Steven Pinker's Book On How The World Is Becoming Pacified

I like Steven Pinker as a writer and thinker so this thread should be anything but a insult because it is not.

Anyhow Steven Pinker is currently writing a book ( Unpublished presently.) in how wars and violence in societies is becoming less prevailing post-modernly in comparison of past historical societies. ( Of course this sort of thinking is not unique to Pinker as others have come to similar conclusions but I have listed Pinker because of himself being a popular writer.)

In this book he describes this polar shift happening because of humanity’s shift more towards reason and understanding versus the tactic and strategy of aggressive violent brute force.

I must disagree with such a perspective where instead I shall offer my own alternative scenario as to why this polar shift is happening.

I believe this polar shift is happening not because humanity is shifting more towards reason or understanding but instead I believe it is happening because humanity has become more effective in controlling, domesticating,manipulating, and supervising it’s populance in a almost Orwellian sense.

( In otherwords this polar shift is happening due to the fact that modern societies have all emerged as police states not because we have obliterated aggression, brute force, or violence but because we have made such things illegal for anyone outside of the government and state to use such tactics within the frame of a thoroughly controlled and regulated society by authoritarian means.)

Humanity has become so effective in controlling, domesticating, and manipulating it’s own populance by implementing authoritarian stop gaps, contingencies,counter measures, and forms of mental warfare by use of propaganda that it virtually becomes almost impossible to express or even act upon natural violent tendencies without someone knowing about it.

( Unless approved by a entity in power like the government for instance since only the government itself is allowed to act upon aggressive measures outside of the populance in that domesticated citizens are forbidden to themselves.)

We have stop gaps and counter measures where if someone disobeys we merely starve them out of existence into transience or imprisonment.

We have stop gaps and counter measures where the media is used to humiliate or outcast others.

We have stop gaps and counter measures where if we want to claim that a particular form of knowledge is correct over all others we merely make it so through academical circles thus eradicating or retiring opposing perspectives to fringe like existences through the use of social ostracism.

I would argue that this polar shift owes nothing to reason or understanding since those inclinations play little upon human behavior but rather such a polar shift owes it’s entirety to the brave new world where every expression and action is watched or observed by Orwellian governments who have come to master control over it’s populance with all the entireties of dominionism.

It is not that strategies of violence and aggressive brute force has been eradicated but instead merely such instruments have been transformed into institutionism that pretends to exist without them when in reality institutionism owes it’s very existence to violent aggressive behaviors.

All of this knowledge is already known and understood on ILP as far as I am concerned.

Thank you for bringing it to attention though for the slower crowd.

(Published works are true while unpublished works are not of course.)

Which should make this conversation all the more simple to discuss.

Slower crowd?

Steven Pinker is going to publish this book at the end of 2009 I believe.

Pacifism is not the same as submissive - it just means that people don’t act mindlessly aggressively, but act when the need arises to take action.

We are still evolving into better human specimens, and who knows where those changes will lead, but they will continue to happen…

Wow. In a world that is becoming ever more crowded this guy is suggesting MORE conflict. Idiot.

I’d say it is less Orwellian and governmental and more cultural. One government legalizes something while another does not. It is more a matter of roots. Why do we punish? It leads to social stability. Would you punish someone that stole your possessions on a regular basis? Naturally, yes. I would rather say the world is becoming more pacified, if it really is, due to the cultural and societal development that is being enhanced through over a century of urbanization and thus a greater membership of a unified culture (same base values), and greater communication through technological innovation such as the television, radio and internet which allow for the exchange of thoughts and ideas in a much more public and broad manner. This would, though, be pure speculation. Look at anywhere but Europe and North America, is the world really becoming pacified?

As for a biological improvement to our species, maybe I can use Europeans during (pre) Greek/Roman times. They were quite busy with tribal culture while the middle eastern and meditteranean cultures were having a clash of civilizations (not physically, but culturally/intellectually etc). Have things improved, or just shifted? Or maybe the question is just, is violence an end in itself or has industrial society just minimized that due to a lack of necessity (i.e. no need to raid and pillage when there’s enough bread and sex can be bought on the street).