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Images like this, from the Auschwitz
concentration camp,

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have been seared into our consciousness
during the 20th century

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and have given us
a new understanding of who we are,

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where we've come from
and the times we live in.

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During the 20th century,
we witnessed the atrocities

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of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot,
Rwanda and other genocides,

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and even though the 21st century
is only seven years old,

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we have already witnessed
an ongoing genocide in Darfur

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and the daily horrors of Iraq.

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This has led to a common
understanding of our situation,

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namely, that modernity
has brought us terrible violence,

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and perhaps that native peoples
lived in a state of harmony

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that we have departed from, to our peril.

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Here is an example
from an op-ed on Thanksgiving,

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in the "Boston Globe"
a couple of years ago,

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where the writer wrote,
"The Indian life was a difficult one,

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but there were no employment problems,

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community harmony was strong,
substance abuse unknown,

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crime nearly nonexistent.

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What warfare there was between tribes
was largely ritualistic

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and seldom resulted in indiscriminate
or wholesale slaughter."

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Now, you're all familiar
with this treacle.

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We teach it to our children.

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We hear it on television
and in storybooks.

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Now, the original title of this session
was, "Everything You Know is Wrong,"

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and I'm going to present evidence

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that this particular part
of our common understanding is wrong,

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that, in fact, our ancestors
were far more violent than we are,

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that violence has been in decline
for long stretches of time,

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and that today, we are probably
living in the most peaceful time

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in our species's existence.

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Now, in the decade of Darfur and Iraq,

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a statement like that might seem somewhere
between hallucinatory and obscene,

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but I'm going to try to convince you
that that is the correct picture.

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The decline of violence
is a fractal phenomenon.

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You can see it over millennia,
over centuries, over decades

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and over years,

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although there seems
to have been a tipping point

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at the onset of the age of reason
in the 16th century.

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One sees it all over the world,
although not homogeneously.

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It's especially evident in the West,

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beginning with England and Holland
around the time of the Enlightenment.

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Let me take you on a journey
of several powers of 10 --

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from the millennium scale
to the year scale --

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to try to persuade you of this.

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Until 10,000 years ago,
all humans lived as hunter-gatherers,

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without permanent
settlements or government.

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And this is the state that's commonly
thought to be one of primordial harmony.

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But the archaeologist Lawrence Keeley,

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looking at casualty rates
among contemporary hunter-gatherers,

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which is our best source of evidence
about this way of life,

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has shown a rather different conclusion.

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Here is a graph that he put together,

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showing the percentage
of male deaths due to warfare

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in a number of foraging
or hunting and gathering societies.

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The red bars correspond
to the likelihood that a man will die

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at the hands of another man,

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as opposed to passing away
of natural causes,

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in a variety of foraging societies
in the New Guinea highlands

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and the Amazon rain forest.

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And they range from a rate of almost
a 60 percent chance that a man will die

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at the hands of another man

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to, in the case of the Gebusi,
only a 15 percent chance.

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The tiny little blue bar
in the lower left-hand corner

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plots the corresponding statistic
from the United States and Europe

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in the 20th century,

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and it includes all the deaths
of both World Wars.

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If the death rate in tribal warfare
had prevailed during the 20th century,

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there would have been two billion deaths
rather than 100 million.

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Also on the millennium scale,

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we can look at the way of life
of early civilizations,

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such as the ones described in the Bible.

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And in this supposed source
of our moral values,

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one can read descriptions
of what was expected in warfare,

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such as the following, from Numbers 31:

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"And they warred against the Midianites
as the Lord commanded Moses,

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and they slew all the males.

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And Moses said unto them,
'Have you saved all the women alive?

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Now, therefore, kill every male
among the little ones

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and kill every woman that hath known
man by lying with him,

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but all the women children that have not
known a man by lying with him,

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keep alive for yourselves.'"

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In other words: kill the men,
kill the children.

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If you see any virgins, then you can keep
them alive so that you can rape them.

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And you can find four or five passages
in the Bible of this ilk.

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Also in the Bible, one sees that the death
penalty was the accepted punishment

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for crimes such as homosexuality,

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adultery, blasphemy, idolatry,
talking back to your parents --

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(Laughter)

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and picking up sticks on the Sabbath.

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Well, let's click the zoom lens down
one order of magnitude

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and look at the century scale.

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Now, although we don't have
statistics for warfare

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throughout the Middle Ages
to modern times,

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we know just from conventional history

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that the evidence
was under our nose all along

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that there has been a reduction
in socially sanctioned forms of violence.

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For example, any social history
will reveal that mutilation and torture

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were routine forms of criminal punishment.

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The kind of infraction today
that would give you a fine,

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in those days, would result
in your tongue being cut out,

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your ears being cut off,
you being blinded,

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a hand being chopped off and so on.

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There were numerous ingenious forms
of sadistic capital punishment:

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burning at the stake, disemboweling,
breaking on the wheel,

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being pulled apart by horses and so on.

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The death penalty was a sanction
for a long list of nonviolent crimes:

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criticizing the king,
stealing a loaf of bread.

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Slavery, of course,
was the preferred labor-saving device,

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and cruelty was a popular
form of entertainment.

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Perhaps the most vivid example
was the practice of cat burning,

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in which a cat was hoisted on a stage
and lowered in a sling into a fire,

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and the spectators shrieked in laughter
as the cat, howling in pain,

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was burned to death.

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What about one-on-one murder?

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Well, there, there are good statistics,

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because many municipalities
recorded the cause of death.

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The criminologist Manuel Eisner

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scoured all of the historical
records across Europe

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for homicide rates in any village,
hamlet, town, county that he could find,

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and then he supplemented them
with national data

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when nations started keeping statistics.

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He plotted on a logarithmic scale,

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going from 100 deaths
per 100,000 people per year,

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which was approximately the rate
of homicide in the Middle Ages,

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and the figure plummets down

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to less than one homicide
per 100,000 people per year

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in seven or eight European countries.

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Then, there is a slight
uptick in the 1960s.

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The people who said that rock and roll
would lead to the decline of moral values

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actually had a grain of truth to that.

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But there was a decline from at least
two orders of magnitude in homicide

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from the Middle Ages to the present,

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and the elbow occurred
in the early 16th century.

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Let's click down now to the decade scale.

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According to nongovernmental organizations
that keep such statistics,

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since 1945, in Europe and the Americas,

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there has been a steep
decline in interstate wars,

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in deadly ethnic riots or pogroms

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and in military coups,
even in South America.

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Worldwide, there's been a steep decline
in deaths in interstate wars.

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The yellow bars here show
the number of deaths per war per year

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from 1950 to the present.

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And, as you can see,
the death rate goes down

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from 65,000 deaths
per conflict per year in the 1950s

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to less than 2,000 deaths
per conflict per year in this decade,

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as horrific as it is.

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Even in the year scale,
one can see a decline of violence.

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Since the end of the Cold War,
there have been fewer civil wars,

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fewer genocides -- indeed, a 90 percent
reduction since post-World War II highs --

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and even a reversal of the 1960s uptick
in homicide and violent crime.

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This is from the FBI
uniform crime statistics.

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You can see that there's a fairly low
rate of violence in the '50s and the '60s,

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then it soared upward for several decades

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and began a precipitous decline,
starting in the 1990s,

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so that it went back to the level
that was last enjoyed in 1960.

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President Clinton,
if you're here: thank you.

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(Laughter)

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So the question is:

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Why are so many people so wrong
about something so important?

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I think there are a number of reasons.

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One of them is we have better reporting.

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The Associated Press
is a better chronicler of wars

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over the surface of the earth

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than 16th-century monks were.

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(Laughter)

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There's a cognitive illusion.

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We cognitive psychologists know

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that the easier it is to recall
specific instances of something,

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the higher the probability
that you assign to it.

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Things that we read about
in the paper with gory footage

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burn into memory more than reports
of a lot more people dying

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in their beds of old age.

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There are dynamics in the opinion
and advocacy markets;

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no one ever attracted advocates and donors

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by saying, "Things just seem to be
getting better and better."

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(Laughter)

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There's guilt about our treatment
of native peoples

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in modern intellectual life,

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and an unwillingness to acknowledge
there could be anything good

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about Western culture.

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And, of course, our change in standards
can outpace the change in behavior.

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One of the reasons violence went down

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is that people got sick of the carnage
and cruelty in their time.

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That's a process
that seems to be continuing,

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but if it outstrips behavior
by the standards of the day,

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things always look more barbaric
than they would have been

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by historic standards.

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So today, we get exercised --
and rightly so --

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if a handful of murderers get executed
by lethal injection in Texas

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after a 15-year appeal process.

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We don't consider
that a couple of hundred years ago,

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they may have been burned at the stake
for criticizing the king after a trial

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that lasted 10 minutes,

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and indeed, that that would have been
repeated over and over again.

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Today, we look at capital punishment

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as evidence of how low
our behavior can sink,

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rather than how high
our standards have risen.

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Well, why has violence declined?

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No one really knows,
but I have read four explanations,

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all of which, I think,
have some grain of plausibility.

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The first is: maybe
Thomas Hobbes got it right.

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He was the one who said

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that life in a state of nature
was "solitary, poor, nasty,

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brutish and short."

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(Laughter)

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Not because, he argued,

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humans have some
primordial thirst for blood

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or aggressive instinct
or territorial imperative,

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but because of the logic of anarchy.

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In a state of anarchy,

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there's a constant temptation
to invade your neighbors preemptively,

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before they invade you.

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More recently, Thomas Schelling
gives the analogy

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of a homeowner who hears
a rustling in the basement.

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Being a good American,
he has a pistol in the nightstand,

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pulls out his gun, walks down the stairs.

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And what does he see but a burglar
with a gun in his hand?

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Now, each one of them is thinking,

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"I don't really want to kill
that guy, but he's about to kill me.

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Maybe I had better shoot him
before he shoots me,

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especially since,
even if he doesn't want to kill me,

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he's probably worrying right now
that I might kill him before he kills me."

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And so on.

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Hunter-gatherer peoples explicitly
go through this train of thought

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and will often raid their neighbors
out of fear of being raided first.

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Now, one way of dealing
with this problem is by deterrence.

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You don't strike first, but you have
a publicly announced policy

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that you will retaliate savagely
if you are invaded.

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The only thing is that it's liable
to having its bluff called,

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and therefore can only work
if it's credible.

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To make it credible, you must avenge
all insults and settle all scores,

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which leads to the cycles
of bloody vendetta.

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Life becomes an episode of "The Sopranos."

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Hobbes's solution, "Leviathan,"

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was that if authority
for the legitimate use of violence

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was vested in a single democratic
agency -- a leviathan --

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then such a state can reduce
the temptation of attack,

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because any kind of aggression
will be punished,

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leaving its profitability zero.

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That would remove the temptation
to invade preemptively

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out of fear of them attacking you first.

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It removes the need
for a hair trigger for retaliation

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to make your deterrent threat credible,

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and therefore, it would lead
to a state of peace.

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Eisner -- the man who plotted
the homicide rates

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that you failed to see
in the earlier slide --

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argued that the timing
of the decline of homicide in Europe

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coincided with the rise
of centralized states.

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So that's a bit of a support
for the leviathan theory.

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Also supporting it is the fact
that we today see eruptions of violence

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in zones of anarchy,
in failed states, collapsed empires,

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frontier regions, mafias,
street gangs and so on.

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The second explanation
is that in many times and places,

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there is a widespread
sentiment that life is cheap.

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In earlier times, when suffering and early
death were common in one's own life,

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one has fewer compunctions
about inflicting them on others.

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And as technology and economic efficiency
make life longer and more pleasant,

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one puts a higher value
on life in general.

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This was an argument
from the political scientist James Payne.

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A third explanation invokes
the concept of a nonzero-sum game,

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and was worked out in the book "Nonzero"
by the journalist Robert Wright.

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Wright points out that,
in certain circumstances,

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cooperation or nonviolence can benefit
both parties in an interaction,

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such as gains in trade
when two parties trade their surpluses

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and both come out ahead,

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or when two parties lay down their arms

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and split the so-called peace dividend

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that results in them not having
to fight the whole time.

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Wright argues that technology
has increased the number

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of positive-sum games
that humans tend to be embroiled in,

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by allowing the trade of goods,
services and ideas

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over longer distances
and among larger groups of people.

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The result is that other people
become more valuable alive than dead,

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and violence declines for selfish reasons.

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As Wright put it,

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"Among the many reasons that I think
that we should not bomb the Japanese

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is that they built my minivan."

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(Laughter)

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The fourth explanation is captured
in the title of a book

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called "The Expanding Circle,"
by the philosopher Peter Singer,

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who argues that evolution bequeathed
humans with a sense of empathy,

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an ability to treat other people's
interests as comparable to one's own.

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Unfortunately, by default,

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we apply it only to a very narrow
circle of friends and family.

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People outside that circle
are treated as subhuman

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and can be exploited with impunity.

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But, over history,
the circle has expanded.

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One can see, in historical record,

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it expanding from the village,
to the clan, to the tribe, to the nation,

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to other races, to both sexes
and, in Singer's own arguments,

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something that we should extend
to other sentient species.

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So the question is:

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If this has happened,
what has powered that expansion?

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And there are a number of possibilities,

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such as increasing circles of reciprocity

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in the sense that Robert
Wright argues for.

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The logic of the Golden Rule --

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the more you think about
and interact with other people,

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the more you realize that it is untenable
to privilege your interests over theirs,

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at least not if you want
them to listen to you.

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You can't say that my interests
are special compared to yours

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any more than you can say

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the particular spot that I'm standing on
is a unique part of the universe

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because I happen to be standing
on it that very minute.

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It may also be powered
by cosmopolitanism, by histories

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and journalism and memoirs and realistic
fiction and travel and literacy,

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which allows you to project yourself
into the lives of other people

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that formerly you may have
treated as subhuman,

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and also to realize the accidental
contingency of your own station in life,

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the sense that
"There but for fortune go I."

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Whatever its causes,

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the decline of violence, I think,
has profound implications.

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It should force us to ask not just,
"Why is there war?"

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but also, "Why is there peace?"

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Not just, "What are we doing wrong?"

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but also, "What have we been doing right?"

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Because we have been doing
something right,

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and it sure would be good
to find out what it is.

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Thank you very much.

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00:17:42,523 --> 00:17:49,438
(Applause)

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Chris Anderson: I loved that talk.

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I think a lot of people
here in the room would say

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00:17:57,438 --> 00:18:00,523
that that expansion
you were talking about,

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that Peter Singer talks about,

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00:18:02,029 --> 00:18:05,683
is also driven just by technology,
by greater visibility of the other

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and the sense that the world
is therefore getting smaller.

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I mean, is that also a grain of truth?

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00:18:10,949 --> 00:18:12,316
Steven Pinker: Very much.

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It would fit both in Wright's theory,

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that it allows us to enjoy
the benefits of cooperation

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over larger and larger circles.

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But also, I think it helps us imagine
what it's like to be someone else.

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I think when you read
of these horrific tortures

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that were common in the Middle Ages,

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00:18:30,465 --> 00:18:32,784
you think, "How could
they possibly have done it,

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00:18:32,808 --> 00:18:35,181
how could they not have
empathized with the person

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that they're disemboweling?"

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00:18:36,591 --> 00:18:41,115
But clearly, as far as they're concerned,
this is just an alien being

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00:18:41,139 --> 00:18:43,294
that does not have feelings
akin to their own.

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00:18:43,318 --> 00:18:45,208
Anything, I think, that makes it easier

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00:18:45,232 --> 00:18:47,652
to imagine trading places
with someone else

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00:18:47,676 --> 00:18:50,436
means that it increases
your moral consideration

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to that other person.

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CA: I'd love every news media
owner to hear that talk

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at some point, it's so important.

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CA: Thank you.
SP: My pleasure.