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Posted: **Fri Nov 23, 2012 3:32 pm**

Please use this thread to discuss Ch. 2 - The Pacification Process.

Posted: **Sat Dec 01, 2012 5:32 pm**

For those of us still favoring a Rousseauean view of human nature, whereby civilization is seen as the corrupting influence leading to warfare and general violence, Pinker's chapter throws down a challenge. It is civilization, that is the imposition of a Leviathan state, that actually begins to reduce the rate of murder in human societies. That these state societies themselves commonly use a form of terror against their own citizens, doesn't negate Pinker's thesis, which is that hunter-gatherers and hunter-horticulturalists murder people at a greater rate than do people living in larger units under centralized control. He has the numbers to back up what is in some respects not a p.c. view. Pinker cites the sometimes extreme resistance that anthropologists encounter when they detail the prominence of violence in simple societies. He says we generally feel better thinking of hunter-gathers as pacific; however, he says that is certainly not true in any general sense.

He's correct that the temperament of "primitive" peoples is an important question. If he can show that, contrary to common assumptions, human beings didn't start off as peaceniks, he has a basis for his narrative of our steadily increasing ability to get along.

Posted: **Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:02 pm**

DWill wrote:He's correct that the temperament of "primitive" peoples is an important question. If he can show that, contrary to common assumptions, human beings didn't start off as peaceniks, he has a basis for his narrative of our steadily increasing ability to get along.

Your statement made me think of what I've read about the aggressiveness of chimpanzees, our closest genetic relative, which makes Rousseau's claim that "nothing can be more gentle than [man] in his primitive state," seem unlikely (to me, anyhow). Oh, now I'm reading where Pinker says he's going to talk about that. Okay... I need to catch up.

Thanks for kicking off the discussion on chapter 2.

The "Peace and Harmony Mafia" makes me chuckle.

Posted: **Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:15 pm**

It has been awhile since I've read Rousseau, but Pinker maybe missing Rousseau's distinction between amour de soi and amour propre. If I understand that distinction right (and that is a big if), all of the "poison arrows while you're taking a leak" stuff would be amour de soi. Pinker himself shows this by comparing it to primate "strategic" behavior.

Maybe this is peripheral to his argument. It's hard to tell at this point because his argument is so dense and I haven't finished the book.

The problem as I see it is that he is not just making a case that violence has declined. He's making a case that violence has declined for "such and such" reasons, where "such and such" is compatible with both his theory of human nature presented in the Blank Slate and a vaguely libertarian view of what makes a "good" society. I'm not convinced he can do that.

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:08 am**

Thanks, March-Hare, for bringing in that distinction made by Rousseau. I don't know much about Rousseau other than he was said to promote an Edenic view of man in the state of nature. It's quite possible that his thought was more subtle than that. Pinker seems to use Rousseau just for contrast with Hobbes' darker view of "savage" behavior. Pinker points out that neither knew anything about anthropology.

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 9:10 am**

Looking at the aggressiveness of our closest Great Ape relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, it's tempting to call humans an average of those two species, but of course that wouldn't be scientifically correct. There does seem to be an agreement that we're not "as bad" as the chimpanzees, while we're not "as good" as the bonobos. I think that especially recently, chimp reputation has taken a hit. Chimps come off as dangerous thugs in many of the media stories that come out. Maybe that portrait distorts their character, though, and a correction is needed.

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 12:34 pm**

Pinker also acknowledges that both Rousseau's and Hobbes' views were more nuanced than he presents.

Pinker wrote:Though the philosophies of Hobbes and Rousseau were far more sophisticated than "nasty, brutish, and short" versus "the noble savage," their competing stereotypes of life in a state of nature fueled a controversy that remains with us today.

Rather than debating the fine points of either philosophy, I think Pinker's goal is to point out the cultural controversy between the two viewpoints and explain how (in his view), Hobbes got closer to the truth of things than Rousseau, although both were speculating. As you say, DWill, Pinker points out that both philosophers had no hard data but were more or less making things up as they went.

Based on my reading of chapter 2, I find it doubtful that Pinker would agree that chimp thuggishness is oversold in the media. Of course, sensationalism (i.e., stories of chimp thuggishness) sells, however, Pinker writes

Jane Goodall... eventually made a shocking discovery. When a group of male chimpanzees encounters a smaller group or a solitary individual from another community, they don't hoot and bristle, but take advantage of their numbers.... And if they encounter a solitary male, or isolate one from a small group, they will go after him with murderous savagery. Two attackers will hold down the victim, and the others will beat him, bite off his toes and genitals, tear flesh from his body, twist his limbs, drink his blood, or rip out his trachea. In one community, the chimpanzees picked off every male in a neighboring one, an event that if it occurred among humans we would call genocide.

There's more but I think this is enough to make the point. He goes on to discuss the doubt within the scientific community about whether such events might be aberrations rather accurate reflections of typical chimp behavior.

Three decades later little doubt remains that lethal aggression is a part of chimpanzees' normal behavioral repertoire.

With regard to bonobos, Pinker suggests that the popular image may over-emphasize their peace-loving nature:

... [It] is easy to get carried away with the hippie-chimp story. Bonobos are an endangered species that lives in inaccessible forests in dangerous parts of the Congo, and much of what we know about them comes from observations of small groups of well-fed juveniles or young adults in captivity. Many primatologists suspect that systematic studies of older, hungrier, more populous, and freer groups of bonobos would paint a darker picture. Bonobos in the wild, it turns out, engage in hunting, confront each other belligerently, and injure one another in fights, perhaps sometimes fatally. So while bonobos are unquestionably less aggressive than common chimpanzees -- they never raid one another, and communities can mingle peacefully -- they are certainly not peaceful across the board.

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 1:27 pm**

March-Hare wrote:It has been awhile since I've read Rousseau, but Pinker maybe missing Rousseau's distinction between amour de soi and amour propre. If I understand that distinction right (and that is a big if), all of the "poison arrows while you're taking a leak" stuff would be amour de soi. Pinker himself shows this by comparing it to primate "strategic" behavior.

Maybe this is peripheral to his argument. It's hard to tell at this point because his argument is so dense and I haven't finished the book.

It's not clear to me why this distinction would make a difference to Pinker's thesis. According to Wikipedia, amour de soi refers to self-love in a state of nature (i.e., without regard to the opinions or views of others) while amour propre is self-esteem dependent on what others think (i.e., in society -- this is what Rousseau considered the corrupting kind if I'm reading it right). The wikipedia description says, "Acts out of amour de soi tend to be for individual well-being. They are naturally good and not malicious because amour de soi as self-love does not involve pursuing one's self-interest at the expense of others." I think Pinker would question the accuracy of the idea that self love does not involve pursuing one's self-interest at the expense of others. What is Rousseau's solution when resources are limited by famine? How is one to pursue self-love without competing with other individuals (who are also pursuing self-love)?

Where you say, "all of the 'poison arrows while you're taking a leak' stuff would be amour de soi," is this self-love on the part of the attacker or the victim? It seems to me that Rousseau's analysis doesn't allow for this event in the first place -- in a hunter-gatherer, noble savage culture, according to Rousseau, people wouldn't shoot each other with poison arrows at all, but would all be busy coming out of their hut to take a leak together at dawn. No one would ever lie in ambush because they're all innocent and noble.

Pinker is just saying that's not how it is in reality, that Rousseau didn't know what he was talking about when he made statements about humans in primitive conditions. Like Aristotle assuming that heavier weights fall faster than lighter weights, Rousseau was speculating. Aristotle's assumption was considered "truth" for a millenium, but it turned out to be wrong. I think Pinker is saying that Rousseau's speculation is of the same nature.

The problem as I see it is that he is not just making a case that violence has declined. He's making a case that violence has declined for "such and such" reasons, where "such and such" is compatible with both his theory of human nature presented in the Blank Slate and a vaguely libertarian view of what makes a "good" society. I'm not convinced he can do that.

So, in the introduction, he argued that violence has declined for historical, contingent reasons, not intrinsic structural reasons. That is, the decline in violence is not inevitable in the structure of history but is due to particular events, forces, and contingent trends over time. It might have gone another way. Is this what you mean by "'such and such' reasons"?

Spoiler

My understanding of The Blank Slate is that he was pointing out that humans are born with a set of hard wired capacities that cause their process of learning about the world to follow a typical trajectory. That is, human beings are NOT born as "blank slates" as Locke had it, but already have some innate programming at birth.

In Blank Slate (IIRC), and in Angels, he points out the controversy between the doctrine of human depravity (associated with Hobbes -- human life in a state of nature is "nasty, brutish, and short", without redemption, humans live in a state of hell) and what we might call the doctrine of human innocence (associated with Rousseau -- that human life in a state of nature is innocent and heavenly and it's civilization that corrupts and causes human depravity).

I think Pinker is saying that both of those views are wrong. Early in chapter 2, he explains how Rousseau got it wrong -- human life in a state of nature is inherently violent. Late in chapter 2, he explains how Hobbes got it wrong -- the Leviathan is not an unmitigated blessing. While the pacification process does reduce violence, it also reduces human freedom. The first governments were not agreements among free agents. Rather, Pinker compares them to extortion rackets. But when the choice was between the fear of being speared upon leaving your hut in the morning or the oppression of raising grain for a warlord with overwhelming accumulated social and political leverage, many early humans chose the latter.

I think one frame for understanding subsequent developments in human social and political evolution is to see them as a negotiation between these forces of pacification (with the potential of oppression) on the one hand and freedom (with the potential of violence) on the other. In this view, human political history has been an ongoing give and take between these forces in an attempt to get the dynamic tension between them just right.

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 2:02 pm**

Spoiler

[quote]...our awareness of the genocides of Native Americans perpetrated by European colonists makes the signatories seem like a black pot in a glass house casting the first stone[/quote]

Repeatedly, Pinker has contrasted the "hydraulic" and "strategic" theories of violence. Here's an example in chapter 2:

[quote]Though war is common among foraging groups, it is certainly not universal. Nor should we expect it to be if the violent inclinations in human nature are a strategic response to the circumstances rather than a hydraulic response to an inner urge.[/quote]

According to the hydraulic theory, inner pressure builds over time until it erupts in acts of violence which relieve the pressure temporarily, until it builds up again. If the hydraulic theory were true, we might expect that all humans everywhere would periodically erupt into violence at a more or less constant rate.

According to the strategic theory, violence is a tool or technique for securing a desired outcome. It is deployed when the risk is low and the likelihood of success is high. If the strategic theory were true, we might expect to see highly variable rates of violence, depending on the circumstances in particular places and times.

Pinker's data and argument is that the hydraulic theory is false and the strategic theory better agrees with the patterns we actually see in the data and the real world. When violence is likely to be successful (in anarchic, primitive situations where my buddies and I have cornered an individual from another tribe, for example), it is observed more frequently. When violence is likely to be punished (under the auspices of a Leviathan where a policeman may happen along at any moment, for example), it is observed less frequently.

In the thread about chapter 1, Geo wrote:
[quote]
My first thought is that we're living in relatively peaceful times because much of the world is on more solid economic footing than in the past. Therefore, it's all cultural. So to answer tbarron's question—is Pinker's optimism of human nature justified?—I'd have to say probably not (strictly off the cuff). Our progression into relative peace must tie into Robert Wright's "conditions on the ground" that strictly relate to new non-zero sum scenarios between nations as the world becomes increasingly smaller. But if our economy collapsed tomorrow, humans would quickly degenerate into violence once again. It seems to me that we're currently living in a bubble that's mostly fueled by cheap energy. I'm really curious to see if Pinker addresses any of these issues. Does he suggest that humans are by nature more peaceful beings? If so, I'm very skeptical perhaps cynical. Regardless, I think Pinker will take us on an interesting journey.[/quote]

In fact, Pinker does address this issue
[quote]One of the tragic ironies of the second half of the 20th century is that when colonies in the developing world freed themselves from European rule, they often slid back into warfare, this time intensified by modern weaponry, organized militias, and the freedom of young men to defy tribal elders. As we shall see in the next chapter, this development is a countercurrent to the historical decline of violence, but it is also a demonstration of the role of Leviathans in propelling the decline.[/quote]

However, I don't see Pinker claiming that humans have become more peaceable by nature, rather that because violence is strategic, when circumstances are such that it involves more risk than alternatives, it is less likely to be deployed.

So I think Pinker gives a role to government (the Leviathan) in creating the conditions that allow the economic prosperity you mention, Geo. I think he attributes the decline in violence not only to economic development but also to the Leviathan-imposed peace that fosters such economic development.

One final quote from Pinker emphasizing the idea that the original Leviathans were not voluntary on the part of those pacified:
[quote]Social scientists who study the emergence of states have noted that they began as stratified theocracies in which elites secured their economic privileges by enforcing a brutal peace on their underlings.... When it came to violence, then, the first Leviathans solved one problem but created another. People were less likely to become victims of homicide or casualties of war, but they were now under the thumbs of tyrants, clerics, and kleptocrats.[/quote]

Posted: **Sun Dec 02, 2012 3:01 pm**

You guys are really blazing ahead with your discussion of "Better Angels." Alas, the end of the semester is upon me, and I fear I will never catch up. Good discussion though.

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Ch. 2 - The Pacification Process

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