An Interview with Steven Pinker: The violent dangers of ideology

[josephpalazzo]

Why did you want to write a book about violence?

It  was an interest in human nature. I had written two books previously on  human nature, and I faced criticism that any acknowledgment of human  nature is fatalistic. I always thought this objection was nonsense. Even  in theory, human nature comprises many motives; if we have some motives  that incline us to violence, we also have some motives that inhibit us  from violence. So just positing human nature doesn't force you to claim  that one side or another must prevail.


You equate Marxist  ideology with violence in the book. Do you think that capitalist values  have contributed to the decline of violence?

I think  that communism was a major force for violence for more than 100 years,  because it was built into its ideologyâ€"that progress comes through class  struggle, often violent. It led to the widespread belief that the only  way to achieve justice was to hurry this dialectical process along, and  allow the oppressed working classes to carry out their struggle against  their bourgeois oppressors. However much we might deplore the profit  motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants iPods we would  probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.


How do you view democracy in those terms?

Democracy  is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the  violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with. So I  don't think it's a triumph, but it's the best option we have found. As  far as we know there doesn't seem to be a better one on the horizon.


How much has religion contributed to violence throughout history? Should we see a correlation between the two?

Yes,  violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect  correlation and it doesn't have to be a permanent connection. Religions  themselves changeâ€"they are not completely independent of behaviour and  they respond to the very currents that drive violence down. Religions  have become more liberal in response to these currents.


You cite ideology as the main cause for violence in the 20th century. Why is that?

There  are a number of things that make particular ideologies dangerous. One  of them is the prospect of a utopia: since utopias are infinitely good  forever, and can justify any amount of violence to pursue that utopia,  the costs are still outweighed by the benefits. Utopias also tend to  demonize certain people as obstacles to a perfect world, whoever they  are: the ruling classes, the bourgeois, the Jews or the infidels and  heretics. As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the  world's ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.


Is there any statistical evidence to suggest that violence doesn't work to provoke political change?

A  study that was published too late to include in my book by two  political scientists, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephen, looked at the  success rate of violent and non-violent resistance movements. It found  that the non-violent ones succeeded 75% of the time and the violent ones  succeeded 25% of the time. So it's not the case that violence never  works, nor that non-violence always works, but that non-violence seems  to have a better success rate.


In your book you talk  about understanding abortion in terms of consciousness and morality. Why  is there so much misunderstanding about this topic, in your opinion?

Consciousness  is increasingly seen as the origin of moral worth. Empirically, the  huge increase in abortions has not accompanied an increase in the  neglect or abuse of children. A common prediction in the 1970s before  Roe v Wade (a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on  the issue of abortion) is that abortion would inevitably lead to  legalised infanticide. We can say with confidence that that prediction  was incorrect, which supports the idea that people's intuition doesn't  equate abortion with murder, that legalised abortion did not place  people on a slippery slope. The slope actually has a fair amount of  traction and I think what gives it traction is the equation of moral  values with consciousness.


You describe the concept of pure evil as a myth in the book. Why?

The  myth of “pure evil” is a debating tactic. We don't think of it that way  because that very awareness would undermine the credibility of our  brief. If the myth of pure evil is that evil is committed with the  intention of causing harm and an absence of moral considerations, then  it applies to very few acts of so-called “pure evil” because most  evildoers believe what they are doing is forgivable or justifiable.


Should we be worried that violence on a mass scale, of the kind we saw in the last century, will rear its head again?

I  think we should worry. I don't think we will necessarily see it on the  same scale, but the violence that did take place was due to features  that were found in human nature. They haven't gone away and it's  possible that they could re-emerge. All the more reason why we should  fortify the institutions that are designed to prevent that from  happening, like free speech, rule of law and human rights.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2011/11/qa-steven-pinker-0

[SGOS]

Pinker seems like a thoughtful person.

[GSOgymrat]

At first I thought this was about a new book but this is a discussion about "The Better Angels of Our Nature," which is a really good. Pinker gives a detailed account of just how violent people have been in the past and how violence is declining.