Steven Pinker on Violence

pretty much happy and welcome to all of
you
so as Kathy says this is going to be
more of a conversation I guess than an
interview and we’ll be talking around
the themes of Steven’s new book on
violence hopefully in a reasonably
nonviolent way are so or they will see
how the discussion pans out and I will
do that in the kind of format that
allows Stephen to set out his stall at
the beginning for you know five ten
minutes or so so we can position the
discussion and then based on that we’ll
have a fairly free-flowing dialogue I
hope that will go organically where it
needs to go and although there are
certain kind of key themes we’ll want to
really want to touch on in the middle of
that so that’s the that’s they’re going
to process for this evening I guess in
terms of content you know is he mad I
mean really he seems to be arguing that
the world is kind of getting better and
there’s less violence around us in
general well you know you look at any
newspaper go on any website tune into
the news anywhere and it looks like
civilizations going to hell in a
handcart and it seems completely
preposterous to suggest that the
tendency the trajectory of world history
is towards peace and love and he must
have been taking the happy pills
sometime so to defense this preposterous
thesis I’m gonna ask Stephen just to say
a few words and then we’ll get into
some of them are security about that so
Steven over to you okay
if you get your impression about how
much violence there is in the world from
the news you’re going to be misinformed
because the news covers things that
happen doesn’t cover things that don’t
happen as long as rates of violence
haven’t declined to zero and certainly
no one would claim that they have
there’s always enough of it to fill the
evening news and it’s the job of the
news to find violence that takes place
anywhere on earth and send the camera
crew there you never see a guy with a
microphone on camera standing in front
of a elderly man dying of Alzheimer’s
disease and in a hospital bed
you never see a reporter in some city
saying well it’s the 37th year now that
there has not been a war in this city so
so forget the impression from from the
news that just tells you that the rate
of war has not gone down to zero the
only way you can assess how much war and
peace there is is to do a count that is
count the number of wars by some
definition count the number of bodies
and when you do that you see that the
curve is bumpy but unmistakeably
downward we’re living in an era that has
fewer Wars most dramatically of all
there are there have been zero wars
between Western European countries
between great powers United States
Soviet Union China France England
there have been no wars between wealthy
developed countries since 1945 all of
which might I may have to even remind
some of you that this is a notable
statement because we tend to think that
wars are conflicts that took place in
those poor backward remote parts of the
world and no one would ever expect say
you know France and Germany to fight a
war well the fact that that sounds banal
is itself on a dramatic historical
change because prior to 1945
of course big rich powerful and European
countries were constantly at each
other’s throats so they’re the statistic
of zero is you
need fancy counts you just look at the
timeline of wars and you see after 1945
these categories they fall off a cliff
less obvious is that if you look
worldwide including Africa Asia Latin
America the number of wars and the
number of deaths in war have been going
down this is a a phenomenon that is well
known to international relations
scholars a friend of mine Joshua
Goldstein wrote a book called winning
the war on war that he was inspired to
write because he is the author of the
principal textbook or in international
relations he’s required to update the
textbook every year partly to stay one
step ahead of this used book market but
also because the world does change and
in the book he had an appendix of all
the ongoing wars and he noticed that
with every edition of the book the list
got shorter and shorter and then he
realized that something very important
is going on but it’s not just war it’s
also personal violence if one looks at
statistics on homicide which in a
country like England go back 800 years
you see that the curve plummets so that
a contemporary Englishman has about
135th the chance of being murdered as
his medieval ancestor you can go even
further back and even try to estimate
say from the archaeological record how
much violence there was before the dawn
of writing in history
non-state societies before the rise of
the state and large civilizations show
signs of violent trauma and their fuckin
Lehigh just a one anecdote that captures
these statistics you all remember it see
the Iceman the fantastically preserved
5,000 year old mummy
dead out of the Tyrol Tyrolean amp Alps
well it turns out after in putting him
in under an x-ray and examining every
part of him that he had an arrowhead and
embed it embedded in his shoulder and
he’s carrying a dagger the DNA analysis
showed had the blood of three
men on it well this is you don’t to
generalize from one example but it’s not
just an amazing fluke that the one guy
that just happened to have been
preserved in the ice also happens to
have signs of violence
the statistics are high enough that that
is by no means a as attack Euler fluke
and finally just think about some of the
practices that used to be
unexceptionable and which then vanished
like gory public executions samuel peeps
wrote of seeing a major-general drawn
and quartered
that is kind of open his organs shown to
him and burned and then strangled and
then he said the the general looked as
cheerful as a man could in that
condition he was a laughing matter and
then he continues and then off to the
pub for oysters with a friend so for all
our barbarism we have gotten rid of gory
public torture executions we’ve gotten
rid of other institutions such as human
sacrifice once practiced in every major
civilization chattel slavery with slave
markets and legally enforceable slave
contracts debtors prisons in most
Western countries capital punishment
across the board the United States being
an exception to that trend the beating
of children in schools by by nuns and
teachers and the popularity of smacking
and other forms of corporal punishment
in the home and have gone down so in
category after category
whenever violence can be quantified it
shows a downward trajectory so that is
the empirical phenomenon that is
centerpiece of the book and then as a
psychologist I set myself the task of
trying to explain first of all why
violence is so ready to burst out it at
any time and why what aspects of human
nature have we been able to mobilize to
inhibit it more and more effectively
over the centuries okay and just be
clear thank you for that student very
helpful kind of kind of positioning
statement helps to orient us a bit but
it does sound like you are excluding
non-physical violence and of course you
know I think about I mean my wife
doesn’t beat me anymore thank God that
instead she she will you know violently
violently assail me with her words for
example and subject me to terrible
rhetorical tortures now why isn’t she
being violent when I can’t hire the
accuser apart well you can you can use
the word violence for any practicing to
deplore your economic violence and
verbal violence and I mean this is a
question that I get quite often and I
consider it a sign of progress that
people are they’re almost ready to
concede ok physical violence is down but
surely there’s some kind of violence
that’s still out there I personally
think it is not helpful to lump together
murder rape kidnapping assault war
genocide torture and so on with bitchy
economic inequality people getting on
each other’s nerves and yeah and I don’t
deny that that we still get on each
other’s nerves we still insult each
other but it’s qualitatively different
and genuine progress compared to getting
a bullet to the head a knife between the
ribs being crucified and so on okay
as if crucifixion is just one of many
forms of business okay with that thanks
for that stuff that helps to kind of
clarify the territory which all yes so
I’m talking about physical violence no
nothing metaphorical okay fine so that’s
the best the territory was if this
discussion gap so there’s all sorts of
things you said in those opening remarks
and just one of the many things you’ve
touched on because there’s such a rich
subject was the notion of capital indeed
corporal punishment because and I guess
why is interested in this is that I am a
have a kind of philosophical background
I did a lot of work on Jacques Derrida
and he talks about the violence of the
law with an essay by him for the force
of law and he talks about in a sense
what win for shorthand we could call
good violence so this is when a state
legitimizes itself to exercise violence
in its own interest so capital
punishment would be an example about you
mentioned in the United States actually
the trend perhaps isn’t going in the
same direction as other countries but
there nevertheless it’s an interesting
idea that although we make the
assumption that violence is a bad thing
there are practices of violence which we
not only tolerate but even endorse so if
not necessarily capital punishment
punishment in general so that the entire
legal system you could say is based on a
violence done to the individual
sometimes physically in compensation for
the violence real or metaphorical that
they have done to others so I mean if
you can help us with this a bit in the
notion of you know what good violence
might be as opposed to bad violence no
more if that’s a spurious distinction
yeah yeah I don’t think I would I would
say that there’s any good violence
although there can be necessary violence
which simply means deterring still
greater amounts of violence so I think
it is it’s not just dairy that goes back
to Max Weber defined the government as
the institution that has a monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence but of
course Thomas Hobbes gave a prescription
to the eliminate the violence of Anarchy
mainly you vest a Leviathan a government
with legitimate use of violence in the
Leviathan as depicted on the cover of
this book had a sword and indeed you
know we have the police and they will if
you do certain things they will
violently remove you and put you in jail
and for hopes violence is one of the
things which produces order yes well it
to the extent that it is needed to
reduce greater amounts of violence
so yeah it’s if the police put you in
handcuffs and drag you off to jail
that’s a form of violence but we
probably all accept that it is better
than having a lot of rapists and
murderers and kidnappers on the streets
still better of course is the case where
the norms are against violence perhaps
initially enforced by the muscle of the
state become internalized well enough
that you that the state needs less and
less violence or needs only the threat
of violence rarely carried out and
people just behave themselves beforehand
in anticipation of the violence they
don’t want to take place so that would
be successful deterrence likewise the
best the nations in dealing with one
another have militaries for a similar
reason the threat of violence deters
invasion but ideally if everyone
internalizes the norm that violence is
futile then you need smaller and smaller
armies because your neighbors are less
and less of a threat and that can spiral
downward because your neighbors are
less worried if your stance is less
bellicose you can have a situation say
like the Canada in the United States or
the member nations of the European Union
not coincidentally honored with the
Nobel Prize just three days ago where
the armies have wound down the forts
facing each other on opposite sides of
the border have been dismantled it’s not
that the armies have been completely
eliminated but they’re a Fattal of their
former selves because of this positive
downward spiral now I like this notion
of smaller violence to forestall greater
violence that’s very helpful on the
hobbs issue though I mean what Hobbes
says is that there there is a kind of
legitimate state violence that does
perhaps prevent the larger violence that
could happen but his assumption
underneath that is because to use his
famous phrase the life of natural man is
nasty brutish and short and he expounds
upon the idea that in fact our instincts
are to be pretty violent with one
another so that’s the kind of unruly
energy that we have in us you know if
you if you look at human beings in the
raw state they are their natural
propensity is not towards peace its
towards war you know that’s that’s where
we begin we begin polemically we begin
in the state of antagonism or aggression
which then needs to be tamed
so the civilizing process you talk about
this in your book is necessary because
the default is the opposite in we are
unpleasant creatures so you need to be
sorted out so wonder if you know it’s
easy to buy perhaps the the expedient
idea that you have a smaller amount of
violence in order to preempt preclude
forced or a larger amount of violence
maybe harder to get rid of the
presupposition or at least the Hobbesian
presupposition in that which is well in
all cases that’s because given half the
chance we would stab each other yes I
think your Hobbs you knew nothing about
what life was like in a state of nature
and we had a rack made reference to
uncivilized tribes in
although I think he and he and he was
dead wrong in his assumption that they
not only work was life nasty brutish and
short but is also solitary he imagined
that every man was at war against every
man that’s that’s clearly wrong but he
did have because people for him family’s
plans tribes and and they don’t kill
each other as much as they kill people
in the other tribe he was right though
that in a state of anarchy
you do get rates of violence that we
don’t accept today such as 15% of on
average people being killed in warfare
about 1/2 of 1% of the population in the
year which is even higher than the death
rate at the height of World War two and
that’s not atypical for a hunter
horticulturalist 200 rather society so
they but interestingly Hobbes did not
attribute this to some primordial thirst
for blood or or violent impulse he had a
more tragic notion that it is almost
inevitable if you had agents that were
intelligent foresight full and perhaps
just a bit self-interested because the
idea is even if you didn’t have an
aggressive bone in your body the people
on the other side of the river you’re
thinking well they have every reason to
covet you know my land my livestock my
women maybe they’re plotting a raid at
this very moment now I really don’t want
to get killed in my sleep what are my
options well maybe I better do it to him
before he does it to me now that’s right
the preemptive strike and the other guy
is cranking through the same deduction
and he’s saying well I don’t really want
to attack the other guy but he has every
reason to attack me in fact even if he
doesn’t want to attack me
he could be worrying that I’m gonna
attack him preemptively out of fear that
he’ll attack me
and so the tragedy is you could have two
agents two two intelligent beings that
that really don’t have a very strong
aggressive urge
have enough self-interest that they
could worry that the other guy being
like them might be tempted to strike and
that’s good to get a spiral going and
then you could have credible deterrence
if I’m strong enough that I could
withstand a first strike and then
retaliate that’s a way to protect myself
through deterrence rather than
preemption but then you’ve got the
problem that to prove the credibility of
your retaliatory capability you’ve got
to respond violently to any insult or
trespass to prove that it’s not a bluff
then you’re really going to carry
through with the vengeance after the
fact and so you get these warrior honor
cultures the lashing out in violence to
any trivial insult so that’s the way
Hobbes conceived of this whole tragic
cycle of violence which he thought could
be circumvented by having a
disinterested Authority you know
Hobbes’s problem was and the reason that
I’m somewhat of a Hobbesian I don’t buy
the whole bill of goods is that he
didn’t really give enough thought to the
violence perpetrated by the Leviathan
because in practice a government is not
a disinterested wise king but more human
beings with all affair what is
ideological else yes and they have the
the since the leaders are themselves
going to be human beings with their own
greed in their own biases you got the
problem of protecting the people against
the Leviathan the way I think of kind of
the human dilemma is were caught between
the extremes of the violence of anarchy
that Hobbes worried about and the
violence of tyranny which he didn’t
worry enough about and you can think of
democracy as a way of getting the
benefits of each probably if you look
over the course of history the even
though the violence of government can be
enormously destructive as we saw in the
20th century probably on average the
violence of Anarchy is worse in terms of
your chances of being killed which is
why so often countries to our
bewilderment accept authoritarian
governments that
that we would not why a lot of people in
China are actually perfectly happy with
their government or Russia because
they’d rather have a repressive
government and anarchy that they used to
live to so democracy is our way of
muddling through and trying to get a
government that hat that exercises the
smallest amount of violence necessary to
prevent much greater violence you know I
mean we’re touching and there are two
sides to this discussion that we’re
talking about the political side of it
but the other side of it is the kind of
psychological side I suppose and I
couldn’t help thinking of Freud as you
were talking as well because there’s a
real crab to you know the people on the
other side of the river bank are they
thinking what I’m thinking and so on
suggests that the the kind of field of
violence is is an external one it’s a
social one whereas if you think of Freud
in a certain sense he would argue indeed
explicitly says in his later work that
the the instinct the violence isn’t just
something that comes around in response
to others it’s not just a it’s not a
dialectical or dialogical social
function it’s much deeper than that its
structures actually structures the
psyche in some way so either early on in
Freud’s career he just talked about
sadism for example and indeed
sadomasochism and for him
sadism and you define sadism I think is
at the enjoyment of cruelty or words
like that before he talks about it in
terms of the aggression instincts early
on in his his life and later on he goes
on to say well it’s actually so deep in
us that it’s it exists at a kind of
species level so when he talks about war
and he was writing in the wake of the
first world war and indeed the run-up to
the Second World War for him the kind of
violence that was manifested in such
kind of global catastrophes was not due
to these kind of almost ironically
civilized negotiations that were
described and where I’m thinking is he
going to get me first or am i you know
and so on it’s to do with a much more
mysterious grant
it much less empirical granted but much
more powerful force which says that
actually there is something in the human
being in the species which is which has
a death wish it is driven to destroy not
only other people but itself and this
was his most scandalous kind of remark
really that there is that the death
Drive Android is this much actually a
suicidal drive as it is an instinct to
do away with others but in either case
it’s something much bigger than any of
us could contain and much bigger that
could be accounted for in sociological
terms yeah and I in in better angels I
do give Freud credit for the really the
core of his model of the psyche namely
the the idea of the component of the
mind that he called the ego which uses
some kind of mental energy he had no
idea what that was to suppress the in we
are evolved and frequently antisocial
impulses and urges I’ve long been
skeptical of that theory until I did
research for the book and I found that
there’s a whole branch of psychology
called ego depletion or ego control that
actually performs pretty well too
Freud’s idea that we have to repress our
antisocial impulses with an effortful
process this is an idea that Norbert
Elias helped himself to in his book the
civilizing process which argued that
that’s what happened in the transition
from the violent Middle Ages to the less
violent present is that the ego was
strengthened or another way of putting
it is people exercise more self-control
delay of gratification shallower
discounting of the future as the
language an economist would use I think
that and indeed laboratory experiments
laboratory experiments have shown that
it really does Mette might be an energy
consuming process if yet people are
sugar depleted they have more trouble
focusing inhibiting their impulses
delaying gratification they the death
wish that the theory of Thanatos that he
derived after World War one I find much
more dubious for as you note it is
mystical it’s a I’m not sure that it
makes sense to talk about a species wide
urge I don’t also don’t think I don’t
think that aggression is is the kind of
hydraulic herbs or impulse that has to
be discharged every once in a while I
think in the way that the longer we go
without drink the thirst year we get the
longer we go without sleep the more
drowsy we get I don’t think it’s true
that the longer we go without killing
someone the more we want to kill someone
I think it’s not an analogy even though
I do think Floyd was right that we do
have certain impulses like the desire
for revenge
the desire for dominance but these are
triggered by situations and so a better
biological analogy might be to something
like say shivering now it’s clear
burning is clearly in a reflex but if
you’re not cold
you don’t shiver you don’t have a
mounting urge to shiver because you
haven’t shivered for a few hours
and you can go the rest of your life
without ever shivering again if you just
never happened to be pulled yes and so
violence might be like that
and I think this is testable namely if
he’s right that World War one in
particular what can be explained by this
self-destructive species destructive
urge it’s always going to be with us and
the reason that you know England and
France versus Germany went to war as
they were playing out this this impulse
on the other hand we have seen and again
I’ll allude to the Nobel Peace Prize
being given to the European Union
suddenly you know England and Germany
just lost this desire to destroy the
species by periodically going to war
against each other hasn’t happened since
1945 certain footballs do except in
football yes but the other species is
doing just fine and it seems you know
you don’t want to say that it’s
impossible anything’s possible but I
think in the realm of live options
England and Germany going to
war is just one of the things that we
don’t just don’t have to worry about
this suggests that the Hobbesian
analysis that it is the mutual distrust
fear tempting each side to pre-emptive
attack which is one of the ways in which
World War one has been explained there’s
probably a better explanation than that
the species has some courage to
self-destruct which and mothers mention
one other thing which on Darwinian
grounds seems quite unlikely so okay so
this is one of the four playas perhaps
this idea of where the violence is
externally generated and therefore if
you can control the conditions as it
were you reduce the urge for violent or
whether indeed that urge is internal in
some way and beyond the reach of control
through social conditioning and so on
there’s okay so we buy that say we we
come down on your side of the the
argument we say fly fine but my god look
at the world population growth you know
it’s it’s fine at the moment in
reasonably affluent societies perhaps
less affluent societies tend to be
generally a bit more violent generally
speaking what about by the time their
world population has tripled and there
are so many of us you know that all
those pacifying instincts that have come
about through the civilizing process
become just practically impossible
because there are too many other people
competing for certain fewer resources
and I just had to kiss out killing other
people to get my get my own way yeah so
I’m really what I’m getting this is
really a question of what the what the
endgame is that you’re getting out in
your your book and in your thinking
because do we do end up in heaven on
your thesis you know because everything
seems to be getting an awfully lot
better
or is there a plateau we can anticipate
is a reversal we might fear or we can
plan for and so it’s I want to ask you
first of all about this notion of the
endpoint because the endpoint does seem
implicit in the some of the assumptions
I guess and then I want to talk
specifically about the notion of
progress but this notion of an endpoint
are we just can we just look forward to
nirvana ya know
no I think it’s I don’t think there’s
anything mystical about the historical
decline of violence and and I for some
categories of violence it certainly
won’t go to zero they’re low and I
believe in human nature I believe in
human nature is part of our comes from
our biological endowment gets
perpetuated to our children and our
children’s children and there’s always
gonna be some young hothead who loses
his temper in a bar and a fight over a
pool table and you know pulls out a
knife there’s always gonna be some way
to puts arsenic in her husband’s tea I
don’t think that can be brought to zero
I think though that I would not predict
that terrorism is gonna go to zero
because all it takes us in a world of
seven billion people who’s to say there
isn’t gonna be some guys somewhere who
doesn’t want to get on the evening news
by making a bomb out of drugstore
ingredients so there will always be a
kind of residual I think there always be
yes I think there always be a residual I
think though that certain rates can be
brought down lower to what they are now
what really what I’m talking about in
most of these categories is not progress
towards happen nirvana utopia and so on
but just chipping away at the numbers so
and which I consider progress if the
murder rate is half of what it used to
be that’s great and let’s see if we can
make it half of that and perhaps even
half of that and it might asymptote at
some level above zero that might be the
price we pay for not living in a
totalitarian society with Big Brother
watching you around the clock you
tolerate you know some degree of
violence there are though some
categories of violence that could be
brought to zero because it’s it’s a
stranger things have happened
so take practice cultural practices like
human sacrifice where again every
civilized ancient civilization practiced
at some buy in in staggering quantities
hundreds of thousands even millions of
victims that were slaughtered to appease
an angry god maybe if we slake his
thirst for blood with a sacrificial
victim then he won’t do it to us better
him than me then
civilization after civilization thought
the better of human sacrifice maybe they
realized that the bloodthirsty God
hypothesis was factually incorrect
maybe life got too valuable they’ve got
more squeamish about cutting the beating
heart out of a living person whatever
reason they abolished it and it’s state
abolished there are no societies now
that practice human sacrifice since
there’s no examples of kind of reversals
and once you reach a certain level of
pacification the trend never goes
backwards in some categories right ha so
another example is slavery as a legal
institution now there is there continues
to be human trafficking in various
shadow forms that shade into slavery but
slavery as an institution that is
practiced in the open that affects a
large percentage of the population that
can be enforced by the government that
got abolished by the last country that
had permitted it in 1980 Mauritania it
was a and before that 1960 to Saudi
Arabia and Yemen eliminated it but it
was a process that where the bulk of the
abolitions happened in the 19th century
and it’s more or less state abolished
France had to abolish it twice because
the Napoleon reinstituted it but by and
large once you abolish e that stays
abolished and there are other things
atmospheric nuclear testing that’s
probably not going to come back because
even the rogue states detonate their
bombs underground commercial whaling
there are certain practices where if
they are an institution and if there’s
some finite number of players then it’s
not utopian to just zero them out it’s
not inconceivable that war between
countries could fall into that category
and there are a number of political
scientists who claimed that interstate
war is obsolescent there are certainly
fewer and fewer of them it’s become
pretty close to unthinkable in advanced
countries dealing with each other
and it is not crazy to think that with
only 200 countries there could be an
evolving norm that
we just don’t do that anymore now there
could still be civil wars but
interesting war could at least
conceivably could go to zero homicide no
terrorism no I don’t think child abuse
and domestic violence will go to zero
but it would be progress if it was less
than what it is now
so as you’re talking I’m reminds me a
little bit of and I’m putting on my
skeptics hat for a moment Francis
Fukuyama’s work on kind of the ends of
history and he was as you know pretty
harshly criticized because Fujiyama and
I’m collapsing the argument very quickly
here but he briefly said look the
tendency of all political ideologies is
to become liberal democracies and those
countries which aren’t are just sort of
lagging behind and eventually they will
and the whole world will be a liberal
democracy and it will all be fine and it
subsequently 9/11 happens and other
things it’s much more difficult for him
to make those claims so there’s a again
with my skeptical hat on I’m sort of
thinking well okay maybe it’s not
utopian because you grant that they will
always be random instance of violence
but the general tendency is downwards
and the implication being will live
better lives fine but underneath that
there’s again in philosophical terms if
you like there’s a kind of big alien
prejudice Hegel is the philosopher most
associated I suppose with the notion
that history does move on a comic line
of progress and you mentioned talked
about progress that there is a kind of
left to right or have you perceive it
past a future along which not just time
travels but history itself so history
itself takes a forward momentum and
generally in the Galleon terms a forward
momentum from something worse to
something better
you know from less good to a more good
and there’s plenty of critiques of this
notion for a start that that helps
because it helps us to understand
history but it’s not the case you know
so a very severe critic might say well
you’ve marshaled all these facts but
you’ve marshal them because you have a
prejudiced about the notion of history
moving in a progressive way for Maine to
be other versions of that say no now
history doesn’t move along these sort of
ineluctable grid lines but it’s
interrupted or it moves in circles or it
repeats so the famous phrase no history
repeats itself as tragedy or fast and so
on but the underlying preconception
there is that there is a sort of and
I’ll use the word again almost mystical
notion that history somehow magically
ineluctably unfurls and yes there may be
fact we can Corral in order to support
that but there’s still a prejudice we’re
dealing with now that’s a big alien view
as it happened Marx took that view over
as well he said in his own terms that
communism will eventually happen it’s
inevitable that communism will happen
you know it’s historically inevitable
and there are people on left and right
debating that at the moment as as you
know but again it’s something I think we
need to just go around a little bit one
of the deepest assumptions here which is
about that there is progress as opposed
to a completely different concept of
time in history of it stops and stars
that repeats that it goes in circles and
so on yeah
yes nothing could be further from the
way I see these developments so the
there are two questions one of them is
what has happened from from past periods
to now and what’s gonna happen in the
future so what has happened up till now
that’s not a matter of prejudice that’s
a matter of plugging the data on a graph
and just looking whether the line goes
like that at line goes like that well
the line goes like that you know with
cycles and I I make the case that
prejudice ideology theory aside look at
the data that just the way it’s gone now
now there’s a question of how do we
interpret it why is it gone down and
will it continue there of course once
you’re predicting an uncertain future
that’s where Theory inevitably
comes in because you can interpret the
same data in multiple ways but again I
think there are more and less reasonable
ways of interpreting the data I think
the idea that there are cycles and that
I just happened to cut catch humanity at
the trough of a sinusoidal data there
just no history is not cyclical the wars
don’t have cycles there’s a lot of
randomness which can fool you into
thinking that there are cycles but but
it’s not as if we’re due for another
span of war because you know if it’s
that that time in the grand cycle that
the cycles don’t exist but the
randomness means that in principle we
could have a third world war we could
and we could have a third world war
right yeah I think the randomness can
coexist with changing probability and
the way I would put it is it is still
possible but it’s less likely than it
used to be now why would be why have we
seen decline is there some
directionality to history is it will
then inevitably continue I don’t think
so I think it’s just that non-violence
really is a better state of affairs that
violence violence is wasteful you might
think well yeah but if you’re the
perpetrator isn’t violence good for you
you get what you want well yeah but
you’re not going to be the perpetrator
forever
winners become losers if you have to
convince other people how they ought to
live their life you can’t say well we’ll
do it in a way that benefits me and not
you so in the long run everyone’s better
off if there’s less violence and so we
figure out ways of knocking violence
down and we accumulate our knowledge we
apply we learn lessons of history
imperfectly not always to the extent we
do we we make things better so I would
analogize it is would you expect and
this is a different way of coming to a
conclusion that sounds a little bit like
Fukuyama
but I think invokes a different
mechanism so would you expect that more
and more of the world will have access
to antibiotics or cell phones yes more
and more the
is gonna have cellphones not because
there’s any mystical process that says
that the end of history is that everyone
has a cellphone but rather cellphones
are good things to have if you have
people who like to communicate cell
phones a really good way of doing it if
you have people who get sick antibiotics
or a good thing to have there go more
and more people are going to want them
if we can make more antibiotics then
everyone will have access to them so
likewise peace is a good thing it’s
really better than than war over the
long run and if we apply our ingenuity
to figuring out ways of making Wars less
likely we’re going to keep the things
that that work and and the world
gradually fumbly with local reversals
will on average try to try to keep those
developments so it’s just another kind
of technological progress and it’s
undeniable that technological progress
has taken place so okay we’re in a
situation where things will probably get
better and that’s the tendency so relax
well no it’s no more than you know
you’ll costly have to maintain your
house you have to maintain the health of
your body yeah here I’m with Freud and
others with the tragic view that the
potentiality is always within us we need
institutions like governments like
United Nations like peacekeeping forces
like education literacy institutions of
communication and travel so that we
don’t backslide into a tribal way of
life so far from relaxing it’s let’s
really try to figure out what works and
what doesn’t so that we don’t waste our
time on measures design that seemed like
on paper that they should reduce
violence that don’t work and we ignore
other things that our best science tell
us seem to work you know okay in a few
minutes I’m going to bring in the
audience and we’ll
here’s some other voices other thing
could I know if you wonder could you
know pick me to pick up the threat of
another question that you asked first
and that’s about population resources
and so on yes I once it comes now and I
guess the final question I want to come
round to is I guess it’s one about the
agenda
it sounds a bit Machiavellian to ask you
what’s your agenda that’s not I don’t
quite want to put it like that but I be
quite interesting to get it the intent
behind the book and behind the project
if you like and within that what some of
the kind of political choices are
because you can have a very peaceful
society that’s also extremely unequal
for example so I want to come on to that
but yes and that’s how most of a go
around the population question yes I I
think population itself is here’s a red
herring
yeah we’ve when I was a child I
memorized the population of the world
which was three billion now it’s seven
billion you might think oh my god how
could you could have thought back then
in the early 60s how could our planet
possibly feed another four billion
people more than the number that already
has in this of course plenty of
starvation in the early 60s in India in
China in Africa and here we are in a
world that’s more than doubled its
population and there is less hunger and
there was back in the early 60s that’s
war but what about then all the
forecasts for the animals is becoming
squeezed and so on so the so first of
all crowding per se is not a risk factor
for human violence some of the most
densely populated parts of the world are
some of the most peaceful Hong Kong
Tokyo Amsterdam and some of the most
sparsely populated are some of the most
violent like like Sudan Democratic
Republic of the Congo was not
particularly crowded in terms of people
but it’s got plenty of violence and by
the way Democratic Republic of the Congo
also has plenty of resources and Hong
Kong has none so the idea that when that
violence comes from scarcity of
resources I think is is deeply wrong
especially it may have been true or in
the past
than it is now because wealth and
prosperity less and less come from just
having a certain amount of stuff and
more and more come from how you combine
it with other stuff by intelligent
recipes designs formulas across large
networks of cooperation and trade in
terms of projections in the future first
is the question whether there will
really will be resource shortages and
there there there might be over water
most predictions of resources running
out of turned out to be wrong and they
may still continue to be wrong there’s
new discoveries of fossil fuels but
you’re not just to be clear you’re not
suggesting a kind of infinite growth of
the species and infinite resources to
sustain a bit we must assume some sort
of limit the limits are probably
different than what we think so I I
think they’re very few limits I think
the limits are going to be political
rather than amount of matter and energy
that is if we have arrangements that
continue that don’t develop the
technology at a requisite pace and that
moreover don’t provide the kind of
incentives that prevent people from
squandering the resources that we have
then things could get much much worse
there’s no doubt more to the point but
I’m not an expert on resources I’m what
I want to talk about is violence and the
assumption which I’d like to challenge
is that wars are caused by these or
shortages and that if there are more
resource oranges there will be more wars
now there can be a lot of human
suffering suffering and misery and waste
so he absolutely should be concerned
with shortages of water and arable land
with climate change just because it
would be really bad if people got poorer
and if people starved
and disease or disease increased but
among those catastrophes organized armed
conflict is not necessarily one of them
and in fact not only our most Wars not
fought over resources in any in any
obvious way the arab-israeli conflict is
not about resources World War two wasn’t
obviously about resources of World War
one both about land in some land because
of its symbolic value not because it was
needed for for planting crops Jerusalem
is not a particularly fertile place and
there’s a lot of violence over because
of the meaning that people invest in it
not because of physical resources and
indeed studies that try to correlate the
climate stress of these are shortages at
time one with civil war at time to find
not much correlation it’s often the rich
flush tribes and countries that raid
each other that have the luxury of
planning for war the dirt poor ones
suffer but they don’t necessarily go at
it after each other’s in raids and
organized Wars so this is again just to
make it clear this is not a call for
complacency about climate change or
resources there are lots of reasons that
this is a very very high priority but
you don’t have to add war on top of what
is already an extremely serious set of
challenges to mobile I think to make it
imperative to deal with those challenges
okay so just to sort of begin to close
this part of the discussion before we
open it up I guess the question as I
said the word agenda isn’t right but
it’s something about what your intent is
with this what the message is what you
want people to do differently as a
result of listening to you reading your
work hearing about your project you know
is it do you have a political agenda is
it you know go away and make sure we
have more civilizing institutions work
harder for you know the UN I mean what’s
the sort of what’s the call if there is
a call yeah well the overall call is to
treat violence as an
mirakl problem that we try to document
and understand the causes of so whatever
the answer turns out to be I’m in favor
of that now it seems to me that based
and that is not as banal as it sounds
because there’s a lot of moralizing
about violence there are a lot of
intuitions assumptions dogmas about
violence and probably not enough
analysis of the facts of violence
because it’s so easy to moralize the one
of the founders of the quantitative
study of war Louis Richardson had a
wonderful quote that he said I could be
accused of saying to understand all is
to forgive all and what I reply is to
content condemn much is to understand
little so understanding it would be the
top priority based on at least my best
assessment of evidence so far and this
is again assuming that violence is that
that killing and raping and assaulting
or all bad things that ought to be
minimized there are there are some
lessons I think good government is a
really good thing that that anarchy is a
bad thing as our tyrannical non
democratic governments I think that
Commerce trade exchange are good things
that it’s good to nip people together in
webs of economic dependency again not to
keep beating this horse but the
assignment of the Nobel Peace Prize to
the European Union not only recognized
the value of an international community
but the European Union grew out of the
European Common Market which grew out of
the European Coal and Steel Union which
were explicitly designed to to implement
the theory that trade reduces war if you
have two countries that economically
depend on each other
then attacking the other is like
attacking itself and it is not even
tempting because you could buy stuff
more cheaply than you can plunder it and
the other guys more valuable to you
alive than dead so I think I applaud the
Nobel Committee even though they
obviously were trying to make a
political point given
the currency union and all kinds of
extra stuff but they were really right
in saying that they acted what was
started off as an economic Union really
did have a pacifying force a third is
education there I’ve said a number of
studies that suggest that countries that
are better educated are less likely to
slip into a dictatorship and civil war
and cosmopolitanism the mixing of people
and ideas make it harder to demonize and
dehumanize other tribes that you
otherwise would not be familiar with so
these would all be my best guesses to
some of the pacifying forces I had one
more we didn’t have time to touch on it
but I was throw it out there because I
do argue for it in the book and that is
empowerment of women that seems to have
a many beneficial effects among them
lowering rates of violence and
particularly struck by your first point
there about understanding and just to go
go back to where we started to around
this this off you know I started there’s
parody of what the newspapers say you
know about violence and so on and I
guess am i right in thinking implicit in
what you’re saying is the lack of
understanding of violence where it comes
from the trend and so on itself is
potentially dangerous because it it
produces a fear of violence that itself
can create the acts of violence which
weird applauded in the first place and
so on is that there’s a kind of strange
reverse psychology that happens because
of that there can be so for example I’ll
give you an example at the the panic
about terrorism that after 9/11 there
was going to be every planes are gonna
be shot out of the sky and stadiums are
gonna be blown up and they’re good
nuclear terrorism was imminent that was
quite obviously responsible for the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq and the abuses
of torture and
a rendition and some people were willing
to let the government’s do that because
it seemed like a reasonable response to
these catastrophic threats if the
threats were actually not so big to
begin with then the reaction to the
threats might not have been as big that
having been said I’ve got to give a
important shout-out to the role of the
press and journalism in I think helping
along the decline of violence by making
clear to people the human costs of war
something that it was very easy to gloss
over when press photography was banned
from the battlefield and so you could
nurture an idea that war is heroic and
manly and thrilling and spiritual and
all of these things that people used to
believe that didn’t survive intense
press coverage of actual battlefield
carnage so there’s a there’s another
paradox which is we overreact we
overestimate the amount of violence
we’re more sensitive to it that does
tend to be one of the forces that makes
us more motivated to root it out to that
we think the we tolerate less violence
than our ancestors did and so we’re more
vigilant about trying to extricate what
remains very good thank you thank you
very much Steven and we’ll go into
questions we’ve got some roving
microphones and I’m sure hands will go
up faster than I can spot them and if I
if I fail to identify this on a
first-come first-served basis I’m sorry
but I will do my best I think the first
one I saw was way over on the left-hand
side thank you very much my question was
what do you think the history of
violence would be like in a matriarchal
burning at this question the hallway to
its format at the ng talks about how
importantly empowerment of women and
could be in future prevention but I
think looking back it would be very
interesting to think about the
officially named thank you it’s a
wonderful question what would the impact
what the history of violence have looked
like under matriarchal societies yeah so
if if if women are in charge there’d be
less violence there wouldn’t be zero
violence but there’d be less I think I
in the in the book I try to distinguish
different motives for violence I don’t
think there’s any one such thing as an
aggressive instinct some violence is
just a kind of rational self-interest
you eliminate or or harm something that
happens to be a obstacle on the path to
something that you want and I don’t
think there’s that much reason to think
that that differs between men and women
if there were a chicken talking about
the history of violence they’d say maybe
we’re as violent as ever and I don’t
think that there’s any you know
aggressive impulse that we have against
chickens and just like the way they
taste and we turn off our empathy so so
I think that category probably doesn’t
differ as much although women probably
do have more empathy than men so I
should qualify even yot but the category
that really drives the rates up is
dominance and revenge the macho
posturing the violent retaliation
against insults the thirst for grandeur
preeminence prestige status dominance
hegemony for its own sake is more of a
guy thing than a
that a female thing and so both
cross-culturally in the anthropological
record and historically in the recent
historical record societies in which
women have more power tend to go to war
less I’m just wanted as any brave soul
who’d like to argue the reverse okay I’m
sorry I’m not going to be able to get a
look at all the hands but the gentleman
with the glasses and the white hair of
the jumper Thank You professor pink you
quoted quite rightly how how the murder
rate has fallen massively since the
Middle Ages when I am I believe I would
see some numbers say that Britain was a
more violent country than Colombia is
today but it’s double what it was 50
years ago
and it soon it may arguably be a double
in terms of murder rates than it was a
hundred years ago why do you think that
is and how does that fit your thesis
yeah so the there has been if you if you
look at the trajectory of homicide in
most West in most Western countries you
have a massive decline since the Middle
Ages and then the 1960s happened and it
went there’s a bit of an uptick The
Epoch by the way has been in large part
reversed again most dramatically in the
United States where the homicide rate
more than doubled between the during the
1960’s and then in the 1990s it fell
back to earth and it’s continuing to
droop year by year in Britain it took a
little longer it was only in the 2000s
that the homicide rate started to fall
again after the great disruption of the
1960s so this was a partial reversal
only in part we’re talking about so in
the in the say the Middle Ages the
homicide rate as you know it was similar
to what you see in Colombia today
anywhere from 35 to 70 homicides per
hundred thousand per year that fell by
the 1900 in most Western European
countries at least in
Britain – about between one and two per
hundred thousand per year it then went
up to say between three and four so
we’re still talking about way way lower
and then it’s the reverse the reversal
has been in turn reversed I think it’s
um it’s because many of the historical
changes that brought violence down from
the Middle Ages to the present to the
60s then got reversed by the 60s and as
a baby boomer it pains me to say this
that our parents will kind of write that
if you have a society that has that
defies Authority that valorizes
individualism and and demonizes
conformity that allows it that’ll that
allows or encourages young men to rather
than moving to the suburbs and raising a
family to hang out with other men if
you’ve got a criminal justice system
that voluntarily disarms and stops going
after criminals and and hooligans and
vandals then the the violence rate goes
back up and part of the reversal of the
reversal namely it starting to come back
down to earth is because communities and
police got more serious about dealing
with with violence again partly this was
interesting reversal that was partly
fueled by the the feminist movement when
up through the 70s it was kind of kind
of square and unhip to be against crime
it was kind of self-expression it was
rebellion it was advancing the
revolution there’s all kinds of
revolutionary romantic nonsense about
violence that I think as it trickled as
it affected the actual practice of the
criminal justice system it allowed a
relaxing of standards which let the
crime rate go up well then a number of
feminist theorists in the 70s started to
concentrate on rape and domestic
violence and then all of a sudden
violence was a
a bad thing again because it was
obviously harming so many women and the
feminist movement pushed for a strong
emphasis abri criminal justice system on
violent perpetrators on safe streets and
then people realized hey this is a
pretty good idea that idea in the 60s
that violence was just part of the
revolutionary spirit was kind of goofy
and that clamping down on violence will
protect women against rape and it’ll
also make us all safer and that that
reversal is still in motion and it came
again it came a little later in Britain
than it did in other Western democracies
but it is definitely visible in the
statistics thank you because the volume
of questions are going to take – if
that’s a right and asked you to deal
okay from home together x – now there’s
Venus obvious downward trend in violence
but there’s also been an upward trend in
the ability to kill people caramel
antigens of nuclear capability which
kind of coincides with the massive drop
off at the end of the Second World War
so just the fact that we now have the
ability to kill lots of people at the
same time without very much effort and
how do you feel that relates to your
theories about it does it make the
society less violent the fact that it’s
easier to be very successfully violence
should you want to be yeah well they’re
there they’re two ways in which this is
a frequently asked question and it has
comes in two flavors one of them is
should we thank the nuclear bomb for
giving us the long peace since 1945
baddest countries were just so terrified
by the possibility of nuclear escalation
that they didn’t go close to waging a
war and one version is – the nuclear
bomb be given in – about Nobel Peace
Prize
there are people who make that argument
I’m skeptical of it for a number of
reasons one of them being that countries
without nukes also thought the matter of
waging war another is that the Second
World War showed that you could do so
much damage with good old fashioned
bombs and tanks and and bombers that an
artillery that there already was
mutually assured destruction even with
conventional warfare and no one wanted a
rematch of World War two anytime soon
and also because nuclear weapons are so
disproportionately destructive compared
to any strategic military aim it’s
almost as if they were taken off the
battlefield as a live option and had
very little effect on the waging of war
so just take one of many examples
why did Argentina do something as stupid
as to invade the Falkland Islands
knowing that Britain was a nuclear power
answer they knew that Britain was not
going to reduce Buenos Aires to a
radioactive crater in response so the
nuclear threat is so ridiculously
disproportionate that it’s almost a
bluff everyone knows that no one is
really going to use it and I think
that’s that’s why you have so many
non-nuclear States to find nuclear ones
and it’s why that the it wasn’t just
amazing luck that no nuclear weapon has
been used since Nagasaki they’re just
there’s really no other than to deter an
all-out invasion an existential threat
there’s absolutely no reason to have
nuclear weapons and it’s even possible
and I’m saying this as someone who is
not romantic or utopian it’s not
inconceivable that they could be
abolished in within a lifetimes of some
of the people in this room of the
younger people the other way of an state
asking the question is more of a
challenge that isn’t aren’t we living in
more violent times by definition as long
as we have the capability of wreaking
massive destruction and so we could be
living in peace forever but we could do
it and that by definition makes us
violent and that’s kind of a for me
that’s more of a philosophical question
of what you mean by violence if the
nuclear weapons just kind of rust away
until they’re radioactive junk metal and
are never used that’s that’s that’s
peaceful enough so let me come back to
the gentleman over here you said about
the German French and the Second World
War the First World War and their
psychology of perhaps being
self-destructive in the in the in the
current war between Israel and Iran and
the fact that Israel lost six or seven
million in the second world war do you
think that their psychology and sort of
paranoia and the and the Arab psychology
will lead them to have to do what you
said that we will no longer be able to
fight Germany and England and Germany
will no longer fight or at least not for
this foreseeable future are they there
for Israel and the Arabs heading for one
of those great big bumps that you
mentioned in the graph in your opinion
almost certainly not so the the wars
between Israel and its neighbors Israel
Syria Israel Jordan Israel Egypt there
hasn’t been one since 1973 through
several regime changes in Egypt and
those were the wars by the way that by
far killed the most people they
certainly the War of Independence the
1973 war if you look at the number of
casualties in the arab-israeli conflict
it goes down like that and again this is
because the wars between countries are
the ones that that do the most damage
that kill the most people and I don’t
see those wars are starting up anytime
soon this if there’s a the two worrisome
scenarios one of them the one that that
Israel itself worries about is Iran gets
the bomb they hasten the coming of the
12th Imam or they rectify the ancient
injustice of the existence of State of
Israel by dropping a nuclear bomb on Tel
Aviv causing a second Holocaust
destroying the State of Israel and and
that would be one one outcome that is
motivating the fear of Israel to strike
preemptively the other is that Israel
does strike preemptively and that Iran
then unleashes a wave of terrorism in
response I think it’s unlikely that they
would try to invade Israel for a number
of reasons so those are the and I don’t
think I don’t think the first scenario
is extremely unlikely that although it’s
better for everyone if Iran doesn’t get
a bomb I don’t think that they are
planning to perpetrate a second
Holocaust I don’t think that’s part of
their their game plan if for no other
reason and here’s where nuclear
deterrence might have an impact namely
as I mentioned it it’s only use is to
deter an out-and-out invasion an
existential threat since Israel does
have a nuclear capability and they
presumably would use it in retaliation
that would prevent Iran from hastening
the coming of the 12th Imam by that
route or or whatever disaster scenario
you have I don’t think anyone really
knows how much how many deaths would
come from a a Lee or an American
preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear
facilities but quite likely it would be
less than the death toll from the
interstate wars between Israel and Egypt
in its history psychology the
possibility of a preemptive strike and
if they hit those sites surely the
fallout
we would be we need an expert in nuclear
science to tell us but I don’t think so
it’s not like it would trigger a nuclear
explosion and it probably would not be
as I don’t know it would be like another
Chernobyl or Fukushima because there
isn’t as much material and it’s more and
it’s more I have more deeply buried but
again I’m not good bad that I don’t know
that’s the sort of job speculation
beyond certainly my competence and –
well unfortunately I’m just really sorry
to say this we’ve only got time for one
more question but people will be around
to sign books and discuss artists that
yes there are there are a number of such
correlations so people who are people
and average levels in societies that I
have that are higher on educational
attainment or intelligence or both and
they tend to be correlated are less
likely to commit violent crimes they’re
less likely to be victims of violent
crimes society-wide they’re more likely
to be receptive to democracy ten years
down the line they’re less likely to
have civil wars so yes there are a
number of positive knock-on effects to
high levels of education and also
periods in history in which levels of
literacy and availability of books and
printed material have gone up have often
preceded enlightenment such as the the
European lightin enlightenment which
occurred prior to a huge explosion in
intensity of printed discourse the
Republic of Letters says that sometimes
called Stephen in a moment I’ll hand
back to Cathy to closed this event
before the book signing I wanted to give
you an opportunity in case there’s
anything else he wanted to add or a
message you wanted to leave us with
to round things off oh well again I
guess I would if I had to give one
summary statement it would be to
reiterate what I at least what I like to
think is what motivates me in writing
that book this book and that is to
attend to the empirical record on what
causes war and homicide terrorism and
genocide domestic violence and so on and
to attend to the best data we have on
what reduces it it’s just so easy to
moralize catastrophize sermonize
ultimately what we want to do is have
fewer and fewer victims of violence
fewer rape victims fewer genocides fewer
Wars fewer homicides less domestic
violence and so it’s not a question of
having your favorite ideology vindicated
it’s a matter of looking to the factual
record and seeing what works and doing
more of it please join me in thanking Stephen and Robert