, female domesticity, and gay bashing. Or at least not as much as they did.Reason takes a dive in society now but the interesting point is the proliferation of reasoning and arguments to accomplish the goal. Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes did not opine from the heart and emote their intuitions. Some of the most extravagant and difficult arguments come from postmodernism. Neuroscience has used tremendous amounts of reason to show how we are biased as do economists. Never has reason been abandoned but rather if anything fetishized. Only conservative authority adherence discussions abandon reason for abeyance.The best part of this chapter was a note on Hume. Many people think Hume refers to rationalizations. That people follow passions and support with reason. Pinker rightly notes "...he was not advising people to shoot from the hip, blow their stack, or fall head over heels for Mr Wrong. He was basically making the logical point that reason, by itself, is just a means of getting from one true proposition to the next and does not care about the value of the propositions."Nevertheless reason according to Pinker allows us to modify self control and moral sense. What is important here is that reasoning leads to accuracy. Bad arguments, bad inferences, and bad premises are more easily sorted out by reason.The growth of education and the expanse of reason leads to less violence. "It is not a big leap to conclude that an education-fueled rise in reasoning ability made at least some parts of the world safe for democracy. Democracy by definition is associated with less government violence, and we know that is statistically associated with an aversion to interstate war, deadly ethnic riots, and genocide, and with a reduction in the severity of civil wars."In "On Angel's Wings" Pinker makes a strong supposition for protective government or the Leviathan. "A state that uses a monopoly on force to protect its citizens from one another may be the most consistent violence-reducer that we have encountered in this book...A Leviathan--or his female counterpart--Justitia, the goddess of justice--is a disinterested party whose penalties are not inflated by the self serving biases of the participants, and who is not a deserving target of revenge." By imposing a cost that is greater than the benefit a governance can make peace more attractive than agression.Feminization. Acknowledging Yamaguchi the only survivor of both atomic bombs "The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers , those who are still breast feeding their babies." Furthermore "Several varieties of feminization, then--direct political empowerment, the deflation of manly honor, the promotion of marriage on women's terms, the rights of girls to be born, and women's control over their own reproduction--have been forces in the decline of violence." This is a long way from the biblical admonishment that a rapist must marry his victim.Pinkers' penultimate reflection concerns humanism. "Discovering earthly ways in which human beings can flourish, including stratagems to overcome the tragedy of the inherent appeal of aggression, should be purpose enough for anyone. It is a goal nobler than joining a celestial choir, melting into a cosmic spirit, or being reincarnated into a higher life-form, because the goal can be justified to any fellow thinker rather than being inculcated to arbitrary factions by charisma, tradition, or force."His ultimate plea is that while he understands the mother's cry for a lost child that it is the proportion of violence that does indeed count. It is not the number of people but the percent of people. Many reviewers criticize this aspect. That 1 death in 50 is better than 10 of 500 and so on. I present that we are more sensitive to death in numbers than ever before. The battle of Antietem took 23,000 lives in one day. 9/11 a tenth of that. Our wars now measure casualties in double digits rather than thousands or tens of thousands. Our sensibility towards individual death is now so great that we watch the news of murders with the same kind of anger we reserved for battles.This heightened sensitivity shows how far we have progressed. We too should close with Pinker "For all of the tribulations in our lives, for all of the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savor, and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilization and enlightenment that made it possible."