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Summary Of The Surprising Decline In Violence By Steven Pinker

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In the TED talk, The Surprising Decline in Violence, speaker Steven Pinker discusses how, despite the common belief that humans have been incredibly violent in modern times, violence has actually declined significantly over time, and that we are “probably living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.” It can be viewed on both a micro-level and macro-level. In “Perceptions Haven’t Caught Up to Decline in Crime,” a New York Times article written by Justin Wolters, he presents data given by the F.B.I. that shows a great decrease in violent incidents per 100,000 people from 1993 to 2012. Seth Borenstein, writer of the Huffington Post article, “World Becoming Less Violent: Despite Global Conflict, Statistics Show Violence In Steady Decline,” discusses findings in Pinker’s book that show that the number of people killed in battle has decreased 1,000-fold over hundreds of years. In this talk, Pinker discusses two concepts about human/social behavior: people are inherently violent and always have been; humans have gradually become more empathetic and put a greater value on life today. …show more content…

In the bible, there are several passages describing men raping and pillaging villages, as well as slaughtering innocent civilians. There are also passages that describe people being put to death for acts that would not be considered criminal in many societies today (idolatry, blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, etc.). In medieval times, stealing a loaf of bread could result in you being put to death or subjected to other cruel forms of capital punishment. Crimes that would normally result in minimal punishment today would have led to your hand or ears being cut off in medieval civilization. It is for these reasons that this concept

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The article mentions that is a common belief that most violence in younger adults, or teens comes from the violence that is seen on media. Many of the people who do the violence, are people have been exposed to violence at a young age it; Whether it be the media, or their own household. The article talks about how there are movie clips of violence, and fighting videos openly posted on social media that eventually become viral, exposing kids to violence making them believe that what they are doing is not as bad

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The shift of violence is motivated by a historical shift that has resulted in the decrease of violence globally. This can be explained in Chapter 3: The Civilizing Processes in the book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker that discusses the trend of violence through the introduction of centralized power, etiquette and the economic revolution. Medieval Europe as indicated by the drawing of figure 3.6 depicted a very violent Europe. A knight would cut off the nose of a civilian as an official punishment for “hearsay, treason, prostitution or sodomy, but usually due to personal vengeance” (Pinker. 2011, p. 68).

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