WEBVTT 00:00:00.777 --> 00:00:04.559 Images like this, from the Auschwitz concentration camp, 00:00:04.583 --> 00:00:08.706 have been seared into our consciousness during the 20th century 00:00:08.730 --> 00:00:14.620 and have given us a new understanding of who we are, 00:00:14.644 --> 00:00:17.843 where we've come from and the times we live in. 00:00:17.867 --> 00:00:21.464 During the 20th century, we witnessed the atrocities 00:00:21.488 --> 00:00:26.959 of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocides, 00:00:26.983 --> 00:00:30.460 and even though the 21st century is only seven years old, 00:00:30.484 --> 00:00:34.285 we have already witnessed an ongoing genocide in Darfur 00:00:34.309 --> 00:00:36.507 and the daily horrors of Iraq. 00:00:37.087 --> 00:00:40.671 This has led to a common understanding of our situation, 00:00:40.695 --> 00:00:43.808 namely, that modernity has brought us terrible violence, 00:00:43.832 --> 00:00:47.100 and perhaps that native peoples lived in a state of harmony 00:00:47.124 --> 00:00:50.562 that we have departed from, to our peril. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:50.586 --> 00:00:54.506 Here is an example from an op-ed on Thanksgiving, 00:00:54.530 --> 00:00:56.682 in the "Boston Globe" a couple of years ago, 00:00:56.706 --> 00:01:00.085 where the writer wrote, "The Indian life was a difficult one, 00:01:00.109 --> 00:01:01.976 but there were no employment problems, 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:05.023 community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, 00:01:05.047 --> 00:01:06.697 crime nearly nonexistent. 00:01:06.721 --> 00:01:10.547 What warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic 00:01:10.571 --> 00:01:13.932 and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter." 00:01:13.956 --> 00:01:16.451 Now you're all familiar with this treacle. 00:01:16.475 --> 00:01:18.780 We teach it to our children. 00:01:18.804 --> 00:01:21.927 We hear it on television and in storybooks. 00:01:21.951 --> 00:01:26.724 Now, the original title of this session was, "Everything You Know is Wrong," 00:01:26.748 --> 00:01:28.343 and I'm going to present evidence 00:01:28.367 --> 00:01:31.346 that this particular part of our common understanding is wrong, 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:35.452 that, in fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are, 00:01:35.476 --> 00:01:39.239 that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, 00:01:39.263 --> 00:01:42.317 and that today, we are probably living in the most peaceful time 00:01:42.341 --> 00:01:44.157 in our species's existence. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:44.181 --> 00:01:46.801 Now in the decade of Darfur and Iraq, 00:01:46.825 --> 00:01:51.790 a statement like that might seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene, 00:01:51.814 --> 00:01:57.910 but I'm going to try to convince you that that is the correct picture. 00:01:57.934 --> 00:02:01.002 The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. 00:02:01.026 --> 00:02:04.672 You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades 00:02:04.696 --> 00:02:06.183 and over years, 00:02:06.207 --> 00:02:08.535 although there seems to have been a tipping point 00:02:08.559 --> 00:02:11.908 at the onset of the Age of Reason in the 16th century. 00:02:11.932 --> 00:02:15.539 One sees it all over the world, although not homogeneously. 00:02:15.563 --> 00:02:17.881 It's especially evident in the West, 00:02:17.905 --> 00:02:21.817 beginning with England and Holland around the time of the Enlightenment. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:21.841 --> 00:02:25.809 Let me take you on a journey of several powers of 10 -- 00:02:25.833 --> 00:02:28.127 from the millennium scale to the year scale -- 00:02:28.151 --> 00:02:30.282 to try to persuade you of this. 00:02:30.306 --> 00:02:33.930 Until 10,000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, 00:02:33.954 --> 00:02:36.582 without permanent settlements or government. 00:02:36.606 --> 00:02:41.945 And this is the state that's commonly thought to be one of primordial harmony. 00:02:41.969 --> 00:02:45.507 But the archaeologist Lawrence Keeley, 00:02:45.531 --> 00:02:50.870 looking at casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers, 00:02:50.894 --> 00:02:54.082 which is our best source of evidence about this way of life, 00:02:54.106 --> 00:02:56.600 has shown a rather different conclusion. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:56.624 --> 00:03:00.301 Here is a graph that he put together, 00:03:00.325 --> 00:03:03.418 showing the percentage of male deaths due to warfare 00:03:03.442 --> 00:03:07.785 in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies. 00:03:07.809 --> 00:03:14.197 The red bars correspond to the likelihood that a man will die 00:03:14.221 --> 00:03:15.716 at the hands of another man, 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:18.652 as opposed to passing away of natural causes, 00:03:18.676 --> 00:03:22.917 in a variety of foraging societies in the New Guinea highlands 00:03:22.941 --> 00:03:24.865 and the Amazon rain forest. 00:03:24.889 --> 00:03:28.510 And they range from a rate of almost a 60 percent chance that a man will die 00:03:28.534 --> 00:03:29.898 at the hands of another man 00:03:29.922 --> 00:03:34.177 to, in the case of the Gebusi, only a 15 percent chance. 00:03:34.201 --> 00:03:37.269 The tiny little blue bar in the lower left-hand corner 00:03:37.293 --> 00:03:40.856 plots the corresponding statistic from the United States and Europe 00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:42.194 in the 20th century, 00:03:42.218 --> 00:03:45.893 and it includes all the deaths of both World Wars. 00:03:45.917 --> 00:03:51.080 If the death rate in tribal warfare had prevailed during the 20th century, 00:03:51.104 --> 00:03:54.976 there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:55.844 --> 00:03:57.629 Also on the millennium scale, 00:03:57.653 --> 00:04:01.051 we can look at the way of life of early civilizations, 00:04:01.075 --> 00:04:04.142 such as the ones described in the Bible. 00:04:04.166 --> 00:04:07.976 And in this supposed source of our moral values, 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:12.010 one can read descriptions of what was expected in warfare, 00:04:12.034 --> 00:04:14.762 such as the following, from Numbers 31: 00:04:14.786 --> 00:04:18.068 "And they warred against the Midianites as the Lord commanded Moses, 00:04:18.092 --> 00:04:20.270 and they slew all the males. 00:04:20.294 --> 00:04:23.586 And Moses said unto them, 'Have you saved all the women alive? 00:04:23.610 --> 00:04:26.644 Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones 00:04:26.668 --> 00:04:29.523 and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him, 00:04:29.547 --> 00:04:33.010 but all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, 00:04:33.034 --> 00:04:34.527 keep alive for yourselves.'" 00:04:34.551 --> 00:04:39.281 In other words: kill the men, kill the children. 00:04:39.305 --> 00:04:43.072 If you see any virgins, then you can keep them alive so that you can rape them. 00:04:43.096 --> 00:04:47.675 And you can find four or five passages in the Bible of this ilk. 00:04:47.699 --> 00:04:53.379 Also in the Bible, one sees that the death penalty was the accepted punishment 00:04:53.403 --> 00:04:55.365 for crimes such as homosexuality, 00:04:55.389 --> 00:04:59.591 adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, talking back to your parents -- NOTE Paragraph 00:04:59.615 --> 00:05:00.668 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:00.692 --> 00:05:02.822 and picking up sticks on the Sabbath. 00:05:03.576 --> 00:05:07.611 Well, let's click the zoom lens down one order of magnitude 00:05:07.635 --> 00:05:09.577 and look at the century scale. 00:05:09.601 --> 00:05:13.492 Now, although we don't have statistics for warfare 00:05:13.516 --> 00:05:15.722 throughout the Middle Ages to modern times, 00:05:15.746 --> 00:05:17.651 we know just from conventional history 00:05:17.675 --> 00:05:20.475 that the evidence was under our nose all along 00:05:20.499 --> 00:05:24.950 that there has been a reduction in socially sanctioned forms of violence. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:24.974 --> 00:05:29.440 For example, any social history will reveal that mutilation and torture 00:05:29.464 --> 00:05:31.609 were routine forms of criminal punishment. 00:05:31.633 --> 00:05:34.290 The kind of infraction today that would give you a fine, 00:05:34.314 --> 00:05:37.873 in those days, would result in your tongue being cut out, 00:05:37.897 --> 00:05:40.253 your ears being cut off, you being blinded, 00:05:40.277 --> 00:05:42.562 a hand being chopped off and so on. 00:05:42.586 --> 00:05:46.841 There were numerous ingenious forms of sadistic capital punishment: 00:05:46.865 --> 00:05:49.976 burning at the stake, disemboweling, breaking on the wheel, 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.785 being pulled apart by horses and so on. 00:05:52.809 --> 00:05:57.330 The death penalty was a sanction for a long list of nonviolent crimes: 00:05:57.354 --> 00:06:00.606 criticizing the king, stealing a loaf of bread. 00:06:00.630 --> 00:06:04.451 Slavery, of course, was the preferred labor-saving device, 00:06:04.475 --> 00:06:07.518 and cruelty was a popular form of entertainment. 00:06:07.542 --> 00:06:10.976 Perhaps the most vivid example was the practice of cat burning, 00:06:11.000 --> 00:06:15.611 in which a cat was hoisted on a stage and lowered in a sling into a fire, 00:06:15.635 --> 00:06:20.769 and the spectators shrieked in laughter as the cat, howling in pain, 00:06:20.793 --> 00:06:22.360 was burned to death. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:23.138 --> 00:06:24.971 What about one-on-one murder? 00:06:24.995 --> 00:06:26.859 Well, there, there are good statistics, 00:06:26.883 --> 00:06:32.518 because many municipalities recorded the cause of death. 00:06:32.542 --> 00:06:36.563 The criminologist Manuel Eisner 00:06:36.587 --> 00:06:39.603 scoured all of the historical records across Europe 00:06:39.627 --> 00:06:45.123 for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county that he could find, 00:06:45.147 --> 00:06:47.548 and then he supplemented them with national data 00:06:47.572 --> 00:06:49.961 when nations started keeping statistics. 00:06:49.985 --> 00:06:53.976 He plotted on a logarithmic scale, 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:00.975 going from 100 deaths per 100,000 people per year, 00:07:00.999 --> 00:07:05.418 which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages, 00:07:05.442 --> 00:07:08.043 and the figure plummets down 00:07:08.067 --> 00:07:12.939 to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year 00:07:12.963 --> 00:07:16.094 in seven or eight European countries. 00:07:16.118 --> 00:07:18.689 Then, there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. 00:07:18.713 --> 00:07:22.549 The people who said that rock and roll would lead to the decline of moral values 00:07:22.573 --> 00:07:24.976 actually had a grain of truth to that. 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:29.762 But there was a decline from at least two orders of magnitude in homicide 00:07:29.786 --> 00:07:31.690 from the Middle Ages to the present, 00:07:31.714 --> 00:07:35.929 and the elbow occurred in the early 16th century. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:36.746 --> 00:07:39.262 Let's click down now to the decade scale. 00:07:39.286 --> 00:07:43.367 According to nongovernmental organizations that keep such statistics, 00:07:43.391 --> 00:07:46.234 since 1945, in Europe and the Americas, 00:07:46.258 --> 00:07:49.976 there has been a steep decline in interstate wars, 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:52.763 in deadly ethnic riots or pogroms 00:07:52.787 --> 00:07:56.284 and in military coups, even in South America. 00:07:56.308 --> 00:08:01.542 Worldwide, there's been a steep decline in deaths in interstate wars. 00:08:01.566 --> 00:08:06.186 The yellow bars here show the number of deaths per war per year 00:08:06.210 --> 00:08:08.634 from 1950 to the present. 00:08:08.658 --> 00:08:11.361 And, as you can see, the death rate goes down 00:08:11.385 --> 00:08:15.809 from 65,000 deaths per conflict per year in the 1950s 00:08:15.833 --> 00:08:20.088 to less than 2,000 deaths per conflict per year in this decade, 00:08:20.112 --> 00:08:21.549 as horrific as it is. 00:08:21.573 --> 00:08:24.976 Even in the year scale, one can see a decline of violence. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.657 Since the end of the Cold War, there have been fewer civil wars, 00:08:28.681 --> 00:08:34.527 fewer genocides -- indeed, a 90 percent reduction since post-World War II highs -- 00:08:34.551 --> 00:08:40.113 and even a reversal of the 1960s uptick in homicide and violent crime. 00:08:40.137 --> 00:08:43.770 This is from the FBI uniform crime statistics. 00:08:43.794 --> 00:08:47.880 You can see that there's a fairly low rate of violence in the '50s and the '60s, 00:08:47.904 --> 00:08:51.318 then it soared upward for several decades 00:08:51.342 --> 00:08:55.018 and began a precipitous decline, starting in the 1990s, 00:08:55.042 --> 00:08:59.976 so that it went back to the level that was last enjoyed in 1960. 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:02.305 President Clinton, if you're here: thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:02.329 --> 00:09:04.035 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:04.059 --> 00:09:05.210 So the question is: 00:09:05.234 --> 00:09:09.429 Why are so many people so wrong about something so important? 00:09:09.453 --> 00:09:11.279 I think there are a number of reasons. 00:09:11.303 --> 00:09:13.216 One of them is we have better reporting. 00:09:13.240 --> 00:09:16.930 The Associated Press is a better chronicler of wars 00:09:16.954 --> 00:09:18.395 over the surface of the earth 00:09:18.419 --> 00:09:20.327 than 16th-century monks were. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:20.351 --> 00:09:21.387 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:21.411 --> 00:09:22.819 There's a cognitive illusion. 00:09:22.843 --> 00:09:24.921 We cognitive psychologists know 00:09:24.945 --> 00:09:30.249 that the easier it is to recall specific instances of something, 00:09:30.273 --> 00:09:32.976 the higher the probability that you assign to it. 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:37.163 Things that we read about in the paper with gory footage 00:09:37.187 --> 00:09:41.780 burn into memory more than reports of a lot more people dying 00:09:41.804 --> 00:09:43.544 in their beds of old age. 00:09:44.886 --> 00:09:48.161 There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets; 00:09:48.185 --> 00:09:53.180 no one ever attracted advocates and donors 00:09:53.204 --> 00:09:56.177 by saying, "Things just seem to be getting better and better." NOTE Paragraph 00:09:56.201 --> 00:09:57.287 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:57.311 --> 00:09:59.907 There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples 00:09:59.931 --> 00:10:01.581 in modern intellectual life, 00:10:01.605 --> 00:10:04.702 and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good 00:10:04.726 --> 00:10:06.042 about Western culture. 00:10:06.066 --> 00:10:11.636 And, of course, our change in standards can outpace the change in behavior. 00:10:11.660 --> 00:10:13.851 One of the reasons violence went down 00:10:13.875 --> 00:10:17.727 is that people got sick of the carnage and cruelty in their time. 00:10:17.751 --> 00:10:19.851 That's a process that seems to be continuing, 00:10:19.875 --> 00:10:24.130 but if it outstrips behavior by the standards of the day, 00:10:24.154 --> 00:10:27.277 things always look more barbaric than they would have been 00:10:27.301 --> 00:10:28.844 by historic standards. 00:10:28.868 --> 00:10:31.570 So today, we get exercised -- and rightly so -- 00:10:31.594 --> 00:10:38.149 if a handful of murderers get executed by lethal injection in Texas 00:10:38.173 --> 00:10:40.987 after a 15-year appeal process. 00:10:41.011 --> 00:10:43.972 We don't consider that a couple of hundred years ago, 00:10:43.996 --> 00:10:48.303 they may have been burned at the stake for criticizing the king after a trial 00:10:48.327 --> 00:10:50.066 that lasted 10 minutes, 00:10:50.090 --> 00:10:53.365 and indeed, that that would have been repeated over and over again. 00:10:53.389 --> 00:10:55.825 Today, we look at capital punishment 00:10:55.849 --> 00:10:59.364 as evidence of how low our behavior can sink, 00:10:59.388 --> 00:11:02.001 rather than how high our standards have risen. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:02.777 --> 00:11:05.231 Well, why has violence declined? 00:11:05.255 --> 00:11:10.015 No one really knows, but I have read four explanations, 00:11:10.039 --> 00:11:13.508 all of which, I think, have some grain of plausibility. 00:11:13.532 --> 00:11:16.376 The first is: maybe Thomas Hobbes got it right. 00:11:16.400 --> 00:11:17.557 He was the one who said 00:11:17.581 --> 00:11:21.478 that life in a state of nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, 00:11:21.502 --> 00:11:22.989 brutish and short." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:23.013 --> 00:11:24.038 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:24.062 --> 00:11:26.356 Not because, he argued, 00:11:26.380 --> 00:11:29.282 humans have some primordial thirst for blood 00:11:29.306 --> 00:11:32.762 or aggressive instinct or territorial imperative, 00:11:32.786 --> 00:11:35.089 but because of the logic of anarchy. 00:11:35.113 --> 00:11:36.270 In a state of anarchy, 00:11:36.294 --> 00:11:40.153 there's a constant temptation to invade your neighbors preemptively, 00:11:40.177 --> 00:11:41.639 before they invade you. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:41.663 --> 00:11:44.161 More recently, Thomas Schelling gives the analogy 00:11:44.185 --> 00:11:46.765 of a homeowner who hears a rustling in the basement. 00:11:46.789 --> 00:11:49.787 Being a good American, he has a pistol in the nightstand, 00:11:49.811 --> 00:11:51.921 pulls out his gun, walks down the stairs. 00:11:51.945 --> 00:11:55.063 And what does he see but a burglar with a gun in his hand? 00:11:55.087 --> 00:11:56.724 Now, each one of them is thinking, 00:11:56.748 --> 00:12:00.096 "I don't really want to kill that guy, but he's about to kill me. 00:12:00.120 --> 00:12:04.254 Maybe I had better shoot him before he shoots me, 00:12:04.278 --> 00:12:06.770 especially since, even if he doesn't want to kill me, 00:12:06.794 --> 00:12:10.514 he's probably worrying right now that I might kill him before he kills me." 00:12:10.538 --> 00:12:11.696 And so on. 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:16.952 Hunter-gatherer peoples explicitly go through this train of thought 00:12:16.976 --> 00:12:20.854 and will often raid their neighbors out of fear of being raided first. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:21.631 --> 00:12:25.678 Now, one way of dealing with this problem is by deterrence. 00:12:25.702 --> 00:12:29.976 You don't strike first, but you have a publicly announced policy 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:33.433 that you will retaliate savagely if you are invaded. 00:12:33.457 --> 00:12:38.573 The only thing is that it's liable to having its bluff called, 00:12:38.597 --> 00:12:41.916 and therefore can only work if it's credible. 00:12:41.940 --> 00:12:46.354 To make it credible, you must avenge all insults and settle all scores, 00:12:46.378 --> 00:12:49.542 which leads to the cycles of bloody vendetta. 00:12:49.566 --> 00:12:52.759 Life becomes an episode of "The Sopranos." 00:12:52.783 --> 00:12:55.557 Hobbes's solution, "Leviathan," 00:12:55.581 --> 00:12:59.359 was that if authority for the legitimate use of violence 00:12:59.383 --> 00:13:04.059 was vested in a single democratic agency -- a leviathan -- 00:13:04.083 --> 00:13:07.541 then such a state can reduce the temptation of attack, 00:13:07.565 --> 00:13:09.976 because any kind of aggression will be punished, 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:13.824 leaving its profitability zero. 00:13:13.848 --> 00:13:17.071 That would remove the temptation to invade preemptively 00:13:17.095 --> 00:13:19.500 out of fear of them attacking you first. 00:13:19.524 --> 00:13:23.019 It removes the need for a hair trigger for retaliation 00:13:23.043 --> 00:13:25.350 to make your deterrent threat credible, 00:13:25.374 --> 00:13:28.191 and therefore, it would lead to a state of peace. 00:13:28.215 --> 00:13:32.111 Eisner -- the man who plotted the homicide rates 00:13:32.135 --> 00:13:35.396 that you failed to see in the earlier slide -- 00:13:35.420 --> 00:13:39.249 argued that the timing of the decline of homicide in Europe 00:13:39.273 --> 00:13:43.361 coincided with the rise of centralized states. 00:13:43.385 --> 00:13:46.242 So that's a bit of a support for the leviathan theory. 00:13:46.266 --> 00:13:50.344 Also supporting it is the fact that we today see eruptions of violence 00:13:50.368 --> 00:13:54.589 in zones of anarchy, in failed states, collapsed empires, 00:13:54.613 --> 00:13:58.820 frontier regions, mafias, street gangs and so on. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:59.770 --> 00:14:02.808 The second explanation is that in many times and places, 00:14:02.832 --> 00:14:06.811 there is a widespread sentiment that life is cheap. 00:14:06.835 --> 00:14:12.317 In earlier times, when suffering and early death were common in one's own life, 00:14:12.341 --> 00:14:16.157 one has fewer compunctions about inflicting them on others. 00:14:16.181 --> 00:14:20.688 And as technology and economic efficiency make life longer and more pleasant, 00:14:20.712 --> 00:14:22.976 one puts a higher value on life in general. 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:26.531 This was an argument from the political scientist James Payne. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:27.244 --> 00:14:31.732 A third explanation invokes the concept of a nonzero-sum game, 00:14:31.756 --> 00:14:36.376 and was worked out in the book "Nonzero" by the journalist Robert Wright. 00:14:36.400 --> 00:14:39.032 Wright points out that, in certain circumstances, 00:14:39.056 --> 00:14:43.722 cooperation or nonviolence can benefit both parties in an interaction, 00:14:43.746 --> 00:14:49.044 such as gains in trade when two parties trade their surpluses 00:14:49.068 --> 00:14:50.770 and both come out ahead, 00:14:50.794 --> 00:14:53.291 or when two parties lay down their arms 00:14:53.315 --> 00:14:55.378 and split the so-called peace dividend 00:14:55.402 --> 00:14:58.825 that results in them not having to fight the whole time. 00:14:58.849 --> 00:15:01.613 Wright argues that technology has increased the number 00:15:01.637 --> 00:15:05.849 of positive-sum games that humans tend to be embroiled in, 00:15:05.873 --> 00:15:09.430 by allowing the trade of goods, services and ideas 00:15:09.454 --> 00:15:12.868 over longer distances and among larger groups of people. 00:15:12.892 --> 00:15:16.665 The result is that other people become more valuable alive than dead, 00:15:16.689 --> 00:15:20.209 and violence declines for selfish reasons. 00:15:20.233 --> 00:15:21.600 As Wright put it, 00:15:21.624 --> 00:15:25.505 "Among the many reasons that I think that we should not bomb the Japanese 00:15:25.529 --> 00:15:27.140 is that they built my minivan." NOTE Paragraph 00:15:27.164 --> 00:15:28.822 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:29.321 --> 00:15:33.411 The fourth explanation is captured in the title of a book 00:15:33.435 --> 00:15:36.976 called "The Expanding Circle," by the philosopher Peter Singer, 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:42.215 who argues that evolution bequeathed humans with a sense of empathy, 00:15:42.239 --> 00:15:48.008 an ability to treat other people's interests as comparable to one's own. 00:15:48.032 --> 00:15:49.591 Unfortunately, by default, 00:15:49.615 --> 00:15:53.130 we apply it only to a very narrow circle of friends and family. 00:15:53.154 --> 00:15:56.233 People outside that circle are treated as subhuman 00:15:56.257 --> 00:15:58.807 and can be exploited with impunity. 00:15:58.831 --> 00:16:02.173 But, over history, the circle has expanded. 00:16:02.197 --> 00:16:04.512 One can see, in historical record, 00:16:04.536 --> 00:16:08.897 it expanding from the village, to the clan, to the tribe, to the nation, 00:16:08.921 --> 00:16:12.390 to other races, to both sexes and, in Singer's own arguments, 00:16:12.414 --> 00:16:15.756 something that we should extend to other sentient species. 00:16:15.780 --> 00:16:18.118 So the question is: 00:16:18.142 --> 00:16:20.976 If this has happened, what has powered that expansion? NOTE Paragraph 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:22.970 And there are a number of possibilities, 00:16:22.994 --> 00:16:25.866 such as increasing circles of reciprocity 00:16:25.890 --> 00:16:28.664 in the sense that Robert Wright argues for. 00:16:28.688 --> 00:16:30.528 The logic of the Golden Rule -- 00:16:30.552 --> 00:16:34.133 the more you think about and interact with other people, 00:16:34.157 --> 00:16:41.127 the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, 00:16:41.151 --> 00:16:43.363 at least not if you want them to listen to you. 00:16:43.387 --> 00:16:47.412 You can't say that my interests are special compared to yours 00:16:47.436 --> 00:16:48.699 any more than you can say 00:16:48.723 --> 00:16:52.761 the particular spot that I'm standing on is a unique part of the universe 00:16:52.785 --> 00:16:56.405 because I happen to be standing on it that very minute. 00:16:56.429 --> 00:17:00.330 It may also be powered by cosmopolitanism, by histories 00:17:00.354 --> 00:17:05.340 and journalism and memoirs and realistic fiction and travel and literacy, 00:17:05.364 --> 00:17:09.196 which allows you to project yourself into the lives of other people 00:17:09.220 --> 00:17:12.161 that formerly you may have treated as subhuman, 00:17:12.185 --> 00:17:17.093 and also to realize the accidental contingency of your own station in life, 00:17:17.117 --> 00:17:19.827 the sense that "There but for fortune go I." NOTE Paragraph 00:17:20.785 --> 00:17:22.486 Whatever its causes, 00:17:22.510 --> 00:17:26.207 the decline of violence, I think, has profound implications. 00:17:26.231 --> 00:17:29.475 It should force us to ask not just, "Why is there war?" 00:17:29.499 --> 00:17:32.096 but also, "Why is there peace?" 00:17:32.120 --> 00:17:34.052 Not just, "What are we doing wrong?" 00:17:34.076 --> 00:17:36.752 but also, "What have we been doing right?" 00:17:36.776 --> 00:17:38.855 Because we have been doing something right, 00:17:38.879 --> 00:17:41.274 and it sure would be good to find out what it is. 00:17:41.298 --> 00:17:42.499 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:42.523 --> 00:17:49.438 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:17:52.067 --> 00:17:55.000 Chris Anderson: I loved that talk. 00:17:55.024 --> 00:17:57.414 I think a lot of people here in the room would say 00:17:57.438 --> 00:18:00.523 that that expansion you were talking about, 00:18:00.547 --> 00:18:02.005 that Peter Singer talks about, 00:18:02.029 --> 00:18:05.683 is also driven just by technology, by greater visibility of the other 00:18:05.707 --> 00:18:08.460 and the sense that the world is therefore getting smaller. 00:18:08.484 --> 00:18:10.925 I mean, is that also a grain of truth? NOTE Paragraph 00:18:10.949 --> 00:18:12.316 Steven Pinker: Very much. 00:18:12.340 --> 00:18:14.730 It would fit both in Wright's theory, 00:18:14.754 --> 00:18:18.996 that it allows us to enjoy the benefits of cooperation 00:18:19.020 --> 00:18:21.005 over larger and larger circles. 00:18:21.029 --> 00:18:26.292 But also, I think it helps us imagine what it's like to be someone else. 00:18:26.316 --> 00:18:28.670 I think when you read of these horrific tortures 00:18:28.694 --> 00:18:30.441 that were common in the Middle Ages, 00:18:30.465 --> 00:18:32.784 you think, "How could they possibly have done it, 00:18:32.808 --> 00:18:35.181 how could they not have empathized with the person 00:18:35.205 --> 00:18:36.567 that they're disemboweling?" 00:18:36.591 --> 00:18:41.115 But clearly, as far as they're concerned, this is just an alien being 00:18:41.139 --> 00:18:43.294 that does not have feelings akin to their own. 00:18:43.318 --> 00:18:45.208 Anything, I think, that makes it easier 00:18:45.232 --> 00:18:47.652 to imagine trading places with someone else 00:18:47.676 --> 00:18:50.436 means that it increases your moral consideration 00:18:50.460 --> 00:18:51.666 to that other person. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:51.690 --> 00:18:54.939 CA: I'd love every news media owner to hear that talk 00:18:54.963 --> 00:18:56.674 at some point, it's so important. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:56.698 --> 00:18:58.150 CA: Thank you. SP: My pleasure.