Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature"

[mdsimpson92]

Just finished reading this and I have to say that I was impressed. Pinker definitely has an atheist bent in his thinking, but his general explanations for why relative violence in the world has gone down over the last century is pretty compelling. He goes pretty in depth concerning government control, education, increased empathy, less emphasis on ideology, less focus on the concept of "honor." All of these things he seems to give good explanations for.

If I had to criticize something is his tendency to focus too much on the West, while he does go into other countries, he does seem to like going back to the Middle Ages and definitely worships the Enlightenment to an extent. Also, he makes a lot of references and interpretations of the Bible that I'm not quite sure fit in context, but these references are central to his argument, merely examples among many others.

[Metacrock]

Just finished reading this and I have to say that I was impressed. Pinker definitely has an atheist bent in his thinking, but his general explanations for why relative violence in the world has gone down over the last century is pretty compelling. He goes pretty in depth concerning government control, education, increased empathy, less emphasis on ideology, less focus on the concept of "honor." All of these things he seems to give good explanations for.

If I had to criticize something is his tendency to focus too much on the West, while he does go into other countries, he does seem to like going back to the Middle Ages and definitely worships the Enlightenment to an extent. Also, he makes a lot of references and interpretations of the Bible that I'm not quite sure fit in context, but these references are central to his argument, merely examples among many others.

why are there two versions of this?