![]() At the same time that they have declined, they have also become near universally condemned. Surveying 5,000 years of recorded history, and pre-history that has become interpretable due to archaeological science, he concludes that we live in a world marked by a measurable decline of violence of every kind: war-both between nations and civil war–genocide, murder, rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, capital punishment, torture and even corporal punishment of children. In fact, argues Pinker, nothing could be further from the truth. The Harvard Psychologist and author of the new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking Press, NYC, 2011), came to Cal Tech’s Beckman Auditorium to offer a profoundly contrary view to contemporary beliefs that we live in a more violent and dangerous world than ever before, one in which terrorists hold more cards than enlightened rationalists, one in which violence is ever-present and Thomas Hobbes’ assessment of life in nature has become the hallmark of our post 9/11 century: it is mean, nasty, brutish and short. Steven Pinker has documented what John Lennon could only imagine: a world in which war is not nearly as popular as it used to be. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Cal Tech Lecture for the Skeptics’ Society ![]()
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