Steven Pinker –"The Better Angels of Our Nature"

O carte foarte convingãtoare (și bine documentatã) care demonteazã opiniile cã trãim în una din cele mai violente perioade din istorie. Pe lângã faptul cã se uitã la statisticile care aratã clar cã avem o scãdere apreciabilã a evenimentelor violente, Steven Pinker încearcã sã identifice factorii care justificã aceastã diminuare a manifestãrilor violente pentru a evita o posibilã inversare a acestei tendinţe.
Pornind de la studii și experimente recente din psihologie, economie, sociologie, Pinker ne trece prin toatã istoria omenirii evidenţiind punctele de cotiturã care au marcat schimbãri în modul nostru de a gândi și de a ne raporta la lume, din perioada preistoricã, când apariţia formaţiunilor statale s-a asociat cu o primã scãdere importantã a manifestãrilor violente, pânã la conflictele anilor 2000. Principala idee a cãrţii constã în a arãta cã noi trãim acum într-o lume unde avem cel mai mic risc de a muri într-un incident violent, fie o agresiune personalã, fie prin implicarea într-un conflict armat naţional sau internaţional. Pentru cei pasionaţi de subiect, aceastã carte cuprinde mai toate aspectele care ar putea fi discutate în domeniu.

"After half a millennium of wars of dynasties, wars of religion, wars of sovereignty, wars of nationalism, and wars of ideology, of the many small wars in the spine of the distribution and a few horrendous ones in the tail, the data suggest that perhaps, at last, we’re learning."

Deși studiile statistice sunt prezentate (de obicei prea) detaliat, concluziile selectate aduc elemente interesante ideii centrale. De exemplu, aflãm cum actele de violenţã fãcute de bãrbaţi asupra altor bãrbaţi au fluctuaţii mai mari de-a lungul istoriei decât cele care îi implicã pe copii, neveste, pãrinţi. Sau preia un tabel cu o clasificare a celor mai sângeroase episoade istorice (iar primele locuri sunt destul de neașteptate).

Prezentându-și propria perspectivã asupra evoluţiei violenţei în istoria și gândirea omenirii, Pinker ţine sã critice o serie de mituri în care credem fãrã a avea date concrete pentru a le susţine. Cum ar fi legãtura dintre violenţã și patologie sau lipsa de moralitate.

"These observations overturn many dogmas about violence. One is that violence is caused by a deficit of morality and justice. On the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators. Another dogma, cherished among psychologists and public health researchers, is that violence is a kind of disease. But this public health theory of violence flouts the basic definition of a disease, namely a malfunction that causes suffering to the individual. Most violent people insist there is nothing wrong with them; it’s the victim and bystanders who think there’s a problem."

Oricum, eforturile de dezarmare sau de interzicere a armelor nu se asociazã în mod dramatic cu o scãdere a violenţei pe scalã largã. "Human behavior is goal-directed, not stimulus-driven, and what matters most to the incidence of violence is whether one person wants another one dead."

Pentru mulţi la baza conflictelor stã competiţia pentru resurse limitate sau valoroase. Pinker susţine cã alţi factori care ţin de natura umanã joacã un rol mult mai important în declanșarea acestor acte violente.
"While contests over resources are a vital dynamic in history, they offer little insight into grand trends in violence. The most destructive eruptions of the past half millennium were fueled not by resources but by ideologies, such as religion, revolution, nationalism, fascism, and communism."

Pe lângã punctele evidente din istorie (cum ar fi perioada Iluminismului cãreia îi acordã o importanţã aparte), Pinker se oprește și asupra unor aspecte mai puţin discutate. De exemplu, influenţa regulatorie a statului asupra pornirilor violente ale membrilor sãi este limitatã în SUA întrucât aici renunţarea la conflictele armate nu a precedat formarea ideii de naţiune, de ţarã, cetãţenii pãstrându-și dreptul de a deţine arme pentru a aplica justiţia la nivel personal.
"In America, the people took over the state before it had forced them to lay down their arms –which, as the Second Amendment famously affirms, they reserve the right to keep and bear. In other words Americans, and especially Americans in the South and West, never fully signed on to a social contract that would vest the government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force."

Deși mulţi dintre noi nu mai regãsesc în marile scrieri filosofice o relevanţã pentru fenomenele actuale, Pinker recurge în mod repetat la filosofii secolelor 18-19 pentru substratul explicativ la evoluţia evidenţiatã în manifestãrile violente.
"The researchers concluded that Kant got it right three out of three times: democracy favors peace, trade favors peace, and membership in intergovernmental organizations favors peace. A pair of countries there are in the top tenth of the scale on all three variables are 83 percent less likely than an average pair of countries to have a militarized dispute in a given year, which means the likelihood is very close to zero."

Mi-a plãcut cum a ales sã descrie societatea actualã unde comuniunea și comunicarea dintre oameni nu mai cunosc limite culturale sau geografice.
"The communications guru Marshall McLuhan called the postwar world ‘a global village.’ In a village, the natural fortunes of other people are immediately felt. If the village is the natural size of our circle of sympathy, then perhaps when the village goes global, the villagers will experience greater concern for their fellow humans than when it embraced just the clan or tribe. A world in which a person can open the morning paper and meet the eyes of a naked, terrified little girl running toward him from a napalm attack nine thousand miles away is not a world in which a writer can opine that war is ‘the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of man’ or that ‘it enlarges the mind of a people and raises their character.’ "

M-am regãsit în câteva dintre fixaţiile care îl deranjeazã și pe Pinker: nostalgia pentru un trecut mult mai bun decât prezentul și obsesia actualã cu empatia.

"[…] nostalgia for a peaceable past is the biggest delusion of all. We now know that native peoples, whose lives are so romanticized in today’s children’s books, had rates of death from warfare that were greater than those of our world wars. The romantic visions of medieval Europe omit the exquisitely crafted instruments of torture and are innocent of the thirtyfold greater risk of murder in those times. The centuries for which people are nostalgic were times in which the wife of an adulterer could have her nose cute off, children as young as eight could be hanged for property crimes, a prisoner’s family could be charged for easement of irons, a witch could be sawn in half, and a sailor could be flogger to a pulp."

"Now, I have nothing against empathy. I think empathy is –in general though not always- a good thing, and I have appealed to it a number of times in this book. An expansion of empathy may help explain why people today abjure cruel punishments and think more about the human costs of war. But empathy today is becoming what love was in the 1960s –a sentimental ideal, extolled in catchphrases […] but overrated as a reducer of violence. […] The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy, but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights."

Paralel cu analiza (și nuanţarea, punerea în context a) motivelor pentru care pesimiștii evalueazã timpurile contemporane ca fiind de o violenţã ieșitã din comun, Pinker subliniazã toate lucrurile care au dus la diminuarea evidentã, probatã statistic, a violenţei la nivel personal, comunitar și internaţional: formarea statelor, tiparul care a facilitat rãspândirea cãrţilor, comerţul, democraţiile, implicarea crescutã a femeilor pe scena publicã, apelul la raţiune, auto-controlul etc.

"I am sometimes asked, ‘How do you know there won’t be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?’ The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up."