James only thinks he's joking...
Sep. 28th, 2011 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThe other day, PZ Myers pointed me to an essay at The Edge in which Steven Pinker says:
I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, I think we need to look at the incentives to act non-violently, none of which Pinker illuminates. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright finds that incentive: as our lives get better, we compete for the resources to make our lives better. At some point, our economic well-being becomes tied to infrastructure, and the broader than infrastructure, the more the economic well-being of others becomes our concern. To the extent that violence disrupts the economic well-being of others, violence disrupts our own economic well-being. We are incentivized to reduce violence in order to reduce the destruction of assets and capital that go along with the maintenance of our well-being.
Wright asserts (and provides better evidence than Pinker) that we only start to view other people as "human" when our economic well-being is tightly intertwined with theirs. (Hence John Derbyshire's infamous "I don't care about Egyptians" comment.) That's the incentive.
James Nicoll only thinks that he's kidding when he writes:
Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence. The decline of violence, to be sure, has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero (to put it mildly); and it is not guaranteed to continue. But I hope to convince you that it’s a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars and perpetration of genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.Pinker then points to an "escalator of reason" in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: How Violence Has Declined, claiming "As literacy, education, and the intensity of public discourse increase, people are encouraged to think more abstractly and more universally, and that will inevitably push in the direction of a reduction of violence."
I don't think that's the case at all. In fact, I think we need to look at the incentives to act non-violently, none of which Pinker illuminates. In The Moral Animal, Robert Wright finds that incentive: as our lives get better, we compete for the resources to make our lives better. At some point, our economic well-being becomes tied to infrastructure, and the broader than infrastructure, the more the economic well-being of others becomes our concern. To the extent that violence disrupts the economic well-being of others, violence disrupts our own economic well-being. We are incentivized to reduce violence in order to reduce the destruction of assets and capital that go along with the maintenance of our well-being.
Wright asserts (and provides better evidence than Pinker) that we only start to view other people as "human" when our economic well-being is tightly intertwined with theirs. (Hence John Derbyshire's infamous "I don't care about Egyptians" comment.) That's the incentive.
James Nicoll only thinks that he's kidding when he writes:
The implications of this effete and decadent eurosocialism for the aspirations of those hoping to find themselves glorious overlords of a savage land filled with SCAdians, Lord the Rings fans and Wiccans scarcely needs explanation!
