Day of Judgment update: gave the paper and the talk. The paper went over very well, with a few corrections suggested that are pretty easy fixes. The talk went over decently well, with an (unexpected) suggestion I attempt to publish it in the near term. I might be good at this political theory thing?

Though I have some skepticism about Steve Pinker's book on the decline of violence (e.g.), I'm not sure John Gray's objections really hit the mark. As I understand Pinker's thesis, the best way to understand the 20th century is two-fold:

1. Though there are a number of events of noteworthy brutality, the overall frequency of those has declined, and there are fewer long-running lower-level instances of death-causing violence. It's a trope for people who study the 17th century, like myself, to note that the Thirty Years War is on an entirely different scale of destruction (at least in Germany) than either of the World Wars.

2. That the reason why we feel this to not be the case is, in part, because the norms of the world, most especially the developed world, have shifted decisively against violence in any form in the last hundred years, give or take.

Neither one of those points seems especially open to dispute, so far as I can tell. And part of point #2 really does have to do with the rise of sentimental theories of morality, and the ability to conceive of oneself as shorn from particular accidents of identity and so fundamentally like (rather than unlike) everyone else in the world, both of which are notable features of the 'Enlightenment,' broadly defined. (It may be true that these ideas existed even in medieval Christianity, which is certainly what I believe, but those medievals seemed remarkably uninterested in working out the implications of those beliefs until denominational difference and secularism began to be significant social problems.)

Now, none of that should be taken as support for any evolutionary claim Pinker may be trying to make (though I'd support a social construction claim), nor am I entirely convinced that his ancient historical data reflects reality and not some omitted variable, but like the tag will say: "modernity? not so bad"

History and Violence

Via Mungowitz (and via I suspect the same email he received about it), Steven Pinker on the global reduction in violence over the last 500 years or so.

I have the usual bits of skepticism:

There's not nearly enough data for the long period of pre-1500 history, and extrapolating from what we do have seems potentially dangerous. (I wonder how much of the violent death stuff is caught up in one's being more likely to die from positively everything way back when; advances in medical technology would seem to make it less likely that you're going to die even if you're still fighting in a war).

Russet and Oneal's work on the liberal peace was, as I recall, discredited in one of my graduate seminars for some statistical reason I understood at the time but can no longer remember (one of my professors long had the theory that the liberal peace gets it backwards: states stop trading in anticipation of a war).

The historical explanation is massively overdetermined. Massively.

Then there's all Foucault's work on how the end of, say, public executions does not correspond to the lessening of violence, just pushes it into different arenas.

Also, the 500 year frame, though convenient for my belief that the Reformation and modernity was the start of everything good, does seem to exclude both the Thirty Years War and the most catastrophic reductions of native populations in the New World.

Still, modernity? Not so bad.