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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Unavailable
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Unavailable
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Audiobook36 hours

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Written by Steven Pinker

Narrated by Arthur Morey

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, the bestselling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. In fact, we may be living in the most peaceable era yet.

Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: the genocides in the Old Testament and crucifixions in the New; the gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm; the British monarchs who beheaded their relatives and the American founders who dueled with their rivals.

Now the decline in these brutal practices can be quantified. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the numbers they did a few decades ago. Rape, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse-all substantially down.

How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed?

Pinker argues that the key to explaining the decline of violence is to understand the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away. Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

Pinker will force you to rethink your deepest beliefs about progress, modernity, and human nature. This gripping audiobook is sure to be among the most debated of the century so far.

This updated edition include bonus reference material provided as a PDF.

Editor's Note

See past violent headlines…

Bill Gates dubbed this “the most inspiring book I’ve ever read,” and with good reason. Throw all your presumptions about the prevalence of violence today, about the seeming decay of culture in this day and age, and much more out the window. Pinker’s book will help you traverse today’s media and political climates and will compel you to tear down the partisan barriers we’ve built through kind means.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 4, 2011
ISBN9781455839605
Unavailable
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Author

Steven Pinker

One of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today," Steven Pinker is the author of seven books, including How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate—both Pulitzer Prize finalists and winners of the William James Book Award. He is an award-winning researcher and teacher, and a frequent contributor to Time and the New York Times.

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Reviews for The Better Angels of Our Nature

Rating: 4.265027229872495 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another brilliant read from a wise old professor.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The subject matter is so interesting and important for Humanity to internalize, act on it, plus remember to enjoy the times we live in. Thank you!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very enlightening and informative, great explanation of complex concepts, highly recommend
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This book is far too long. Pinker seems to enjoy giving dozens of examples of violence and torture. I would have preferred moderation and modesty. (Qualities that I have found lacking persistently in his work) And as far as his peas for dinner problem is concerned, I suggest: try moving to Amsterdam. Also our most civilized academics happily shovel with knife and fork.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate, and Enlightenment Now.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Although it took me a long time to read, (this is a very dense book, well written but full of examples of statistics) I would recommend it to anyone and everyone.
    Steven Pinker proves that our world is getting less violent. This is flatly contradicted by our senses and experience every day. Any person alive now will be inundated with news of terrible violence around the world and believe that it's getting worse.
    All the proof is here. Examined from all sorts of angles, with doubts and attempts to disprove thrown in, as in all good science. But the proof still stands.
    It doesn't shy away from reality and includes all the atrocities and massacres but puts them into a greater context of all of humanity's history.
    This is one book that truly has changed my life, and it continues to protect me from tendencies to total cynicism and pessimism.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A masterly and authoritative work on the historical trends in violence and conflict within and between communit ies and polities. Like Piketty's volumes on Capital, one wishes the information and the arguments had been put forward in a more concise form! Indeed, each of the half dozen chapters could well be a medium sized book in itself, of a hundred pages or more. However, the style is direct and straightforward, and the arrangement of sections and arguments is logical and helpful, making it easy to read, even if a somewhat daunting undertaking, like a long road disappearing into the distance!
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    So close, yet, time really explained everything Pinker didn’t understand
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is another one of the masterpieces in the analysis of centuries of historical data on par with Sapiens and Guns Germs and Steel. It is a liberating work of considerable depth. It opens one’s eyes to the huge progress made and to the potential for huge progress still. It falls short on one count: western progress came at the expense of the less developed societies it exploited in the process of colonization. To date, the regime of rights that has quashed violence in western societies has not yet been extended to the developing world. Until that followup arrives, this superb audio production of a masterwork is very much worth the listen.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5

    This is one of the greatest books I have read in my life or that have ever been written.
    It is impossible to overstate the light it brings to any reasoning individual as to the progress humanity has brought upon it by and what has really given us the privilege to live in this era, and the hopes it brings for the future of humanity.
    I give a great THANKS to the great Professor Steven Pinker for the immense effort he made to give us and all the world such precious and clear guides for what is worth figthing for. It is a great legacy for which all of us who had the fortune to read it should be thankful.
    A great congratulations, please read Enlightment Now by same author. We hope to read more wisdom from you soon!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well written, precise and eye opening. A must read in my opinion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An outstanding case for modernity, free exchange, and civilization itself.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What an amazing book. just read it. it will improve our ability to understand the world, people and cultures. It will give you insights about crucial aspects of our civilizations, our history and our humanity. this book should be mandatory for all people!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    "Bright-Sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich blows this guy's book out of the park. And gross (as in disgusting), using Bill Gates as any kind of measure for what a good book is. Bill Gates is a man who was best pals with Jeffrey Epstein for many years - why is he held up as some kind of hero? Being super wealthy doesn't mean someone is good, or smart, or admirable, or that we should follow their examples or their prescriptions. Very often the opposite is true.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overwhelming argument that human society has become less violent over time. Nice to read some good news for a change. But proving it involves hundreds of pages about how awful people are to each other - fortunately less awful now than in the past.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic book. Worth the time invested. I listen to audio books during work and was highly entertained and engaged by this book.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I tomb of a book that well illustrates Pinker's vast knowledge of the area. Well researched and founded upon exstensive reviews of the evidence. Perhaps one of the most important contributions to understanding the evolution of human morality and humanity.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ever the optimist, psychologist Steven Pinker posits that the world is getting better, not worse in this very long (almost 900pages) book He is certainly correct in that we no longer burn witches at the stake, and the Catholic Church has abandoned The Inquisition. However, I would like to see him bring our a revised version to update our current society in the age of Trump & Brexit.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Excellent book. But somewhat long. At times it seemed like he wanted to bludgeon us with more and more data to prove his point. By the end I was finding it a little redundant and looking forward to the end.

    But overall, a book I learned a lot from.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Has the human condition gotten better over time? In this book, Steven Pinker argues that it has, mainly by showing how dreadful it was in the past. People still intentionally inflict unspeakable harm upon one another, but compared to the atrocities of the past, (some of which, such as animal cruelty, genocide, torture, and rape as a spoil of war, they did not even considered atrocities at the time) we have made considerable progress. In this lengthy book, Pinker provides details, data, and analysis demonstrating his point. At times, it seemed almost too much. Despite the almost painful level of detail, I found this a thoughtful and persuading mixture of history, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. I highly recommend it as a much-needed counter for the mistaken idea that humanity has somehow digressed from an idyllic past.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This lucid book can cheer the naive. It also may terrify those who wonder why if the world (or at least Western Society) is getting better there is an epidemic of mental health difficulties like depression, despair and anxiety. Are markers like an improvement in general physical health, reduction in violence, or material prosperity really the best indicators of progress? For this reason, although the book is good on some of the points Pinker observes, it is reductionistic.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The feelgood book of the year.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book, for me, had the power and logic to change my way of thinking.

    All thoughtful people in these Modern Times are torn between the values of Conservatism and Progressivism.

    Conservatives on the one hand seem to respect the Ten Commandments and traditional family values inherited from the past as an antidote to perceived violence and cultural decay of the present.

    On the other hand, Progressives see Inequality embedded in past societies as the source of all violence and evil.

    This book attempts to describe and quantify violence (that we all must agree is evil) throughout the ages of human evolution and across the geographical continents.

    The very big book raises hypotheses and then draws conclusions in the most scintillating, rich & dense language packed with so much knowledge and nuance in his field of cognitive science and psychology

    In my opinion Stephen Pinker would be the next step for followers of Jordan Peterson

    In the early chapters of the book there were descriptions of Medieval public executions by the most agonizing and prolonged torture that could be conceived by the mind of man, and the general public’s apparent acclimatization and participation in this phenomenal sadism. The confrontation of the reader with this truly shocking reality prepared him or her for the later chapters wherein Stephen Pinker introduces his hypotheses and conclusions as to why violence and evil has provably reduced dramatically and hopefully irreversibly since the advent of what is commonly known as the Enlightenment

    You will have to read and digest the book yourself in order to learn of his conclusions: I won’t spoil the ending for you.

    Suffice to say that this book in a hundred years might well be seen to be as as historically influential as the works of, for example, Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I picked up this book by chance in a bookstore, and did not know I was in for a reading adventure. With great sensitivity and a marvellous sense of humour, Pinker lays out the justification of his surprising thesis that violence in today's world is at its lowest level in human history. Along the way, he gives the reader lessons in the darker periods of world history, in the physiology of the human brain, and in the evolutionary reasons for why people act as they do.

    His insights into the role of reading as an important contributor to the pacification of the world, and to the indispensability of human reason to the betterment of our species are profund and inspiring.

    This was a true tour de force, introducing me to dozens of insights that never would have occurred to me otherwise. The book at 840 pages is somewhat of a long slog, but it was a very good investment of my reading time.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A Jaw dropping scope. The articulation of truly stunning and gratitude-inducing patterns. A nice ‘tuning-up’ of my understanding of our Enlightenment inheritance. And I’m the wake of it all, a hope for humanity in these bickering times as we proceed along the arc of the moral universe and time, towards a better world. Read this book (or listen!)

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a fascinating book, and many people will be surprised by what Pinker has to say. We routinely tell ourselves that we live in a violent world, that for all the comforts of civilization wars are more common, more terrible, and more fatal to non-combatants. Anyone who follows the news can cite examples of terrible atrocities that are the basis of our certainty that the human race is demonstrating a destructiveness and depravity towards other human beings unknown in the simpler, gentler past when knights and armsmen fought other knights and armsmen, leaving the civilians largely undisturbed.

    Stephen Pinker explains, with examples, details, and cites to original sources and current research, that we have it all wrong, and the past was a far more violent place than we typically imagine, or than we experience day to day in all but the most violent places on Earth now. And those "most violent places" aren't our modern cities in developed countries.

    He examines the levels of violence and the rates of violent death in primitive human hunter-gatherer communities, mediaeval Europe, and modern hunter-gatherer societies. He mines information from physical anthropology, historical records, recorded causes of death, death rates and causes of death in modern hunter-gatherer communities, and the trend is both clear and quite different from what our reflexive biases often tell us. Hunter-gatherer cultures generally have startlingly, even shockingly, high rates of death by violence. This stems from raids and conflicts with neighboring groups, the need to have a reputation for being too strong to attack and/or likely to take revenge if attacked, and other conflicts that, in the absence of a functioning government, individuals have to prevent or resolve for themselves.

    He traces the significantly lower but still high rates of violence in early agricultural settlements, as government begins to evolve but is still, itself, pretty violent, and then the evolution of things that start to resemble the modern state. We are introduced to Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and how their theories both described and influenced the growth of government, Hobbes' "Leviathan," and the concomitant increase in self-control and decrease in private violence. He describes in enough detail to make the point the behavior that resulted from the expectation that mediaeval armies would feed and pay themselves by "living off the land," i.e., raiding villagers, and damage the enemy's wealth by burning the fields and killing the villagers. Torture was also used routinely, openly--and often as a form of public entertainment.

    Fewer mediaeval Europeans were likely to die by violence than hunter-gatherers, but it was still a shockingly violent time by modern standards.

    Pinker marshals evidence from the fields of sociology and psychology as we move closer to our own time, as well as crime statistics, war records, causes of death, etc. He does not shirk examining the effects of the two World Wars in the past century, as well as civil wars, the Rwanda genocide, and other painful modern episodes.

    He also looks at less obvious declines in violence, such as hookless fly fishing and the elimination of many kinds of "entertainment" that used to be taken for granted. The banning of dodgeball by some schools and summer camps, and speech codes at universities are discussed as ridiculous extremes that are nevertheless simple overshoots of what are generally beneficial trends.

    Stephen Pinker has a track record of excellent books using psychology and sociology to examine major aspects of modern life in an interesting, informative, and enlightening way. He's done it again, and in this volume lays out a powerful case that the growth of effective government, the development of political forms that placed a premium on self-control, the growth of modern literature (and, eventually, movies, tv, and the internet), democracy, open societies, and international trade have all contributed to dramatically lowering rates of violence and creating a startlingly safe and peaceful world--for now. He makes no claim that we've changed human nature, or that the trends that have produced our current peacefulness could not be reversed.

    This a compelling, enlightening, and highly readable book.

    Highly recommended.

    I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I first became interested in this book through a TED talk Pinker gave on the same subject. It was a fascinating idea (that violence that greatly decreased over time) and one that struck me as true fairly quickly. Picking up the book, I was shocked by the many instances of barbarism of past centuries that modern persons would never even consider. Some may find the length of the book and Pinker's many examples for each point excessive, but I greatly enjoyed the thorough exploration of the myriad strange forms human violence has taken. Pinker's comparison of cultures separated by time and space was well done and backed up by a lot of statistical evidence. (He was also careful analyze the possible limitations of the statistics he cited.)

    However, where the book fell apart for me was in Pinker's reliance on evolutionary psychology, particularly in relation to differences between genders and between races. Evo-psych is not a discipline I have a lot of respect for (most of its claims are unfalsifiable and supported by little to no evidence) but I pride myself on being openminded and was willing to hear out Pinker's evidence that this differences are primarily the product of evolution, not society. The only problem was he never presented any.

    If I was being generous, I might say he provided some anecdotal evidence, but as far as hard, scientific evidence, crickets. It was actually quite jarring in contrast to heavily evidence-backed claims of the rest of the book. I hadn't been too familiar with Pinker's work before picking this up, but it turns out he has a bit of a reputation for this sort of thing.

    I still think there are many good ideas in the book but Pinker's embracing of some very morally and scientifically dubious ones calls the whole thing into question.

    2 people found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    A half-baked book using stories from pseudoscience and made up fairy tales. Do yourself a favor and take a pass
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I abandoned this book when it got way too deep into the statistical weeks for my comfort, but the author explores an interesting thesis. He posits that mankind and our cultures have become less violent rather than more violent. While media coverage focuses our attention on both individual incidents and on terrorist attacks, mass murder, and outright warfare and their resulting carnage, violence is less likely to directly touch our lives that at any time in the past.This might seem counterintuitive, given that the first half of the 20th Century saw the two most destructive wars in human history. He suggests that this needs to be put in perspective by considering the world's continually growing perspective. He provides hard data to support his thesis. More interestingly, he explores reasons for the gentling of our natures. Much of it traces back to the Great Enlightenment and our growing awareness that other individuals share the same emotions as we do.Still, too much detail for me.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed his arguments and his collection of data from different historical surveys and textual study, but I found the overall structure of the book longwinded and incoherent. Pinker jumped around throughout history, when the obvious structure of the book would follow time, as violence has decreased through time. Also, many of his causal explanations were lacking.

    1 person found this helpful