Yet another critique of Pinker’s book about the apparent decline in human violence. I myself find it hard to judge the human data, but do object to the idea of an inborn violence that we have managed to overcome. It is a rather Freudian take (civilization helps us overcome our basic tendencies) without much evidence that our ape ancestors were violent. For all we know, they may have been bonobo-like peaceniks (see Eric Michael Johnson’s piece on this, below). As Ryan and Doug Fry argue, neither do we know that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were as violent as Pinker claims. In all debates about human violence that I have seen, it is tough to tell ideology from data.
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Yet another… via Frans de Waal - Public Page
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-ryan/pinkers-dirty-war-on-preh_b_1187329.html
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=415874
