Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20150201

A familiar face to cspan and viewers the former solicitor general and the coauthor of this book revealing the dream the case for Marriage Equality along with david. Did you surprise a lot of people with your position on marriage . Apparently i did. I didnt surprise me and i didnt surprise people that knew me because i felt i grew up in california and ive always thought its wrong to discriminate against people who are or and when i was first asked to take the case i thought it was something i could do and wanted to do so i was a little surprised that people were surprised because im a conservative a lot of people were and i felt it was my mission to try to convince as many of them as i could but this was the right place to be. About conservative case to me is easy. These are two loving people who want to come together in an enduring relationship and form a part of a community and have a family and be part of our society and live together. What could be more conservative than that . We should want people who love one another to want to get married. Marriage is a conservative value and when people want to get married should be the same thing. They have the same aspirations and same fears and hopes the rest of us do and we should support that. For those who may not know what is the long relationship with you and your coauthor, how did you first meet . Spinnaker david and i first knew one another before the bush v. Gore case. Most people know us as opposite sides. He represented the Vice President and i represented governor bush in the bush v. Gore case and decided we finally have Great Respect for one another and our wives are both lawyers. We started to get together and enjoyed evenings together into the more time we spend with one another we realized we should Work Together on something. When this case came along i called up the dead and did and i thought it was important to present to the American People that it wasnt a conservative or liberal issue, it was an American Issue and about lawyers that are the lawyers that are known on opposite sides of the political spectrum could come together people could see it as an American Issue and not a heterosexual or liberal issue but an issue about American Values and american rights and freedom. We try to convey that point of view. This book is written by two lawyers. Ken layne and understand that . Spinnaker we hope. We thought it was important to express the case we took from the very beginning all the way to dissipate court in terms of warriors would learn as a lesson but also as people would value as a journey of individuals and freedom and people and we tried very hard to make sure that we could communicate with people that were not lawyers. The worst thing in the world is for a lawyer to talk like a lawyer. People dont understand that or want to hear it. Its important to understand you have to speak english and language as people understand and we try to convey our emotions and feelings and strategy in terms that all americans could understand especially younger people who might aspire to the lawyers or people studying political science. We try to reach out to that audience. Host what is your sense of how quickly its being accepted across the country . Spinnaker glad you asked that question. We started this case with three states which individuals could bury the person they love if it happened to be a person of the same sex. Today, five years later, 33 states recognize their edgy quality. Can you imagine and the American Public was against their edgy poverty by a factor of 17 points or Something Like that and now it is maybe ten or 12 on the other side. People under 3875 to 80 that belief in their edgy quality and respect the rights to get married. That also plays in the course of five or six years. Its a remarkable transformation all in favor of people who love one another its trust very important. What about the Republican Party . The Republican Party is getting there. When we filed our briefs in the Supreme Court we had some 30 prominent members of the Republican Party that supported the case including the former chairman of the Republican National committee and rob portman and imported senator who is a republican and more and more republicans are understanding that marriage between people that love one another is a value that they have to support or they are not going to ever win elections. Its important for people across the political spectrum who we need in american rights and republicans will not be accepted as a Majority Party if they wish to achieve the majority status unless they recognize the rights of human beings and freedom and liberty. Are any marriage issue is coming back before the Supreme Court ended so are you involved in that . Spinnaker im not involved in them that we have had several cases including the virginia case the Supreme Court decided not to take this year but theres another case involving kentucky tennessee and a couple other states the Supreme Court is considering right now. I believe the Supreme Court will take that case. This case. Im hoping the Supreme Court will hear that case before the end of next june when they decide the case for this term. Im not involved in it now, but im rooting for those lawyers who are handling this case and if they want any help from me they will have it. Regaining the dream the case for managing quality. This is book tv on cspan2. Argues we are living in the most peaceable era of human existence and through the spread of government literacy, trade and cosmopolitan humans have been able to increasingly control the demons that lead people to violence. His book is the better angels of our nature and it is the Facebook Book Club selection. Violence has been in decline for long stretches of time and today we are probably living in the most peaceful time of the existence. The decline of violence has not been steady and it hasnt studied and it hasnt brought the violence down to zero and it has not guaranteed to continue. Nonetheless it is a Historical Development visible on scales from bulimia two years from war and genocide to the spanking of children in this treatment of animals. This evening im going to discuss six major historical declines in violence, their immediate cause in terms of historical events of the era that a historian would single out and also the ultimate cause in terms of general historical forces interacting with human nature. The first decline i call the pacification process. Until about 5,000 years ago humans everywhere lived in anarchy without federal government. What was life like in this state of nature . This is a question on which people have had opinions for many centuries. Tom is in 1651 famously said in the state of nature the life of man is solitary poor, nasty and short. 100 years later they countered that in a state of nature nothing can be more gentle than man in his primitive state. They were pontificating from the armchair if they knew anything about what life was like in the state of nature and today we can do better. There are two methods in the society. One of them is for insect archaeology. A kind of paleolithic mainly what proportion of the prehistoric skeletons have signs of violent such as in schools, decapitated skeletons of arrowheads embedded in fevers, fractures on the bones, the kind you get when you hold up your arm to ward off a blow and money is found with ropes tighter to their next . Well, unfortunately this space will accommodate visuals but i have a graph of 20 prehistoric archaeological sites which archaeologists to try to estimate the proportion of skeletons with signs of violent they range from 0 to 60 and the average is about 15 . Lets compare that 15 figure with those of some state societies. For example, the United States and europe through the 20th century the comparable rate of death from the warfare was about 1 . If we try to get the worst possible figure by throwing in all of the poor deaths from genocides and from manmade famine throughout the world during the 20th century the figure is about 3 . The figure for the world in 2005 for the most recent decade on the graph is invisible because it is far less than a pixel it is about three tenths of 1 . The second way of estimating the rate of violent death in the nonstate societies is by examining the Vital Statistics that is what percentage of People Living in the recent nonstate societies hunter gatherer and other tribal societies die at the hands of their fellow humans . Again cut the grass that i would display shows 27 societies for which such figures arent available and a range on the scale and the rate ranges from zero to 1500 but the average is about 500 deaths per 100,000 people per year. Lets compare that with some of the states and we will stack the deck against the states by choosing the most violent states in the history such as germany and the 20th century, to the world for the figure is about 150 as a similar figure to what we have for russia in the 20th century which has gone through two world wars a revolution and a civil war, japan was closer to 60 the United States in the 20th century was less than three and the world in the 20th century is about the third day leftparen hundred thousand per year. They are throwing in all of the genocides and manmade famine is about 60 per 100,000, far less than the five and 25 in the nonstate peoples. What was the immediate cause of this change in the violence of that . Most likely is the rise and expansion of states. Students of history are familiar with the various pieces and posed by an empire or hegemon. When a state imposes control of territory extends the territory it tends to try to stamp out the tribal raiding and its not because this comes from a benevolent interest in the welfare of the subject people but rather all of this is a nuisance because it settles the scores among them and in that loss couldnt keep the people of life to provide them with taxes and attributes just as a farmer has an interest in presenting the cattle from killing each other because it is a loss to him so the emperor or the warlord will try to keep his subject from killing each other at a loss to himself. The second transition has been caused by the civilizing process and it refers to the transition between life in the middle ages and i have a lovely cut putting daggers through. The homicide statistics go back hundreds of years to the 14th and often the 13th century and a few plot homicide statistics over time over the centuries you find that they plummet from an average rate of about 35 per 100,000 per year to the contemporary rate of one per hundred thousand per year a decline by about a factor of 35. This is one of many that im going to ask you to imagine which consists of a jagged line that he enters from the top left of the graph when the statistics first started to be kept for the bible be describing and in the end is that weve found to be cut down to the bottom right that represents the era which we are now looking into that is true for homicides in europe. It was identified by the german sociologist in his book called the civilizing process and during the transition from the middle ages to modernity was a consolidation of Central States and kingdoms out of the european patchwork. As a result of the criminal justice was nationalized and a life of the feuding warlords they were called tonight today we call them warlords was replaced by the kings justice where some genius had the idea that if instead of the family of a victim collecting blood money from a family of a killer if it was the state that collected money it would be a constant revenue stream and in fact the king sent a representative to every town once a year to tally the number of homicides picking could collect compensation from the family of the perpetrator. This agent of the crowd was called a quarter nor which is why we still call the official who assesses the deaf and the coroner. The transition to the middle ages to modernity saw the growing infrastructure of commerce from institutions such as money and finance and contracts that could be enforced and recognized in the boundaries of these newly consolidated states and the technologies that lubricated the trade such as transportation the instruments of timekeeping and other technologies the result was zerosum was the victims loss was increasingly replaced by positive some trade where the parties were to evolve the exchange could benefit. The third illustrated by some of the methods to impose peace on the kingdoms, punishments such as breaking the wheel where the victim would be tied to a wagon wheel and the executioner was smashed his or her bones in her arms and legs with a sledgehammer and at which point avoid duty to victim would be hoisted up onto the wheel and left to die of exposure and shock. The burning at the stake, sawing and half from the cross up come in him and through the rectum and flush with iron hooks. However in the remarkably narrow sense of time in the 18th century, torture as a form of punishment was abolished by every major country including the United States in the eighth amendment to the constitution this was part of a Global Movement to abolish the judicial torture. They also sought the abolition of other institutionalized forms of violence that we now consider barbaric such as the frivolous application of the Death Penalty. In the 18th century england have 222 capital offenses on the book including coaching the counterfeiting robbing a rabbit or warren and a strong incident of malice in a child aged seven to 14 years of age. This wasnt just a theoretical possibility that was carried out with relish for example he speaks about a 7yearold girl that was pinged for stealing a petticoat. Iep 60s when the list of capital crimes was down to four basically high treason murder in the sum of its variations. There was an enormous list of capital crimes in the colonial and early independent period for the crimes other than murder and be inverse from close to 100 of the colonial period down to pretty much zero. They are punishable by execution other than murder are conspiracy to commit murder. The Death Penalty itself was put on death row starting in the 18th century and began a gradual and then precipitous wave of Capital Punishment nowadays the United States is the only western democracy that even has the Death Penalty and even then only in two thirds of the states and even then to say that the United States has the Death Penalty is a bit of a fiction if you look at the number of american executions as a proportion of the population it has been plunging and so now it is about 50 people executed every year in a country that has close to 17000 homicides so even here in the backwater of the abolitions it is a shadow of its former self. Other during the humanitarian resolution include witchhunts religious persecution such as burning at the stake, debtors prisons, and of course slavery through the end of the 18th century saw the beginning of a tidal wave of abolitionists of slavery and again the states behind the curve are not doing it until the 1860s but today for the first time in history it is not legal anywhere in the world. It used to be that it was legal everywhere in the world and indeed endorsed as part of a natural order of things by the ancient greeks and just about everyone else. What would the immediate cause of the humanitarian revolution . I looked at a number of candidates and the most plausible in terms of something that happened before the humanitarian revolution was advances in printing and literacy. It was the only industry that showed an increase in productivity prior to the industrial revolutions in the 19th century and the cost of printing a book plunged in the 16th and 17th century into the result was an exponential increase in the number of books that were published in the countries and there were more people who could read them in the 18th century for the first time the majority of englishmen were literate. Why should literacy matter . The causes are those that we abbreviate with the term the enlightenment. For one thing knowledge replaces the superstition and ignorance. And of those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. As your society becomes smart enough to debug the forms such as the pair takes to help which caused crop failures and children are possessed some africans are just coming they are right to buy so on it is right to undermine many traditional rationales for violence. Also it can be part of age in earl current towards the cosmopolitanism and also encouraged by technologies such as chips that allow the easy movement of peoples. It is plausible that as people spend more of their waking life leading fiction and history and journalism they start to inhabit other peoples minds and see the world from their point of view there for developing more empathy and less cruelty. If you try to imagine what its like to be some other person then you are a little less likely to enjoy seeing them to send out. The fourth historical transition have to wait another 150 years or so and its a development that borrowing from the political scientist i call the long piece and it speaks to the common conception that the 20th century was the most violent in history. Interestingly, people who repeat that claim that her back it up with any numbers from any century other than the 20th century and its hardly likely that it is fallacious. It is true that it was the deadliest event in history in terms of the absolute number of people who were killed. On the other hand of the world had a whole lot more people in the 20th century than it had in the past centuries and we record and care about that in the 20th century than people did in the previous centuries. If you try to estimate whether only retrospectively the death toll from atrocities in the past centuries and you scale them by the size of the population at the time it isnt so clear that it was the worst. Ive taken figures from several atrocities such as mackey white in the book the great big book of horrible things that he lists the 100 worst things people have ever done to each other that we know of. I divided them by estimates of the worlds population worlds population at the time and what happens is that world war ii comes in ninth place and world war i doesnt even make the top ten other atrocities such as the invasions of the african slave trade, the annihilation and basically every time a dynasty fell in china there could be several tens of millions of People Killed and if you look at the worst atrocities through Human History over time they pretty much form and even called for 20,500 years. If you then zoom in on the last 500 years we could do a little bit better instead of just plotting the atrocities we can add them up through the centuries, the political scientists have done that for a particular category on the Mass Violence mainly the great power war that ended loyalty to the pound gorilla of the day and the largest states and the ones that in fact do far more damage when they get into the war than all of them combined. If you plot the proportion of the years between 1500 to 2,000 in the great power that they you see the great powers were pretty much always at war. There were many points that occurred at 100 in a quarter century. Now the great powers are virtually never at war. The last great was the korean war that ended in 1953. If you plot the duration involving the great power on at least one side it goes down and we used to have things like the 30 year war, 100 year war and the 20th century we have a six day war. If you plot the frequency involving the great power that is how many are started every year. Again you have a curve that works its way downward from 1500 to the present. However there is one that goes in the opposite direction. If you look at most of its history if you plot the deadliness that isnt how many are started but how many people are killed once it does begin. That goes the other direction that is the nations got the better and better at killing larger and larger numbers of soldiers until 1945 at which that doesnt other at and since 1945 for the first time in history they have become both less numerous and less deadly per nation year of war. If you then combine the two figures you must apply the number of the war by the deadliness of each and you get a zigzag curve but the Crucial Point is that the last point on the curve representing the last 25 years in fact the last 50 years are hitting alltime lows over the last 500 years. This is the phenomenon called with a long piece namely that the last two thirds of the century since 1945 theres been a historically unprecedented decline in the intrastate war between countries. To be exact and here are some statistics that are easy to convey and they dont need a draft because they all consist of the number zero there were no wars between the soviet union and the United States which may sound unexceptional today that every expert predicted that world war iii was inevitable. Many people in the room grew up with the experts assuring us that it was only a matter of time before the u. S. Didnt get out. No Nuclear Weapons have been used since wartime again confounding every expert prediction. As i mentioned thereve been no war between the great power since 1953 probably the longest span of time without a great power while since the roman empire. Thereve been no of course no one expects france and germany. What a concept or sweden and russia. But of course any student of european history knows that this isnt the exception until the precipitous decline of the state war of 1945. No and a developed country that is the 45 or so countries with the highest gdp per capita. Now what about the rest of the world . There is a fifth major decline of violence that refers to the rest of the world. So what happens if we set aside the great power to the western European Countries and the rich countries what was the rest of the world doing . There was a decline in the number of interstate wars where one country declares war against another. However there has been a huge increase in the civil war. It namely exploding starting in the 1960s when the newly independent states in the inept governance were challenged by the insurgent movements and both sides were armed and financed and egged on by the cold war superpowers. However since 1991 even the number of civil wars have declined in the end of the cold war and one now has to ask if the number of interstate wars went down the number of civil wars went up and the answer is very clear if killed far more people or at least they have since the late 1940s. Theres nothing like a great pair of towers bombing each others cities into sending massive numbers of tanks. In comparison some teenagers armed with a ak47 could surely make life miserable in the local area which they work but they simply dont do the same amount of nationwide damage. They showed the deadliness of the intrastate war over the last 55 years. The number of deaths in the intrastate war per year has plummeted for the civil war its just a slight increase followed by a decrease. If you then add up all sorts of the war that is the intrastate and civil, what you find is a decline with the peaks for the korean war, the vietnam war but in the last ten years there is basically a narrow little stripe. You cant see the picture i will describe it in the numbers during the worst years of world war ii the death rate from the war was about 300 per 100,000 per year. During the late 1840s and 50s it had fallen to about 22 per 100,000 per year. In this past decade it has been at one third per 100000 using a constant yardstick of battle deaths and this is the phenomenon that ive been calling the new piece so it would be a bit of an exaggeration but not too much of an exaggeration to say that it is the dream of the 1960s book singers is almost coming true that is the world is almost putting it into an end to the war. What are the immediate causes . One influential hypothesis came in 1975 in his essay perpetual peace in which he proposed that democracy can interstate trade and International Community all but dried down the likelihood of the war. Recently a pair of political scientists have tested by measuring these factors into showing first of all the bulbs that have increased in the second half of the 20th century. The number of democracies exceeded the number of hypocrisies abound 1990 and have shown an increase. The amount of International Trade skyrocketed after the end of the second world war. The membership in the International Government organizations increased throughout the 20th century and especially since 1990 theres been a huge increase in the number of International Peacekeepers that his sweaters with blue helmets and others others from other natural parties who get in the way of those forces. They dont always present the reigniting of the hostilities into the war but they do far more often than there are no peacekeepers. Finally, the sixth historical decline in the violence i call the right revolution which refers to the targeting of the violence in a smaller scale against vulnerable minorities such as racial minorities women, children, homosexuals and animals. It could be 150 per year. Hate crime murders of blacks had been in the Single Digits since they were first recorded in half since then plunged to about one per year. The kind of racist attitudes that in the past with license outbursts of violence such as genocide had been in steady a steady decline. For example in the United States if u. S. White people what you did a black family moved in next door into ub leave that they should go to separate schools and all of those attitudes have been in a steady decline. Many of them have fallen so low that they are in the rank of the craig opinion and pollsters dropped them from their surveys. The womens Rights Movements have Seen Movement have seen an 80 decline in rate since the early 70s when the statistics were first kept. Also a precipitous decline in the best of violence. A strong decline in the most extreme forms of Domestic Violence that is the killing of wives and husbands and although here i must add that the decline is far steeper for why wives, husbands and husbands killing wives. At the Womens Movement has been very good for man. The childrens Rights Movement has seen a steady decline in the number of american states that have corporal punishment. A decline in every every western country in the degree of the approval of spain spanking. In which animals were harmed. While all of this raises the question question why have all of the graphs done downward over the history and why so many declines of violence and scales of mag magnitude of crime. Toddlers continue to hit little boys continue to fight. Grownup boys and many girls enjoy various forms of violence like murder mystery greek tragedies, video games ice hockey and movies starring a certain exgovernor of california. And a number of social psychologist have assessed the prevalence of homicidal fantasy and asked people if you have fantasized about killing someone you dont like. 15 of women and a third of men frequently fantasize about killing someone they dont like. 60 and three quarters occasionally fantasize about killing people they dont like and the rest of them are lying. A more likely possibility is that human nature is complex and comprises inclinations toward violence and those without them. Historical circumstances have increasingly favored the peace inclinations or better angels. I think violence is not a single psychological category. We have a number of neuro biologically disstinct motives that can result in violence. There is exploitation and we see that played out in violence, rape, conquest and elimination of rivals. And very difference is the quest for dominance. The drive for individuals to climb the pecking order and the drive among groups for ethnic and religious supremeracy. And the category of revenge violence which is rough justice and cruel punishment. And perhaps the biggest category consist of violence pursued in quest of an ideaology like militant religious, nazism and comuniism. If your ideas hold out the prospect of a future world that is good forever, what are you entitled to do to attain that world . You can commit as much violence asio you want and you will still make the world a better place by the costbenefit analysis. Picture you have been safe with the one true faith according to which there is a utopia to which you can strive and there are some people who hear about this utopia but stubbornly reject it. How evil are they . You do the math. That is why the tails of the distribution of massive violence tend to be pushed outward by utopian ideas. What do we have on the other side to counteract the motives for violence . What are the better angels . There is selfcontrol. The ability to know the consequence consequences of our behavior. There is empathy, the ability to feel others pain. There is the moral sense, which is a family of intuition and some can increase violence but one flavor of the moral sense, the drive for fairness can counter act violence. There is reason the cognitive faculties that allow us to engage in detached analysis. If we have the inclination toward violence on one hand and inhibition over the other what tipped the balance and brought out our better angels . The first idea is proposed in a book that refers to a state with a monopoly on the system of violence can eliminate the symptoms of attack by punishing it and thereby reduce the need for deterance and vingence and both side in dispute will always believe they are on the side of the angels and the other side is wicked stubborn stupid or all three. People we know from social Psychology Research overstate their own innocence and this stokely gets revenge unless you have a third Party Meeting to deal out the penalties. The pacifying and civilizing affects of states are known and we can watch the movies in reverse in anarchy where violence can reerupt like the american wildwest and the nearest sheriff being 90 miles away. In mafia and gangs that can not File Lawsuits or 911 because of the nature of the work they do so they have their own justice results in vin detas. And the effectiveness of International Peace keepers is there. The second historical force that draw out the better angels is commerce. The idea that trade is a game in which everybody can win. Over the course of history, has technology improved and allowed the trade and ideas among larger distances among larger groups of people and the rest of humanity becomes more valuable alive than dead. There is not a lot of afection between the United States and china but it isnt likely they will go to war. Among other things they make too much of our stuff and we owe them too much money. Historical evidence for the theory of gentle commerce showing countries are greater International Trade are embroiled in fewer wars host fewer civil wars and fewer genocides. The third source is the expanding circle. This was named by peter singer but first endorsed by Charles Darwin more than a century before. The idea is that evolution gave us a sense of empathy. Unfortunately we apply it only to a narrow circle of friends and families. But over the history course you can see the circles expanding to embrace the family village, clan tribe, nation and extended to other races, both sexes, to children and eventually other beings species. This begged the kegquestion of what expanded the circle and technologies that increase cosmopolitan may have that affect. Opportunities for travel. And we know from the social psychologist laboratory that if you get a person to adopt the ideas of another person they are more sympathetic to the that person and the category they represent. In the 17th and 18 century there were letters that proceeded the humanitarian revolution and the second half of the 21st century was also the era of the electronic global village. It is often guessed that the rise of internet and social media assisted revolutions like the arab spring. And the final historical force i called the escalator of reason. The possibility that the growth of literacy, edgeucation, and Public Discourse has encouraged people to think more abstractly and more universally. They get into the habit of putting their own interest over the interest of others and replace a morality placed on tribalism with one based on four fareness and rules and recognize the futility of the cycles of violence and seeing violence as a problem to be solved rather than a context to be won. What is the evidence . One intriguing piece is abstract reasoning abilities increased over the course of the 21st century. Throughout the 21st century and all over the world iq increased by about three points a decade. The socalled flin effect. Studies show that people and societies with higher levels of education and measured intelligence holding equal commit fewer violence crimes cooperate more in experimental games and more liberal attitudes like opposition to racism and sexism and more receptive to democracy. Why have i ended up with this list of four very divinity forces . Why are they all pushing toward less violence. The closest we can to an overarching theory is violence is what game theory people call a social delima. It is ruinious to the victim to display this behavior. In the long run all parties are better off if violence is avoided and our delima or pickle is how to get the other guy refrain from violence at the same time you do. If you are the only one to beat your swords into plow shares you are a sitting duck for invasion by the bad guys. Everybody has to beat the sword into plow shares at the same time. You can see the forces in cases of Human Experience gradual solves the problem like other things in nature like hunger we have dealt with and all of these forces increased the material and cognitive incentive to avoid violence. Regardless of the correct explanation of fr the decline of violence, i think the implications for understanding the human condition are profound. They call for a reother thanrientation of violence from a realistic to empairem emperil mindset. We might ask what are we doing right because we have been doing something right and it would be good to find out exactly what it is. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you Steven Pinker. This was a fan tacktastfantastic presentation. People are lining up for the questions. I will ask again. I would like you to keep your questions really brief. That way everyone gets a chance and steven i would like you to keep your answers brief. It works both way. If you are comfortable, please say your name. I am dr. Caroline popland. My question is germany. It was the most cosmopolitan and highly educated society in europe and they did the most horrible crime. Yeah. Well, it is a little misleading to say it. There were sectors of jaernlgermany that were educated and sectors of germany that were more tribal in their mindset and deeply antisemetic. And rather than an acceptance of the idea of universal rights and emphasis on the flourishing individuals the was a primitive embrace of blood and soul soil tribalism. You are right. There is a flourishing of cosmopolitans but they were all murdered. When it comes to an entire society, it is important to see how dynamics can lead to Competition Among the various sectors. And if you have a robust population that people are not murdered it can affect the society as a whole of course. First a comment then question. I think i have a fantasy carl would appreciate was the boon well of the great spanish filmmaker and cleverist of his all as he was dying said if only ever ten years i could get up out of the grave and get a newspaper and keep in touch with what is going on in the world. In terms of overt violence your presentation is impressive. On the other hand there is a containment in one sense in the proliferation of violent games starting with kids as young as two and three and tremendous compulsive occupation with violence in the media. I would call it contained. Part of it i think, is freud spoke of the pervasive violence in his aggressive drive and that you can kind of identify with people who are suffering and say thank god it isnt me. And then even more important, murder mysteries. I can fantasize i did this murder but somebody else is going to be discovered and i go go consciousfree. Yes i agree. I agree a pleasure taken in violent entertainment is a great constant of Human Experience. I dont believe violent entertainment causes violence. The huge expansion of violent video games has been accomp accompannied by this statement. I think it is a guilty pleasure that people all of eras have had. If you look at the penny dreadfuls or the Old Testament or lives of the saints there is a lot of gruesome stuff in there. People enjoy it for interesting reasons. I would think very few people watch an excution in terms of the population but now people are watching it in large numbers people brought a whole family to watch public executions like burnings breaking and strang strangling and bowl remove movals. I noticed laughter in twitter when you talked about disembowelment and mummies around the cord. Folks, we have a long line and i would like everyone to get their chance good evening, and happy new year to who that applies to. I will give a nickname and leave it to the imagination. It is paulolly. I was very much impressed by the presentation. I have always wanted to meet you. No bizarre fantasy here. No murder involved. The question is this do you think some people have a tendency to really almost be inherently evil . Like looking at clowns in the dark and it looks like a fear of clowns could arouse evil . Little children Holding Scissors behind their back . Say three year olds that look charming pretty little girls, want to play and if you get too close watch out that scissor is going to be a nice dagger in your gut. And no matter how you raise them even if adopted by the nicest, kindest people there is Something Like that about them they like to see others suffer. Yeah. The answer is there is a substanial component to antisocial tendency and at the extreme violence ones. The trouble makers get that way because thank toess to Real Life Research that compares adoptive parents to bio logical and adoptive parents. Psychopaths are the most extreme and they seem to be without the ability to develop a conscious that count for the interest of others. You never know. I think we need to move on. I think only fair everyone get a chance. Thank you. Hi my name is noah. My question is about the backroom boys t. Was a phrase used to refer to the chemist and chemical engineers that dupont that developed what was used into war against china in the vietnam war. In reviewing the record of the backroom boys and colleagues of yours, remarks that there is an object and distance from the effects of their actions. They had very technology operations. And he said this objective by rational people has roots in those that prolong genocide conflicts that abated in the areas. That time maybe 30 of what is now Czech Republic perished. But the institutions remain with us. This dispassionate rejection of extreme violence like the backroom boys in the 1950s developing very affective killing ate nitty ate agents. As we developed high tech push button forms of warfare i have been asked if theyll take away from the hand on bloody violence and lead you to expect violence to go way up. I dont think that is consistent with the process of history. You mentioned the 30 year war with the rates of violent death carried out by pike men and weapons and bayonets and so on. I think people can very easily overcome their resistance to hands on violence. In fact it is often the most high tech forms of violence that are deployed most gingerly with Nuclear Weapon being an example. I think the correlation is much less than people think because it is easy to commit handson violence on the historical link between violence and the pattern in Northern Europe is a pattern of technilogically rich and devoted to violence. How clear is the history relate today the violence . The highest technology of any culture is typically applied to weapons of war. The mongolians on horse back had well engineered bows that could do vast amounts of damage quickly. That is something that brings out peoples ingenuity. I am paul, a. I am wondering if you can comment on the thoughts you may be dismissing a change in human nature a little too quickly in the sense that genes are always in a dance with the environment. And i know you cite greg clark and his research is remarkable at looking at what happened starting in the 13th century with royals being much more fert fertile than the lower classe seamarks. The enlith tookpeople in new england were having what was called attention Deficit Disorder and greater control. Skwh when a Society Moves in that direction, that may changing caning change the way it fuels a change in the culture. Yes and i discuss that possibility at length in the book. I end up not embracing or rejecting it mainly because of lack of evidence for one thing. It makes the prediction that english men, regardless of their culture, should be genetically less prone to impulse and violence than people from other garment cultures and races. This isnt a possibility i am eager to test any same soon. But it may be unnecessary. It is early in the investigation of recent biological evolution. But given that some of the developments i discuss occur far too rapidly to be attribable to genetic evolution like the dropping of the crime rate in 1992 or the rights revolution so something happened that wasnt genetic on that ground. So i dont see the need for a hypothesis there has been a genetic change and not ruling it out. I am a terrible public speaker but a henleyuge fan. I am curious about the relationship with a civilian Law Enforcement. It is interesting to hear about declone in violence but the swat teams have gone far beyond the hostage situations. They are breaking into peoples home over College Loans and things. If rates of violence are declining among the people why are the civilian Law Enforcement flexing their muscles in a way that doesnt correlate with the decline in violence. Well we have to look at figures over time of governmentviolence perp governmentviolence against their own sucivilians. I suspect there hasnt been much increase. To keep people from each others throat they introduced the second problem. The first transition was a tough bargain because it lowered the rate of violence and gave you blood thirsty spots to deal with with. The continuing battle for democracy and Civil Liberties is an attempt to find the sweet spot where the government can deter one citizen over northanother but no so pompwerful it is a menace to others i will make sure everyone in line gets to ask a question and that will be our limit tonight. So hi i am gregory walsh. I have been looking forward to reading the book since seeing a speech you gave 34 years ago at the ted conference on this topic. I was wondering, however, if you could comment on allegations made in a book i recently read called sex at dawn the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality in which the author presents the data you present about the rates of violence among hunter and gather cultures, nonstate people is erroneous and they allege for example that the data at the time it was collected these people had contact with modern society for many decades and that they are not in fact nomadic. They are settled people. I have been curious since reading that to hear your response to allegations. I am not familiar with the allegation allegations. But the data i present are from people who definitely had no contact with any europeans like samples of skeletons from precolumbian native americans. Many are from hunter gathering people who had no contact as well no contact. The sources i consulted made it clear when there has or hasnt been contact. And some society dont have measured rates of homicide or death in war. But on average the rates are way up there and from many many cites cites of different kind. What they have in common is not living under government. That seems to give uniformally, on average, high rates of violence. And from what i can tell from the ethnographic and archeo logical resources and i site many sources that back up the claim. Thank you for your presentation. When you have listing factors showing decline of violence in the Society Everything from pad ling to Death Penalty to rape. I guess one except that stood out was incarceration. Very high level of incarceration. Of course there are violent people that deserve to be and nonViolent Crimes that are sentence and people thrown into the situation where prison like isnt getting less violence. How do you factor that . Historically prisons now are less violent than when they were shackled to the floor and spike collers and high rates of death. Historically it would be inaccurate to take the current prison sentence saying nothing improved. For the last 20 years this was a way of reducing the enormous increase in street violence ge violent Violent Crime of all types that took over. The homicide ratedoubled and rate of assault as well. So there was an the increase in incar carceration which is what caused the rates to droopp. Most of the crime decline was tributed to the increase in imprisonment. In the United States it is little misleading. The country we know best and teerm think of it as a representative of western democracy but it is an outlier and trends mentioned are true for every democacy but the United States. It is true of homicide Capital Punishment, willingness to engage in war and true of impris imprisonment where we throw larger amounts in jail. There is no comparison between todays prison and those of the 18th 18th and 18th 19th century. Hi, i am megan. I was wondering if you could share thubt share about the methods you used to arrive at the numbers you talked about. Did you do independent testing with statistics like look at this cause . Did this factor cause competitionx to change this. Could you share the source of your numbers and how you approverrived at them. For the state and nonstate contrast it came from looking into tribal people and forensic archeology. In europe it came about unearthing records every year for a town in europe going back to the middle ages. In the case of war, it depends on the period. Since 1944 there have been records kept on the debt of war members. Before 1996, there was a project that looked at death rates from 1816present. Prior to 1816 it becomes, as you can imagine the further back you go the fuzzier it is, but they have tried to look at the death tols from the wars and come up with best guest estimates. The fbi keeps good statistics or have since the 1930s for crimes other than homicide like rape and assault. Victim surveys are not con tam taminated so they are help. It depends on the kind of violence. Did you take a new approach with analyzing the reports . In general, i took the data sets in their entirety and never secondguessed the criteria. I didnt want to do any cherry picking to saver the hypothesis. So the data sets i use vary in their quality for sure but none were selected in order to show a decline or manipulated. I dumped loth dateloth data. I didnt give myself the freedom of cherry picking them. All of the i was just wondering, social capital has been declining in the United States. Interconnection and community. And i would have thought that would lead to maybe more violence, more crime, but it seems like we have had a decline in crime despite those kind of maybe troubling figures. I wonder if you gave thought to that and wonder my putnums results might be going in a different direction. That is a good question. Other data sets seem to suggest that the rate of violence crime depends on the degree of social interconnectedness and trust and institutions. When i refer to the civilizing process, it declined from about 10010000 per year and that is occurring every year that government extends its tentacles. But then the further decline we see in europe and parts of the United States from ten down to the low singledigits doesnt depend on the presence of government but accepting the legit legit behavior that you would expect to see correlating but dont as you point out. The embarrassing dirty little fact is that no statistical criminalologist has been successful for counting for the increase in the crime nor the plunging from the90s to the present. They dont predict why the curve is going up and down. That is the embarrassing secret. I do my best in the book to talk about changes in cultural attitudes that could filter down to Law Enforcement and push these up or down. But we are all retelling stories post talk. Last question. My name is rich. I want wade to read the book cant it is a fascinating subject. I am interested in buywhy the perception we live in a dangerous era is so prevalent. Why is that . It is an intrigueing question. I think one reason is what the media reports and are Getting Better at reporting. Not only is there a programming policy of if it bleeds it bleeds. They know like people enjoy violent entertainment they enjoy violent news. That is promoted at one. We are better that finding violence. Anyone with a cellphone can beam violence all over the world. And cognitive psychologist know the human mind recognizes ease with the examples we can recall. If you think of an example you can it is dangerous. We are not as good as calculating denominators and the media doesnt report that. If you got millions of people dying of alzheimers and cancer and heart attacks and if Vladimer Putin keels over from a heart attack a camera crew isnt filming it. But if he is sheathot by a postal worker it will bow onbe on the use. We care more about violence now. Genocide is now a heavy rain heinous crime but before the 20th century it wasnt a problem with anyone. It it is all over the new testament. Many people thank god for wiping out the indians. There is a change down the scale to isolate behaviors that were okay favored my favorite example is about bullying. 25 years ago this would have been an episode of the simpsons with the president speaking out. Boys are going to grow up tough. But now we think of life from the point of view of the bullying child. There are counts of the suffering from the victims of bullying and now there is a new category of violence that wasnt counted as violence before. Thank you. [applause] that was Steven Pinker on his book the better angels of our nature. For more information visit facebook. Com ayearofbooks if you say isil it means you are not recognizing the state of the modern way of israel because it is a region. I dont know they why the Administration Calls it i isil but it is dangerous. What do you do with these guys . You kill them. [applause]. Isis is winning a psychological battle. When you pull up social media and seeing beheadings of people that is how you show yourself to be the strong tribe. And the next thing you know, all of the diseffected youth male and females, want to be on the team. It is a recruitment tool saying look at us. We are not afraid of the United States of america. We are beheading their people. They are talking. You take someone like isis and you crush them and make them wish they were never born. You tell them whatever corner of the world they go into someone with the stars and stripes on their shoulder will be there to put a bullet between their eyes. That is the only they understand and the only thing to keep the country protected. It was alqaeda now isis, what is next . You will get another radical Islamic Terrorist Groups nonstate, nonuniform belligerent that believe their sfrigz vision for the world is the right one. Think about being a christian in the oldest christian civilizations in the world and for the first time in a there is