Why Violence Has Declined: Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature"

Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature makes a startling and deeply counterintuitive claim: that violence has declined dramatically over the course of human history, and that we may be living in the most peaceful era our species has ever known. This flies in the face of how most of us perceive the world, saturated as we are with news of war, crime, and atrocity. But Pinker marshals a vast array of historical and statistical evidence to argue that, measured properly, as a proportion of population, rates of violence of almost every kind, war, murder, torture, cruelty, have fallen, often dramatically, over the long run. It is an ambitious, data-rich, and hopeful book, and I read it with both genuine interest and the critical caution its sweeping claims demand.

Here is what The Better Angels of Our Nature taught me about the long decline of violence, about the forces that drove it, and about reading optimistic data critically.

Key takeaways

• Violence has declined over history, measured as a proportion of population.
• Our perception is skewed by vivid news and historical forgetting.
• Forces of peace: the state, commerce, literacy, reason, and widening empathy.
• The “better angels” are the human capacities, empathy, self-control, reason, that curb violence.
• Read critically: the data is impressive but the thesis is debated.

The long decline of violence

Pinker’s central, surprising thesis is that violence of nearly every kind has declined over the long sweep of history. Drawing on archaeology, history, and statistics, he argues that prehistoric and tribal societies were far more violent, per capita, than we imagine; that medieval Europe was vastly more murderous than today; that practices we now find unthinkable, slavery, torture as public entertainment, the casual killing of women and children, were once normal and have been progressively abolished or reduced. Even the catastrophic wars of the twentieth century, he argues, do not overturn the long-term trend when measured as a proportion of the world’s population. The key, Pinker insists, is to measure rates rather than raw numbers, and to compare honestly across eras. Our sense that the past was more peaceful and the present uniquely violent is, he argues, an illusion produced by our ignorance of just how brutal earlier ages really were.

The forces of peace

If violence really has declined, what drove the change? Pinker identifies several forces. The rise of the state, with its monopoly on legitimate force, replaced the endless cycle of private vengeance with law and courts. The growth of commerce and trade made other people more valuable alive and cooperating than dead, turning zero-sum raiding into positive-sum exchange. The spread of literacy and the printed word expanded people’s circle of empathy, letting them imagine the inner lives of others, including strangers and enemies. And the growth of reason and Enlightenment values fostered the idea that cruelty is wrong and that all humans have rights. These forces, Pinker argues, gradually strengthened the “better angels” of our nature, our capacities for empathy, self-control, moral reasoning, and a sense of fairness, over the “inner demons” of dominance, revenge, and ideology. It is a hopeful account, one that credits human institutions and ideas with genuinely making us less cruel.

Reading the optimism critically

I find Pinker’s thesis genuinely heartening and his evidence impressive, and I also think it must be read critically, as any such sweeping claim should be. Scholars have raised real questions: about how the statistics are gathered and interpreted across vastly different eras, about whether measuring violence as a proportion of population can obscure the sheer scale of modern atrocities, about whether the trend is as steady and inevitable as it can sound, and about whether recent decades guarantee anything about the future. Pinker himself is careful to say the decline is not inevitable and could reverse. I take the book, then, as a powerful and largely persuasive corrective to reflexive pessimism, valuable for reminding me that the world has, in important ways, become less cruel, while resisting any complacent conclusion that progress is automatic or that the danger of regression has passed. Hope grounded in evidence is worth holding; hope mistaken for guarantee is not.

What I’m taking with me

The Better Angels of Our Nature challenged my reflexive sense that the world is only getting worse, and that is valuable. What I am taking from Pinker is the well-evidenced argument that violence has declined dramatically over history, a fact our news-skewed perceptions hide; his account of the forces, the state, commerce, literacy, reason, widening empathy, that strengthened our “better angels”; and a measured optimism, held critically, that human institutions and ideas can genuinely make us less cruel. I hold the bolder claims with appropriate skepticism. But the core lesson endures: the world’s moral progress is real, hard-won, and worth defending, precisely because it is not guaranteed.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Better Angels of Our Nature about?

It is Steven Pinker’s argument, backed by extensive historical and statistical evidence, that violence has declined dramatically over the course of human history, and an analysis of the forces that drove this decline.

Why do we think violence is increasing when Pinker says it’s decreasing?

Because our perceptions are skewed by vivid, constant news of violence and by ignorance of how brutal earlier eras actually were. Measured as a proportion of population, Pinker argues, violence has fallen over the long run.

What are the “better angels”?

Pinker’s term, borrowed from Lincoln, for the human capacities, empathy, self-control, moral reasoning, and a sense of fairness, that restrain violence, as opposed to the “inner demons” that drive it.

References & further reading

1. Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Viking, 2011.
2. Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate. Viking, 2002.
3. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process. (1939; English translation, Urizen Books, 1978.)