Anyone who takes a superficial look at developments in world affairs and is impressed by the latest news can easily get the impression that violence between people has increased. One need only recall the world wars and seemingly countless local conflicts that were fought with weapons and left behind mountains of corpses. Suffice it to mention Syria and Ukraine and to recall the often religiously motivated terror that was felt above all in New York on September 9, 2001.
However, despite this increase in military and political violence, the American evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker argues in his book "Violence" that the use of material power over and above necessary aggression has decreased over the course of human history. Pinker wants to write "a new history of humanity" with his book and explain "Why Violence has declined."
The US psychologist takes his cue from sociologist Norbert Elias, who analysed the "process of civilization" and found that it was accompanied by a decline in violence. The main reason for this is human reason, from which the light of enlightenment emanates and which has been named by many thinkers as the essential hope for coping with threats such as the atomic bomb and environmental destruction. This noble reason also plays its special role in Pinker's work, as it is the only driving force of mankind that is granted a progressive potential. In other words: Only the reason of human society can increase in the course of time and thus in the context of history, thus promoting the associated level of civilization, which is to be recognizable through better nutrition and education.
To the reporter, the opposite idea seems more plausible: that humanity as a whole and its disposition has not really become more peaceful, but that technical civilization has ensured that the members of society have more and more ways of serving their driving forces and calming their dark side. Just think of major events with public viewing and the intoxicated jubilation in the pack, when in the alcoholized group experience the otherwise sympathetic "I" turns into an exuberant and wild "we" that abandons itself to intoxication and can hardly be controlled.
