| Submit your comments on this article |
| Olde Tyme Religion |
| A History of Violence |
| 2007-09-14 |
| In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth. Interesting article. Pinker outlines a number of theories. Not too long, hard to excerpt, go RTWT. |
| Posted by:KBK |
| #5 Whatever its causes, the decline of violence has profound implications. Anyone who doubts this should carefully watch "A Clockwork Orange". |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-09-14 23:19 |
| #4 Well, if we don't take our capacity for violence out of storage, dust it of and put it on... |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2007-09-14 19:54 |
| #3 I probably should have quoted the penultimate paragraph: Whatever its causes, the decline of violence has profound implications. It is not a license for complacency: We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time. Nor is it necessarily grounds for optimism about the immediate future, since the world has never before had national leaders who combine pre-modern sensibilities with modern weapons. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-09-14 19:36 |
| #2 Hmmm, I guess Atlanta doesn't count as in most of the world. |
| Posted by: Titus Hayes4699 2007-09-14 19:25 |
| #1 Counterintuitive, but makes sense. Good find, KBK. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-14 18:43 |