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Why Violence Has Declined By Steven Pinker: Chapter Analysis

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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). This violence can be attributed to kingdoms being very weak, that they resorted to bringing
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Violence was particularly common with political opponents and this is evident with Caesar and Pompey. Caesar and Pompey were army generals who ended up as political enemies who wanted to become more powerful than the other, and to prove this they fought in a battle that is known as the Battle of Pharsalus. “ [Caesar] attacked Pompey's left flank and, rejoined by their cavalry, were able to get behind and attack Pompey's army from the rear… Caesar had won his greatest victory, having lost only about 200 soldiers and 30 centurion.” Thus, violence became a normal aspect of Roman life.

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Violence is never an adequate solution to achieving the goals of civil rights- well, according to Cesar Chavez. Ten years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights advocate, Cesar Chavez published an article on his theories of nonviolent resistance. He states his position clearly, and is very adamant as well: no good comes from violence, as it causes additional problems and is only successful temporarily. Chavez builds his argument using particularly explicit diction, making his stance evident. He additionally makes use of contrasting diction to distinguish between violence and nonviolence, and introduces Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi to establish credibility.

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In the book " Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City" written by Dr. Elijah Anderson, The William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale, brings to light the different issues that are regular in the city today. The street codes have a huge influence on the activities and conduct of numerous young people in the inner city or "hood". In the streets, it is stressing, as it is credited to ills like expanded rate of crime, anxiety, drug trafficking and all manifestations of brutality with extreme aftereffect of death. The urban life inside the ghettos majorly pitched into the street codes. Plainly, he brings out the issue of respect.

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The medieval times are violent and very harsh unlike the contemporary

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Before judicial systems, not harsh enough consequences were handed down so the reoccurrence of this violence kept happening. Without something to make someone

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There are about 250,000 child soldiers today. In A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah we read about his personal experience as a child soldier. In this book we see the start of the civil war in Sierra Leone before he was a soldier but as the war spreads he becomes a soldier as he didn't have another option. We see him go through loss of family and friends, brainwashing, violence, drug addiction, withdrawal and PTSD. He goes through recovery and gets better through hard work and the help of others.

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Another fact Pinker uses to illustrate how the violence started and how we are where we stand today in society is “Forensic archaeology – a kind of “Csi : Paleolithic” can estimate rates of violence from the proportion of skeletons in an ancient site with bashed in skulls, decapitations or arrowheads embedded in bones.” With this evidence from the text the reader may also conclude that not only was the era of primitive society barbaric, but those who committed the crimes didn’t value human life. In contrast to this Pinker’s uses the fact, “On average 15% of people in pre-state eras died violently compared to about 3% of the earliest states”. This evidence from the article illustrates to the readers that before the earliest states were made more than one fifth of people died from violent deaths in the world’s

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Have you ever heard of a saying that goes “if someone kills your loved one, you must find them and kill them”? Well, that is an actual thing in the novel “Long Way Down”. Written by Jason Reynolds, this powerful novel has stories that are full of emotion. It all starts with the main character named Will. His brother Shawn was unfortunately killed, and Will is determined and pressured to find his brothers killer and murder them.

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The novel Outsiders by S.E Hinton communicates through characters actions and violence, the town the greasers and socs are in is all about violence and theres violence and action every way you look. The greasers have danger and violence all the time in their town and they have things like fights and jumps and more. But in general they are entitled by action and danger.

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According to Steven Pinker’s article, “A History of Violence”, violence has decline throughout the centuries. The way of life and traditions were much more different in the sixteenth century. Violence was more extreme. Pinker mentioned that their form of entertainment was cat-burning, “in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire.” In our modern time, people would think it is unacceptable and the most horrifying event to be taking place.

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Dorothy Siegel’s argument in the essay “What Is Behind the Growth of Violence on College Campuses?” is persuasive. Siegel persuades the reader by presenting her points and validating them with facts and statistics. One of the strongest aspects of the argument is that contrary to popular belief, students are committing a majority of the crimes that take place on college campuses; the students “themselves may become the assailants”, not persons from outside of the campus. She further supported this by pointing out that students tend to know their attackers. Another strong aspect of her argument is that campus violence is due to substance abuse.

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Taking a look back at our history, slavery was a huge issue that existed within our country as well as a great example of racial conflicts that still exist today. Slavery created such awful stereotypes about black men and women that African Americans now are still paying for these horrific discernments. Slavery demonstrates just how such judgments can form hatred for a particular group and or kind. We now still live in a society where hatred exists everywhere towards numerous different groups, races, and or ethnicities. The problem now lies on how do we as a society address this issue of hate or hatred?

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Violence can provoke an individual to be easily manipulated and become evil or uncivilized. For example, “Other problems include high levels of youth unemployment in the Muslim community, the availability of arms and a highly developed communications and transportation network in Belgium” (Burke 2). Because of the low youth unemployment, Belgium is a main target for Muslim terrorists. European countries due to violence against them and inequality bombed Belgium several times because of the corruption of Belgium. As well as in Lord of the Flies the boys killed an innocent because of that fear of the “beast” on the island (Golding 153).

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Owning guns in the United States is not a novel concept. What seems to be changing is the awareness of the American people of the dangers guns possibly pose; heightened awareness brought on by news breaking stories about large mass shootings have sparked major controversy in regards to the nation’s gun regulations and accessibility. In a Ted Talk given by Dan Gross: Why Gun Violence Can’t be Our New Normal in Vancouver, British Columbia, Gross boldly states his unwillingness to accept gun violence as a societal norm in the US and in his Ted Talk argues that gun violence may be greatly reduced if guns were managed and regulated properly, and by putting in place Brady background checks nationwide to ensure that guns will truly be kept away from

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At the beginning of his analysis of Benjamin, Martel correctly suggests that 'when we leave out his [Benjamin's - D.L.] theology, we leave out the core of his philosophy as well.' Thus, Martel shows that he is interested precisely in the politico-theological debate which was led and partly initiated by both Schmitt and Benjamin. He turns to Origin of German Tragic Drama, the text in which Benjamin explicitly refers to Schmitt's Political Theology and to which Schmitt himself will later refer in Hamlet or Hecuba. According to Martel, Benjamin is very critical of contemporary commodity fetishism which is still here with us.

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