Why is there less violence today than in the past?

[Danmark]

In a response at http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 659#647659
McCulloch cited a very interesting book:
The Better Angels of our Nature

Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia.....What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? ....Pinker argues the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

http://stevenpinker.com/publications/be ... our-nature
The questions for debate are: Has there been a dramatic decrease in violence and if so, to what do you attribute it?

[jerryxplu]

[Replying to Danmark]

I would like to think that it would be due to medical advancement so people won't die easily from minor wounds or infections from it.

A big part of it is that most countries are doing much better than they were back then. Poverty is directly related to crime if you think about it. Of course I am not saying that people well off doesn't commit crime but rather it would be more likely to lead to desperate acts. Now most countries have so form of social welfare program that reduce the need for such act. Not saying it prevent it but does reduce it at a large scale.

Now we move to technology. There are much more crime that depends on technology that can make lots of money such as stealing identity or other schemes. Not to mention the crime is not as easy to detect like the violent crime. We have cameras in many places, the new advance also comes with DNA testing making it easier to find suspects.

In summary I think crime rate overall is about the same but type of crime move on to theft of many different type.

PS. Just because crime are not reported on national news doesn't mean it doesn't happen. When I was living in Connecticut we have multiple death due to crime such as armed robbery but it doesn't even make it to the news anymore. Besides, I don't think we had that many school shootings in the past either.

[heavensgate]

[Replying to post 31 by jerryxplu]

I like the nuance of how technology and white collar crime add to the discussion.
I think that the character of the German Nazi is somehow of extraordinary men and women that had a penchant for violence and domination is somehow distorted by Pinker's thesis.
If it is that some how we are becoming more gentle in our natures as humans, the analogy seems only true in the comfortable middle class in the western democracies.
Take away the rule of any meaningful Law (in which War creates a vacuum for violence to rush in) and given a rather vast propaganda machine as in the case of the Nazi machine, we as a collective society can fall back in this kind of barbarism in the blink of an eye. History agrees. We are not smarter, we are not more compassionate, we are not more loving, I agree, we are just us, and no spin doctor can really tell us much different without manipulation, or under reporting as Pinker has done..
Education will advance nations, so will financial independence, sometimes will also brute force. But for the individual, we are actually no different than the ancient Egyptian or Hebrew. We are all, still all the same, just different clothes, different technologies, and different world views. How do you measure that?

[McCulloch]

[Replying to post 31 by jerryxplu]

I like the nuance of how technology and white collar crime add to the discussion.
I think that the character of the German Nazi is somehow of extraordinary men and women that had a penchant for violence and domination is somehow distorted by Pinker's thesis.

Not at all. He sees Nazism as a reactionary throwback. In a world that is generally moving towards the protection of rights and freedoms, the authoritarian regimes of the middle of last century were perhaps the last desperate attempt to impose a darkness in the West.

If it is that some how we are becoming more gentle in our natures as humans, the analogy seems only true in the comfortable middle class in the western democracies.
Take away the rule of any meaningful Law (in which War creates a vacuum for violence to rush in) and given a rather vast propaganda machine as in the case of the Nazi machine, we as a collective society can fall back in this kind of barbarism in the blink of an eye. History agrees. We are not smarter, we are not more compassionate, we are not more loving, I agree, we are just us, and no spin doctor can really tell us much different without manipulation, or under reporting as Pinker has done..

Pinker is not arguing that our natures are fundamentally changing. He is arguing that the the better parts of our nature dominate over the worse parts of our nature when our societies function certain ways. The Rule of Law, Education & Literacy, Trade & Commerce and Cosmopolitanism are all factors that help to reinforce the good side to our natures. Weaken any or all of those and expect to descend into barbarism.

[heavensgate]

[Replying to post 33 by McCulloch]
Me in Red

Not at all. He sees Nazism as a reactionary throwback. In a world that is generally moving towards the protection of rights and freedoms, the authoritarian regimes of the middle of last century were perhaps the last desperate attempt to impose a darkness in the West.

If you read the reactionaries up to 100 years before Hitler, you will find that the German people were prepared (groomed) and ripe for such a thing to happen. We had Nietzsche advocating much of the Nazi ideology well before Hitler, and ideas of eugenics and race based policies were a common discussion in German intellectual circles way before him.
It was to this kind of social/intellectual engineering where Bonheoffer found that the state endorsed church itself was completely blind to the ideological ramifications of Hitler's policies. (Thus a split from the state and 'Confessing' churches). It was in that struggle that he lost his life to the Nazi machine.
So no, not a recapitulation at all, it was manifest that this was actually programed into the very system of belief, over a very long period of time, and all this in 'moderns'. Thus we also need not mention that it was the intelligentsia that performed the horrors in experiments on those destined for death in the camps. This was no throwback. This is man at his worst, and it sometimes has happened at all stages of our history.

Pinker is not arguing that our natures are fundamentally changing. He is arguing that the better parts of our nature dominate over the worse parts of our nature when our societies function certain ways. The Rule of Law, Education & Literacy, Trade & Commerce and Cosmopolitanism are all factors that help to reinforce the good side to our natures. Weaken any or all of those and expect to descend into barbarism.

Well I am happy to see this slant on it. I must say, that discussions I have had have so far with various assumed an evolutionary leap in human kindness to Pinker's work.
So we are not that far apart when it comes to realising that there are two sides to this human coin. As a Christian I see this also. There is a part of us that must be ruled, and there is a part that must be free to live in God (the better angel of our nature).
Regards

[Danmark]

We had Nietzsche advocating much of the Nazi ideology well before Hitler,....

Repeating this misinformation is academically reckless.

The coldest of all cold monsters is known by the name, State.
It tells cold lies, as well; and this lie creeps from its mouth:
'I, the State, am the people.'
__from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, The Teaching of Zarathustra, "Of new Idols.

"These are not the words of an individual who supports concepts of government, let alone something that would be called a "Reich.
....
Nietzsche had no love for racists, and avoided them, to the point of dissociating completely from his own sister as a result of her anti-Semitic dealings. From 1875 - 1882, one of Nietzsche's closest colleagues was Paul Rée, a Jew.

He tenaciously maintained friendship with Rée much to the dismay of his increasingly anti-Semitic contemporaries, namely his own sister, and Cosima and Richard Wagner, among others. Nietzsche, in fact, made his aversion to racism clear when in 1887 he wrote a letter to anti-Semite, Theodor Fritsch, explicitly telling Fritsch he was not interested in racist ideas, and calling the anti-Semitic movement queer, abominable, hypocritical, absurd, and false."
http://www.unc.edu/~jenseits/Thinking/N ... ntext.html

You are not alone, however, in repeating these myths. Nietzsche's anti-semitic sister is responsible for much of this baloney. In the last years of his life she:

"... acquired access to all his unpublished notes which she "edited" to produce her own version of his philosophy. These bastardized works (in particular The Will to Power, published in 1901, which would be more accurately credited as the written work of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, rather than that of her brother) were subsequently used in developing the emerging anti-Semitic movements. The last ten years of his life, Friedrich Nietzsche was completely oblivious to what his sister (or anyone else) was doing."
ibid

[heavensgate]

[Replying to post 35 by Danmark]

I will reply in Red text

heavensgate wrote:


We had Nietzsche advocating much of the Nazi ideology well before Hitler,....

Repeating this misinformation is academically reckless.

I am confused. Why would a simple statement like that be reckless? Have you read any of Nietzsche’s stuff? I have to ask as some times we may all quote from sources at times that may not represent the author all that well. However, before I had made the connection between Hitler and Nietzsche (I was truly ignorant of the fact that there was debate or even a connection of the two philosophies on the subject) I decided to read “Beyond Good and Evil� in the hope of reading in context the classic comment of his that “God was dead!� (only to later to find that it was in a different book “The Gay Science�). Anyhow, as I was reading through “Beyond Good and Evil� I was surprised to find many approaches to social engineering and a totalitarian style and forms of eugenics that Hitler later seemed to emulate in his Reich.
I did not intend to say that Nietzsche was the Father of the concept of a Reich (That belongs to Plato’s Socrates)but certainly Hitler did esteem him .
Below is some reference notes from Wikipedia and some of my own from my notes from Beyond Good and Evil. I do not see any contradiction to what I have stated in the previous post.
The influence of Nietzsche on Hitler and Mussolini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_ ... _Nietzsche

The Italian and German fascist regimes were eager to lay claim to Nietzsche's ideas, and to position themselves as inspired by them. In 1932, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche received a bouquet of roses from Adolf Hitler during a German premiere of Benito Mussolini's 100 Days, and in 1934 Hitler personally presented her with a wreath for Nietzsche's grave carrying the words "To A Great Fighter". Also in 1934, Elisabeth gave to Hitler Nietzsche's favorite walking stick, and Hitler was photographed gazing into the eyes of a white marble bust of Nietzsche.[32] Heinrich Hoffmann's popular biography Hitler as Nobody Knows Him (which sold nearly a half-million copies by 1938) featured this photo with the caption reading: "The Führer before the bust of the German philosopher whose ideas have fertilized two great popular movements: the National Socialist of Germany and the Fascist of Italy."[33]

Despite protests from Bataille, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus and others, the Nazi movement found much affinity with Nietzsche's ideas, including his attacks against democracy, Christianity, and parliamentary governments. In The Will to Power Nietzsche praised – though sometimes ambiguously – war and warriors, and heralded a ruling race that would become the "lords of the earth". The Nazis appropriated from Nietzsche's views on women, which declared that "Man shall be trained for war and woman for the procreation of the warrior, anything else is folly", for their social program for women, "They belong in the kitchen and their chief role in life is to beget children for German warriors."[36]
Nietzsche, Hitler and Eugenics
“We, who have a different faith……we have no other choice… to make a start on antithetical evaluations and to revalue and reverse “eternal values�…….to teach man the future of man as his will, as dependant on a human will, and to prepare for great enterprises and collective experiments in discipline and breeding so as to make an end of that gruesome dominion of chance and nonsense that has hitherto been called history� (Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 203)
Nietzsche, Hitler and the Church
“They (German populace) feel they are fully occupied with…their businesses and pleasures…they have it seems not time left for religion. They tell themselves it is not possible to go to church simply to make oneself miserable. They are not opposed to religious usages, if such participation are demanded in certain usages. ..The majority of German middle class Protestants can today be numbered amongst these indifferent people…�
(Circa 1870 – 1889 Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil ch 58)

“Religion is one more means of overcoming resistance so as to be able to rule: as a bond that unites together ruler and ruled and betrays and hands over to the former the consciences of the latter�
(Circa 1870 – 1889 Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil ch 61)

Compare this with the emergence of the ‘Confessing Church’ before and during the Second World War who were resisting the seduction to the NAZI state machine like the rest of the Lutheran Church and was well in decline even in Nietzsche’s day. The church had long been a cultural artefact for decades apart from those in resistance like Bonhoeffer and the ‘Confessing Church� many of whom lost their lives during the NAZI Regime.
Now besides the above, Nietzsche, though his opening chapter was not favourable to philosophers, certainly had striking resemblances to Plato’s Republic which is seen by some as a manifesto for a totalitarian state. The position of women, the position of plebs, the use of propaganda and the toleration of the church as what we call today ‘useful idiots’ were all in just this one book “Beyond Good and Evil�. I am keen to get hold of more of his works though and have him on my reading list. Good and Evil was supposed to be as per Nietzsche’s own words similar in content to Zarathustra.


The coldest of all cold monsters is known by the name, State.
It tells cold lies, as well; and this lie creeps from its mouth:
'I, the State, am the people.'
__from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part, The Teaching of Zarathustra, "Of new Idols.

"These are not the words of an individual who supports concepts of government, let alone something that would be called a "Reich.

Nietzsche did not really like philosophers, but he did seem to borrow a great deal from Plato (I just happened to read this today from Plato’s Republic. Plato’s Socrates was contending that in setting up the state ruled by Guardians, there was no particular problem in spinning a few lies to the people, as long as it was good for the prolonging and order of the state. Plato’s ideas of eugenics are clearly replicated in Nietzsche and the class system (Rulers and Ruled) as are his attitudes towards women.
I think that while Nietzsche did not necessarily like statehood per se, he did know that it was more the ‘kind’ of state that we should suffer that was the real question. He does not appear to me to be an anarchist.

....
Nietzsche had no love for racists, and avoided them, to the point of dissociating completely from his own sister as a result of her anti-Semitic dealings. From 1875 - 1882, one of Nietzsche's closest colleagues was Paul Rée, a Jew.

I can only say I agree, there was no anti-Semitism with him, and in fact he praised the Jews for their industry and intelligence (from what I have read anyway).


He tenaciously maintained friendship with Rée much to the dismay of his increasingly anti-Semitic contemporaries, namely his own sister, and Cosima and Richard Wagner, among others. Nietzsche, in fact, made his aversion to racism clear when in 1887 he wrote a letter to anti-Semite, Theodor Fritsch, explicitly telling Fritsch he was not interested in racist ideas, and calling the anti-Semitic movement queer, abominable, hypocritical, absurd, and false."
http://www.unc.edu/~jenseits/Thinking/N ... ntext.html

You somehow have turned my reference to Nietzsche / Hitler into being particularly about Jews. This chapter in German history was indeed tragic, but the other ramifications of an earth ruled by Nazi are far reaching, way beyond the Holocaust. Hitler admired him so it is not a long bow to assume that some of his ideas crept into Hitler’s. It is highly probable. See sample below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_ ... _Nietzsche
Nietzsche and fascism
See also Nietzsche's criticism of anti-Semitism and nationalism.
The Italian and German fascist regimes were eager to lay claim to Nietzsche's ideas, and to position themselves as inspired by them. In 1932, Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche received a bouquet of roses from Adolf Hitler during a German premiere of Benito Mussolini's 100 Days, and in 1934 Hitler personally presented her with a wreath for Nietzsche's grave carrying the words "To A Great Fighter". Also in 1934, Elisabeth gave to Hitler Nietzsche's favorite walking stick, and Hitler was photographed gazing into the eyes of a white marble bust of Nietzsche.[34] Heinrich Hoffmann's popular biography Hitler as Nobody Knows Him (which sold nearly a half-million copies by 1938) featured this photo with the caption reading: "The Führer before the bust of the German philosopher whose ideas have fertilized two great popular movements: the National Socialist of Germany and the Fascist of Italy."[35]
Now admittedly, I have neither the time or inclination to research whether the above excerpt from Wikipedia is from reliable sources, so we must at least agree to a stalemate unless you can produce something of more authority than Wikipedia.


You are not alone, however, in repeating these myths. Nietzsche's anti-semitic sister is responsible for much of this baloney. In the last years of his life she:
"... acquired access to all his unpublished notes which she "edited" to produce her own version of his philosophy. These bastardized works (in particular The Will to Power, published in 1901, which would be more accurately credited as the written work of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, rather than that of her brother) were subsequently used in developing the emerging anti-Semitic movements. The last ten years of his life, Friedrich Nietzsche was completely oblivious to what his sister (or anyone else) was doing."
Ibid

The works that I have quoted from were published while Nietzsche was still in some form of rational health (1886). This is way before his sister posthumously edited some of his works, and 14 years before he died in August 1900.
Given the age at his death at 56, and the Reich and Hitler’s acquaintance with Elizabeth, I would say that at the time of publication, his sister would in no way be able to influence or alter the work of Beyond Good and Evil. I am thinking you are grasping at straws to use this.

[Danmark]

We had Nietzsche advocating much of the Nazi ideology well before Hitler,....

Repeating this misinformation is academically reckless.

I am confused. Why would a simple statement like that be reckless? Have you read any of Nietzsche’s stuff?

I've not only read it, I quoted it to you. I also explained in detail how HE did not write some of what YOU attribute to him. It is reckless because these facts have been known for decades, you've been given notice of them, but you continue to repeat this false information. I gave you the benefit of the doubt by calling it 'reckless.' Now you seem committed to prove your repetitive disinformation is purposeful.

[heavensgate]

Me in red
[Replying to post 37 by Danmark]

quote] Repeating this misinformation is academically reckless. [/quote]

I am confused. Why would a simple statement like that be reckless? Have you read any of Nietzsche’s stuff? [/quote]
I've not only read it, I quoted it to you.

No, my question is, have you actually read a book of his? A whole book? Not read about him through various media. I need to know this so we can get serious.

I also explained in detail how HE did not write some of what YOU attribute to him.

I am not sure if you really read my previous post properly. Perhaps you missed it.
The Anti Christ was published 1894 (just 6 years before his death) and at this time the Nietzsche Archive was founded by Elizabeth his sister. By this time Nietzsche had already been catatonic for some time. So his previous works well published before then (Beyond Good and Evil 1886 some eight years previous to Elizabeth's compilation). What I have previously stated that if he died 1900 and his sister was the darling of the Reich, we are talking a serious time gap between his death at 56 (1900) and Elizabeths greeting with Hitler. Elizabeth must have been very young and conniving. But besides this, are there no copies of the original publications available. Would not a copy confirm or deny what I am saying?
My copy in which the Introductory and translator notes are substantial (21 pages,) do not carry the information you are supporting.
What more can I say.

It is reckless because these facts have been known for decades, you've been given notice of them, but you continue to repeat this false information. I gave you the benefit of the doubt by calling it 'reckless.' Now you seem committed to prove your repetitive disinformation is purposeful.[/quote]

You need to check your sources.

[Danmark]

The Anti Christ was published 1894 (just 6 years before his death) and at this time the Nietzsche Archive was founded by Elizabeth his sister. By this time Nietzsche had already been catatonic for some time. So his previous works well published before then (Beyond Good and Evil 1886 some eight years previous to Elizabeth's compilation). What I have previously stated that if he died 1900 and his sister was the darling of the Reich, we are talking a serious time gap between his death at 56 (1900) and Elizabeths greeting with Hitler. Elizabeth must have been very young and conniving. But besides this, are there no copies of the original publications available. Would not a copy confirm or deny what I am saying?
You need to check your sources.

You persist in claiming Nietzsche was a Nazi or somehow promoted Nazism, despite the evidence and Nietzsche's own words and the scholars who have specialized in him. No one is disputing that Nietzsche was highly critical of Christianity and the 'God' of Christianity. I don't agree with all of his criticisms. In fact I vehemently disagree with some of his conclusions. He actually criticized the Christian God for being too soft and too kind. I think it's just the reverse. All through the Torah (same God, right?) God is presented as a tribalist who promotes genocide and land theft. It is exactly that image of God that fits the Nazi agenda of the 'chosen' Aryan people who should rule the world, the 3d Reich. If there is confusion about Nietzsche, there is equal confusion and contradiction about Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In 1889, at age forty-four, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. The breakdown was later ascribed to atypical general paresis due to tertiary syphilis, but this diagnosis has come into question.[10] Re-examination of Nietzsche's medical evaluation papers show that he almost certainly died of brain cancer.[11] Nietzsche lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, after which he fell under the care of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche until his death in 1900.

As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. Förster-Nietzsche was married to a prominent German nationalist and antisemite, Bernhard Förster, and reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own ideology, often in ways contrary to Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were strongly and explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism (see Nietzsche's criticism of antisemitism and nationalism). Through Förster-Nietzsche's editions, Nietzsche's name became associated with German militarism and Nazism, although later twentieth-century scholars have counteracted this conception of his ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

[jerryxplu]

[Replying to post 1 by Danmark]

In other news, look up rape statistics from around the world. I think it should be consider a violence yes? And not to mention the rape case that were not reported.