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Name: The Better Angels of Our Nature
Rating: 4.5 (82 reviews)
Author: Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker

Why Violence Has Declined

4.5 (82 ratings)

37 mins

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Change & Evolution Anthropology Crises & Scandals General Knowledge Wars Culture

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The Better Angels of Our Nature
Summary of 15 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Discover why humanity is more peaceful than ever, even though most of us fantasize about murder.

Have you ever fantasized about killing someone? If you’re like most people, you probably have – even in the last year.

All humans have the capacity for violence as this has been built into our genes as a crude way of getting what we want. Yet, despite popular belief, as humanity develops, it actually uses less and less violence.

In these blinks you’ll find out exactly why that is.

First you’ll discover our “inner demons” – the five primal motivators behind our propensity for violence. For example, you’ll find out why exacting revenge on someone might feel like taking cocaine.

Second, you’ll discover the better angels of our nature – four other motivators that encourage us to refrain from violence. For instance, you’ll understand why an average teenager today would have been a genius in 1920 and far less violent because of it.

Finally, you’ll see how six major historical shifts reduced violence drastically by accommodating the better angels of our nature while curbing the sway of our inner demons. Along the way, you’ll come to understand, for example, why headbutting a cat to death is no longer considered wholesome, fun entertainment.

Though we’re evidently living in the most peaceful time ever, this is not to argue that violence has been eradicated from human life – self-congratulations are not in order quite yet. Rather, we must continue our efforts to reduce violence by nurturing and promoting the better angels of our nature.

Predation: Violence is a simple, natural way to get what we want, but it’s also risky and crude.

In the first five blinks, let’s look at what motivates humans to commit violence – our so-called “inner demons.”

The first of these is rooted in the fact that violence is a simple way to gain an evolutionary advantage.

Through natural selection, all organisms have evolved to compete with one another for the survival of their genes.

In this competition, organisms are sometimes forced to oppose one another – for instance, when resources are limited or there’s a short supply of potential mates. Using physical force is an effective way of securing those resources, so organisms prone to violence do have an advantage. This kind of instrumental violence is called predation and it’s a pragmatic means to getting what we want.

For humans, too, this violent tendency is natural and commonplace. In fact, it can even be seen in young children: studies have shown that the most violent stage of development is toddlerhood, when children express behavior like biting, kicking and hitting.

The tendency persists as we mature, too: in a survey of university students, up to 90 percent of men and 80 percent of women admitted that they’d fantasized about killing someone in the past year.

This violent streak seems to have a neurological basis. Studies have found that artificially stimulating a certain area of the brain known as the “rage circuit” triggers feelings of aggression.

But even though we have a natural propensity for violence, from an evolutionary standpoint our instincts for violence need to be kept in check, because acting on them is often a bad idea:

Harming our kin, for example, would be counterproductive because they have inherited our genes.

Also, violence is risky, because even if a particular organism wins a battle, it may still suffer injuries which could lower its chances of surviving and passing on its genes in the long run.

For this reason, humans tend to employ violence selectively.

Dominance: Violence can also be used to bolster one’s social position, making access to resources or mates easier.

As we’ve seen, violence tends to be a risky strategy for getting what you want, because even if an organism wins, there’s a high risk of injury, which could diminish its chances of passing on its genes.

It makes sense then that most social species would try to avoid unnecessary battle. Many of them accomplish this by establishing dominance hierarchies. These are hierarchies whose order is based on who would win if a confrontation were to occur, and their main benefit is that fights, and the injuries that result from them, can be completely avoided.

The desire for revenge fuels violence around the world and it probably evolved as a deterrent.

The desire for revenge – something most of us have felt – appears to be a major and almost ubiquitous motivator of violence.

In this context, revenge doesn’t refer just to immediate retaliation, but also to people’s tendency to hold grudges and seek retaliation over the long term.

Sadism is a rare and perplexing phenomenon which seems to be an acquired taste.

The next driver of human violence we’ll look at is not only bizarre but also monstrous: sadism – deliberately inflicting pain on someone just because the sight of the suffering it causes is experienced as enjoyable.

Nowadays sadism is fortunately very rare in its pure form, and we’re rather more likely to encounter sadism coupled with other motivators for violence, such as revenge.

Ideology: Well-meaning efforts to bring about a better world have spawned horrific amounts of bloodshed.

Let’s now take a look at the final motivator for violence: ideology – a shared belief that some greater good is so utopian that achieving it warrants limitless violence.

In this sense, ideological violence is similar to predation: it is instrumental to our getting what we want. The difference is that the motive for ideological violence transcends the motives of the individuals of a group: Ideology strives to create a better world.

Empathy evolved for us to take care of our families, but we can also learn to have empathy for other groups.

The first better angel of our nature that decreases our tendency toward violence is empathy: having an altruistic concern for the well-being of others.

But why did we evolve into empathic beings?

Self-control helps us resist violent impulses and it can be strengthened or weakened by practice.

Everyone knows the depiction of temptation and conscience as an angel and a demon on a person’s shoulders, where the person tries to resist being tempted by the demon’s words.

In fact, this analogy to actual human behavior may be more apt than you might first think: studies suggest that our impulses and our resistance to them do come from entirely different parts of the brain.

Our sense of morality can encourage or discourage violence, but thankfully it’s tilting toward the latter.

Humanity’s sense of morality plays an interesting dual role in violent behavior:

Over the years, certain people like homosexuals and heretics have been killed in the name of what’s considered right and wrong. But on the other hand, our moral sense has also led to a reduction in violence, through, for example, our striving for racial equality.

Reason drives us to seek peace and nonviolence, and our faculty for reason is increasing.

You might think that reason isn’t inherently good on its own. After all, it can be directed toward, for example, determining how to best use violence to acquire what one wants.

But in fact reason only develops in creatures who, due to natural selection, value their own life and welfare. To that end, they are more likely to use reason to pursue a world of peace, not one of violence.

The pacification process began 5,000 years ago, when states began to monopolize violence.

Some 5,000 years ago, people began to transition from small, nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies with formal governments. This pacification process brought with it a reduction in violence.

Why?

As states grew and trade flourished, gaining wealth through honest toil became more attractive than through violence.

The second major historical shift that reduced violence was the civilizing process. Beginning in fifteenth-century Western Europe and continuing right up to the present day, this process has been driven by two forces.

The first is the increase in the size and strength of European states during the period.

The Humanitarian Revolution reduced violence by preaching that even despised people deserved humane treatment.

The third major decline in violence began in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, before spreading elsewhere. It was caused by the emergence of a humanitarian philosophy whereby people who’d previously been treated cruelly or persecuted were beginning to be treated humanely.

The effects of this humanitarian revolution were seen broadly in a number of areas.

The long peace after World War II followed an overall 500-year decline in conflict.

Spanning the period from the end of the Second World War to the present day, the long peace was another historical shift away from violence.

During this period, violent warfare decreased greatly. From 1945 to 1955, the number of deaths around the world that resulted from military conflict was approximately 17 in every 100,000 people. Yet in the past decade, this number has reached a low point of one per 100,000 people.

The New Peace after the Cold War has seen further reductions in conflict, genocide and terrorism.

The fifth major historical shift to reduce violence occurred in the post-Cold War period, from 1991 up to the present day.

During this period we’ve seen broad reductions in violence, as even small-scale conflict and warfare decreased.

The Rights Revolutions of the 1960s decreased violence against marginalized groups, like women and racial minorities.

The final historical shift which decreased violence is the era of the Rights Revolutions, which emerged out of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movements and has lasted until today. This era brought a decrease in violence against numerous minorities and marginalized groups.

This decrease can be seen as a continuation of the Humanitarian Revolution, which saw individual humans becoming of central importance, regardless of race, sex or other bodily attributes.

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What is The Better Angels of Our Nature about?

The Better Angels of Our Nature (2012) takes a close look at the history of violence in human society, explaining both our motivations to use violence on certain occasions and the factors that increasingly restrain us from using it – and how these factors have resulted in massive reductions in violence.

Who should read The Better Angels of Our Nature?

Anyone who thinks the world is becoming an increasingly violent place
Anyone who’s interested in the forces and reasons that drive us to and keep us from violence
Anyone interested in the history of violence in human societies

About the Author

Steven Pinker is an experimental psychologist, linguist and cognitive scientist with a professorship at Harvard University. His other bestsellers include How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought.

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