a history of violence part two

Are we getting less violent?
According to the latest news about crime on the streets in the UK, this does seem to be the case:
Jay Doubleyou: crime statistics - and the perception of crime

And certain scholars think the trends show a decrease in violence among humans generally:



Jay Doubleyou: a history of violence
BBC Radio 4 - Things Ain't What They Used To Be (from 18:18)
A History of Violence Edge Master Class 2011 | Edge.org

But here's a very critical view of this thesis:

"Picture a band of 150 or so hunter-gatherers, among whom the murder rate is five to six times that of contemporary New York. One's image will undoubtedly resemble that famously coined by Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and short. However, because of the tiny social scale, that sky-high murder rate pans out to about one murder every fifteen to twenty years--once a generation. Thus, despite the statistically high murder rate, "the general tenor of daily social relations observed by the ethnographer can readily be a strongly positive one of friendship, camaraderie, and communal sharing that is very rarely disrupted by argument or physical fighting." (Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies & the Origins of War)" [[...]

To pretend that tribal warriors who used to travel hundreds of kilometers to capture one or two individual enemies as part of their ritual raids are more violent than modern societies who invented large-scale processes of human annihilation such as concentration camps or atomic bombs reveals a state of complete disconnectedness.

If this contrived nonsense appeals to you, seriously consider making friends with at least one person who lives at the other side of your town...

Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

And others see the 'primitive' which we have 'evolved' from as actually less violent:

Fortunately, a far more plausible outlook has emerged, one that corresponds to the overall version of Paleolithic life in general. Food sharing has for some time been considered an integral part of earliest human society (e.g. Washburn and DeVore, 1961). Jane Goodall (1971) and Richard Leakey (1978), among others, have con- cluded that it was the key element in establishing our uniquely Homo development at least as early as 2 million years ago... One of the telling arguments in favor of the cooperation thesis, as against that of generalized violence and male domination, involves a diminishing, during early evolution, of the difference in size and strength between males and females. Sexual dimorphism, as it is called, was originally very pronounced, including such features as prominent canines or "fighting teeth" in males and much smaller canines for the female.

Though of course the much-maligned Neanderthal has been pictured as a primitive, brutish creature - in keeping with the prevailing Hobbesian ideology - despite manifest intelligence as well as enormous physical strength (Shreeve 1991).

As regards violence among gatherer-hunters, Lee (1988) found that "the !Kung hate fighting, and think anybody who fought would be stupid." The Mbuti, by Duffy's account (1984), "look on any form of violence between one person and another with great abhorrence and distaste, and never represent it in their dancing or playacting." Homicide and suicide, concluded Bodley (1976), are both "decidedly uncommon" among undisturbed gatherer-hunters. The `warlike' nature of Native American peoples was often fabricated to add legitimacy to European aims of conquest (Kroeber 1961); the foraging Comanche maintained their non-violent ways for centuries before the European invasion, becoming violent only upon contact with marauding civilization (Fried 1973).

Future Primitive--John Zerzan

And:

Even today some people who should know better confuse primitive agricultural societies with hunter-gatherer societies and argue, from such confused evidence, that hunter-gatherers were violent and warlike. For example, one society often referred to in this mistaken way is that of the Yanomami, of South America's Amazon, made famous by Napoleon Chagnon in his book subtitled The fierce people. Chagnon tried to portray the Yanomami as representative of our pre-agricultural ancestors. But Chagnon knew well that the Yanomami were not hunter-gatherers and had not been for centuries. They did some hunting and gathering, but got the great majority of their calories from bananas and plantains, which they planted, cultivated, and harvested. Moreover, far from being untouched by modern cultures, these people had been repeatedly subjected to slave raids and genocide at the hands of truly vicious Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese invaders.[1] No wonder they had become a bit "fierce" themselves.

How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways | Psychology Today

On the other hand, whilst there maybe a decline in violence on the streets in Western societies...

[but not elsewhere:
If you ask a Bahraini, Iraqi, or Congolese scholar about violence, my guess is you'll get a quite different take. Ask a Haitain or Chinese sweatshop worker about the violence of being paid $3-$4 for a 14 hour work day. Ask Indian farmers about the violence of debt slavery that leads to suicide plagues. Ask Filipinos and Cambodians about the decline in sex slavery. Ask a Chilean, Bolivian or Indonesian economist about having your country's future sold off into debt at outrageously inflated prices for the benefit of dictators and multinational corporations and sent to offshore bank accounts. Just because they don't go in an beat the workers and citizens over the head with clubs on a daily basis doesn't mean it's not violence, and to make generalizations implying otherwise is a blinkered analysis.
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined]

... we still have a big problem with domestic violence:
Domestic violence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Australia:
The brutal price of domestic violence

In India:

Acceptance of domestic violence: The Reuters TrustLaw group named India one of the worst countries in the world for women this year, in part because domestic violence there is often seen as deserved. A 2012 report by UNICEF found that 57 percent of Indian boys and 53 percent of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 think wife-beating is justified. A recent national family-health survey also reported that a sizable percentage of women blame themselves for beatings by their husbands.

“When a boy grows up seeing his father assault his mother, he starts to accept such a behavior and repeats it,” Anuradha Gupta, mission director for India’s National Rural Health Mission, was quoted as saying.

10 reasons why India has a sexual violence problem

And of course, there is our love of Hollywood violence:

Jim Carrey's decision to withdraw his support for Kick-Ass 2 following the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school last year has re-opened an old debate that's been around in Hollywood for decades. That is, do violent acts depicted on screen have a direct influence on reality? Carrey's decision to make a stand against screen violence (he is a staunch advocate of gun control) is admirable, even if the timing of his announcement seems odd.
Hollywood and movie violence debate: Where do the filmmakers stand? - Movies News - Digital Spy

A study out today in the journal Pediatrics examines movies as a potential source of the so-called “weapons effect” whereby the presence of guns can increase aggression. American and Dutch university researchers found that in a 20-year period, gun violence in PG-13 films has more than tripled. 

Gun Violence In U.S. Movies On The Rise; PG-13 Levels Exceed R-Rated Films: Study - Deadline.com
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