Pinker and Wright vs The Forces of Darkness

[elfs]

The other day, I pointed to an essay in which Steven Pinker documents the slow decline in human violence over the past two millenia, both interstate and interpersonally. One of the commentors at the Edge's page (evolutionary psychologist John Tooby), states:

I'm also worried that the initial sort of liberal revolution that led to this sort of openness and a cosmopolitan direction also leads culturally to people in these democracies who are now largely unwilling to defend themselves. If you look at Europe, Secretary of Defense Gates said they are unable to sustain a campaign of more than a few weeks outside of Europe. ... even in the U.S., blue-staters are European. If you look at who goes into the army, there are all of these myths that it is stupid people or ignorant people or the poor, but it's not. It's middle class, rural people who are slightly better educated than average and who are religious. Those people are getting fewer in the liberal cosmopolitan revolution.

If the commentor is correct, then we are all doomed. (Disclaimer: I do not believe the commentor is correct.) "Red State" values tend to short-circuit the intellectual development necessary to sustain a high-tech culture; the sexual permissiveness of red state values (that is not a typo) (source; Christian pundit wringing his hands at the data) leads to a disruption of the average educational prospects of those who hold to them. Consequently, this makes them well-suited only to jobs nowadays more effectively done by machines, and thus leads to a generalized impoverishment of those who hold red-state values.

The consequences of this trend can be seen in the way that, of the top ten states that receive more federal money for projects that the state generates in the way of tax revenue, eight of them are considered "red states." Likewise, of the ten states that generate the most tax revenue compared to their tax of federal project money, seven are considered "blue states." (Source) Tooby's source of raw military material is economically dysfunctional in a world that demands less physical labor and more creativity.

It also leads, now that I think on it, to a contraction of perceived economic independence. Red state values include autarky (both at the personal and state level) as a virtue. In Robert Wright's thesis, which independently supports Pinker's, we start to value and perceive the humanity of those with whom we have a mutually beneficial economic arrangements, and it has been the spread of credit and interconnected webs of trust and commerce that have led to the spread of peace.

Pinker documents that Tooby's thesis is fundamentally flawed: the world has been getting progressively more peaceful over time. Both Pinker and Wright give us reason to believe that, barring a major catastrophe, this trend should continue. And the more people want the benefits of a modern technological society, the more pressure is put upon so-called "red-state" values to disappear entirely.

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

More to the point:

"now largely unwilling to defend themselves. If you look at Europe, Secretary of Defense Gates said they are unable to sustain a campaign of more than a few weeks outside of Europe..."

...so an unwillingness to fund a war outside your own soil is by definition an unwillingness to defend oneself? As I believe the kids say: ORLY?!

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Several other people have pointed out the dichotomy. I harbor a possibly unfair suspicion that Tooby views immigration as a form of warfare.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

(strangled, gagging noises)

(also, sadly, probably not unfair at all)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

There's one very minor flaw here, Elf. It's actually indirect, due to an ethonocentric view.

The indirect flaw is the assumption that, in the event of a major catastrophe, people will hunker down & isolate themselves and/or turn against one another. This is what we, in America, are told all of the time.

And that's the ethnocentric bit: that we are all only mere days away from Howling Madness given any sort of shortage. We in the U.S. are told that by our entertainment (Mad Max anyone?). We're also told that constantly by our churches.

But here's the thing: if that were reaaaalllly true, wouldn't half the population of India be eating each other?

I remember hearing a radio program about, oh, 7 years ago, that you can predict how a culture will react to catastrophe by how their impoverished behave on a day-to-day basis. The example cited was Turkey, and how people in the slums of Ankara pool their meager resources, Stone-Soup style, to make life more livable. The same thing happened nationwide after the earthquakes there last decade.

I could be misremembering this. Mah brain ain't what it once was. ^_^

But still… there are billions of people living in conditions shown in movies such as Mad Max, yet they aren't descending into Howling Madness.

Mind you, that doesn't mean that the U.S. wouldn't do so. But that's just America. Americans are not the entirety of the human race, and the human species is not exactly like Americans, despite what we're told. ^_^

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

But here's the thing: if that were reaaaalllly true, wouldn't half the population of India be eating each other?

No fair bringing up facts.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

^_^