Steven Pinker makes the case for 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' cleveland.com

In this detail, a peasant disembowels a horse, and a man is being led to the already occupied gallows, which is next to the wheel where a crow picks over a shattered body. The drawing originated in "The Medieval Housebook," a German manuscript about daily life, circa 1475-1480.


Excerpt: But the book's main thesis, which Pinker calls "the most important thing that has ever happened in human history," is not about the diminishment in human cruelty but about the decline of violence. His argument about violence, while convincing, is not as ironclad. After all, the 20th century gave us two of the most devastating wars in history. In rough estimates, World War I snuffed out 15 million combatants, and a mind-boggling 55 million died in World War II.
But in ranking war deaths adjusted for population, Pinker notes, the 20th century doesn't fare badly. The two world wars were less deadly than the Mongol Conquests, for instance, which slaughtered a much higher percentage of Earth's population. To further buttress his case, Pinker points out that in 1945, the world entered "the longest period of peace among great powers since they came into being five hundred years ago."

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