The Myth of Increasing Violence

[thir]

It seems that I hear all the time about how we humans are becoming more and more violent over the course of history. This "fact" seems to be making its way into "common sense" knowledge, yet this idea that we, as a species, are becoming more violent over time hasnt ever really felt like truth to me. I believe the opposite, that over time we have become less violent and more tolerant of eachother and that we will continue to do so. Maybe im just an optimist ... or maybe not, here is an interesting video from Tedtalks (A recent interweb discovery that has me glued to my computer these days, I highly reccomend it) ... anyway for your viewing pleasure:[/COLOR]
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/st..._violence.html

Love to hear your thoughts on the subject whether you watch the vid or not.

Ok, here are mine.

It has been discussed a lot that the news people seem to think that only bad news are news, and that they simply swim in war, catastrophy, crime and the like. In fact one can get absolutely depressed by listening to them! And it is certainly also true that we hear a lot more about what is going on than ever before in our history as humans, and it is worth discussing whether this gives the idea of increasing violence, or at least that the world is a violent place despite the many, many quite ordinary people simply living a normal life.

So far I am with him - there may not be more violence, just more knowledge of violence. But his is trying to prove that violence has been decreasing all over the world ever since the gather-hunterers.That is quite a statement!

How does he do this, then? His argumenst rests on one archeologist, the bible, one criminologist, unnamed non-governmental sources, and FBI files. During his talk he goes from topic to topic with wars, cruelty in general, laws, and from area to area. Scientific it isn't, but is it convincing?

I am in doubt. He has an archeologist, Lawrence Keely, who, according to SP, claims to be able to establish how many percent of male deaths in that period is owing to violence from others rather than natural causes. This is quite obviosly not possible. I do not even know where to start here - but noone knows how many there were, much less how many died of what. There simply isn't enough left of them to even begin claims like that.

As for the bible, that is certainly a violent story, if we are to believe it. But I am not at all sure that the same kind of thing isn't happening in our world today, in various kinds of the world. So I am not sure that a claim that it is on the decrease is right, I believe that it will depend on where you are, and I see it is as very difficult job to find out if what is going on now is more or less than what was going on then. I am not saying he is wrong here, but I am not convinced by his bible quotations.

Likewise the medieval times were cruel in our eyes today, no doubt about that. In Western parts of the world the laws have certainly changed. But not in all parts of the world - we know that. Burning of women whose dowery has not been paid, stoning, whippings, cutting of of hands, killing of children, incredible animal abuse..we know it is all still out there in places. Whether it all put together spells less cruelty totally now than before I think is very hard to say - it is a big world out there, outside our western societies.

Then there is Manuel Eisner. Here I feel more convinced, we are talking actual scientific research here. He is counting homocides as reported by authorities 'across Europe' and has calculated the pattern in homocides per 100.0000 people per year and comes ot the result that it has fallen from 100 to 1 'in seven or eight European countries'. Sounds good. But what about the rest of Europe, and what about the rest of the world?? Can we conclude from 'seven or eight' countries in Europe to all the world?

Last comes his statistics from 1945 onwards - bypassing a couple of world wars - but otherwise back to wars again. He refers to statistics from un-govermental sources to show that thre are fewer deaths per conflict - in fact from 65.000 to less than 2000 per conflict per year - seemingly no matter what conflict and how many are involved??

And finally FBI, who claim a fall in violent crime of 90%, apparently in USA. I can't say anything about that, not knowing things so well in USA, but does that sound credible? A fall of 90% in crime?

All in all I feel that his material is extremely shaky if you want to see it as proof, but very interesting to discuss.

As for me I am not convinced by his material, but it is a good thought and it might well be right in some parts of the world.

SP then goes on to speculate why this might be the case, that violence is on the decline. Noone knows, he speculates four reasons.

First, Thomas Hobbes claims that life in primordial times life was cruel and anarchistic and everybody must have wanted to invade your territory before he invades you. Actually, thimas Hobbes lived in England and died in 1679 (!) according to Wikepedia, and he seemeed to have believed in a strong and absolute monarchy.
I sincerly doubt that he actually knew much about 'primordial humans' and their life, since we don't even today, but it is hard for me to imagine this constant nervousness and warfare in a time where there were so few humans and so much space compared to today.

I just wonder that SP ahd to go back this far to find support for his ideas? I remember he started with the indians, and made sweeping claims about what their life was not, quite as if 'indians' were, or are, one homogenous mass. But they were as different as people in Europe, and some were war like, others not at all.

Second SP suggest that while before life was considered cheap and as death was ever present, it was easier to inflict death on others, while, with more technology and better economy, life in general is better and longer, and that that is why we do not want to inflict death on others.

Life is better in certain parts of the world, but that is the minority compared to who are still striving under perhaps much the same circumstances as always. Statistically speaking this argument must fall, even if the general argument holds, but I am not so sure that it does. Does a gang war kill less people? Does a war? Is greed less? Rather, it seems proven that the more you have the more you want, and is prepared to do to get it.

Third, he argues that trade is better than war and means that you want to keep people alive. I think he has a good point here, except for certain nations who'll rather make war on their creditors than pay them..But all in all, in Europe at least this has been seen as a good reason for preventing war. I have to agree with him here.

Fourth, he says that we have developed empathy with, in the beginning, just the ones closest to us, later fon urther and further out. He says that the more we know about each other, the more this empathy comes into play. I think this is right. But he totally forgets all the power structures that has been during times, where a few people decided and an whole lot had to do. I believe that for this empathy to work, people have to have freedom to do what they think right. It is a good thought that if they can, most will.

How this empathy comes into play is another story.