Three pieces on the ABC Religion and Ethics site:
one by Pinker himself, which summarises his views on the historical decline of violence ...
one by John Gray (who takes Pinker to task in a way that many of you will be familiar with if you've read a lot of his work) ... and
one by me (basically a positive review of Pinker's new book,
The Better Angels of Our Nature.)
It seems like Mr. Pinker's main point is that the probability of one of us dying an unexpected violent death has reduced. So what? It's been replaced by something even more horrible. People are now dying protracted deaths, by the millions, from the effects of poverty. We've regressed to the days of serfdom. And what about the psychological violence being inflicted on the people of the world today? To not point this out is a sure sign of moral decay.
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