A quick reflection on the Steven Pinker event that just finished.
He looked great. Sharp pinstripe suit, impressive mane of curly silver hair, and a poppy, as if his message that the world has become more peaceful wasn't enough.
I was glad to see he struggled ever so slightly with his power point slides, which tempered the ambient envy in the room.
Highlights for me were being reminded of the great Voltaire quote: "Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities."
I also enjoyed the idea that "violence is now a problem to be solved, not a conquest to be won."
And I liked the reference to Kant's essay on Perpetual peace, where he argued that three things would reduce violence: trade, democracy and international community.
Perhaps the best point was his claim - in response to a question about morality not being the cause of reduced violence - that the moral sense has done more harm than good. He backed this by saying that most homicides are justified on moral grounds, and that most aggressors think of their cause as morally justified.
I asked a question, which amounted to: If you define violence as human on human activity, then the argument flows beautifully and your data seems to back it. But if you give a broader definition of violence, including forms of 'structural violence' in social and economic systems, violence against other species in the form of factory farming and violence against nature in the form of environmental degradation, it is not so clear that we have become less violent.
His answer was basically that these things are not really violence as such, and he slightly ridiculed the environmental point by comparing killing somebody to polluting a stream, which is rather different from entire islands disappearing and their population being displaced, or Darfur being the first of many climate change wars.
Had Matthew not asked for questions to be brief, I would have linked my question back to Kant. If you reframe violence not as direct human on human contact, but on the way our exploitative instincts manifest in the economy, towards other species and towards the planet, is it not the case that democracy, trade and international community may be responsible for the increase in violence, of a form that threatens our way of life? This idea of the world as a 'resource to be used' rather than something to stand in reciprocal relation to resonate with McGilchrist's argument about the increasing dominance of a left hemisphere perspective on the world.
But then I listen to myself, and wonder if I am one of those people Pinker was talking about when he said that, for social critics, good news is bad news.
Maybe I am, but if the decline of violence is to be a measure of the success of modernity, as Pinker wants, then surely we need to give it its broadest possible definition?
Is it even possible that our violent impulses are being projected away from each other, and towards impersonal systems and structures that cannot retaliate?
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I agree he's using a narrow definition of 'violence' to make his conclusion true by definition.
I agree the definition of violence should include 'modern' forms of structural or systemic violence, and not just the ancient axe on skull type.
I don't agree that limiting 'violence' to human on human violence is the only way in which he's unrealistically narrowed the definition.
The severity, incidence and prevalence of harm caused by global economic structures and relationships which are knowingly and intentionally perpetuated by powerful countries and elites within those countries against the majority of people is probably even worse than the scale of violence committed in pre-modern times.
Statistics only prove a case if the measures are really relevant to the scientific question. I haven't actually read Pinker's book yet, only lots of articles about it, some even in favour, but it sounds like he's committing the classic fallacy of mistaking a statistical result for a scientific conclusion, designing the definition of the independent variable so that it proves the conclusion he wants by circular logic rather than actually tests his hypothesis.
thanks I'll have a look at that - I am constantly wavering in my conviction about mankind's influence and whether there will be natural mitigating planetary responses - and am keener on making sure that we start by just moving towards a better global species preservation perspective - OUR species...
Thanks Sarah. Judging by recent reactions I fear we might be in the minority!
Thanks again, I am inclined to think Pascal is wrong, for similar reasons that Descartes was wrong- they both think they can decouple human consciousness and reason from the material world in which it is embodied and embedded. I don't doubt nature can show indifference to mankind, indeed often does. Given the time, the main thing I would want to talk about is that being in communion with nature and recognising that we are part of it(I don't see why pantheism, or even panentheism has to be part of this) doesn't preclude knowing that it is indifferent to us- we can still love it, and believe it has intrinsic value, even if that knowledge and love is not reciprocated....indeed at some point, if the mystics are to be believed that sense of separation dissolves, so there is nothing left to reciprocate.
Hi Jonathon
"I think violence is something to do with objectification - about the severance of our sense of relatedness, and that relatedness does not have to be reciprocal."
Are you saying that any philosophical rejection of pantheism counts as violence? Regardless of how the rejector acts in the world? Pascal famously says that man is a "thinking reed". And that "if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this." Pascal is saying that the "severance of our sense of relatedness" with nature is simply the truth of the situation.
It could be that feeling more alienated from nature might actually make you more careful towards it. If you want to believe you're in communion with nature, you may not wish to face up to just how blindly destructive it can be. Where did the fossils which make fossil fuels come from? From earlier mass extinctions, like the Permian-Triassic.
(BTW doesn't "a sense of relatedness" presupposes sensation? Doesn't that mean we're already beyond a priori?)