`` Violence Vanquished `` By Steven Pinker - 1355 Words

In his Wall Street Journal essay, â€Å"Violence Vanquished,† Steven Pinker claims that contrary to perceived notions of increasing violence and turbulence in the world, brutality is declining and empathy is on the rise.† Pinker establishes this argument through numeric comparisons of death tolls, genocides and other aggressive perpetrations in modern society with those in prehistoric times. He credits the fall in these quantifications of â€Å"violence† to the processes of pacification, civilization, humanitarian revolution, Long Peace, New Peace and the rights revolution that have together created an environment conducive to â€Å"our better angels.† While Pinker does an efficient job substantiating these claims with abstract examples of our â€Å"bloody history† drawn from sources like the Old Testament and feudal lifestyles, his argument rests upon a narrow denotation of violence that only looks at human death and no other manifestation of aggression. Though Pinker organizes his argument to prove each development process’s impact on peace, he fails to acknowledge the price society has paid in ways like global warming, diplomatic inadequacy and weak national governments. The data Pinker uses to prove his point obscures the collateral damage social change has generated by creating new forms of violence that are as destructive as wars but disproportionately affected certain communities. Although Pinker references historical violence as portrayed in, â€Å"gory mutilations in Shakespeare s