Violence and civilisation

[Hermit]

You cannot have civilisation without violence. For to be civilised means to behave in a way that is considered civilised. To create such a situation one must use violence, discipline and punitive measures against people who do not adhere to the rules of such a group in order to create a cohesive civil structure in the first place.

I grant you this: You are very good at waffling and sprouting platitudes. What exactly is your opinion in regard to the opening post?

Mine is that violence - at least in democratic, capitalist nations - has definitely declined over the centuries. We no longer burn witches or heretics. Today we are content with ridiculing new ageism and arguing with theists of whatever colour. Homosexuals are no longer gaoled and women are protected from rape within marriage.

And take a look at the treatment of the unemployed: The Enclosures in England and Wales resulted in massive unemployment. These unemployed hordes started to wander about the lands, looking for work. Measures were taken to handle this problem. Among them were these: In 1388, the Statute of Cambridge introduced regulations restricting the movements of all labourers and beggars. Labourers wishing to move out of their own county "Hundred" needed a letter of authority from the "good man of the Hundred" — the local Justice of the Peace — or risked being put in the stocks. In 1494, the Vagabonds and Beggars Act determined that: "Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." the Statute of Legal Settlement in 1547 enacted that a "sturdy beggar" could be whipped and branded through the right ear with a hot iron, or made a slave for two years — or for life if he absconded. The Act condemned "...foolish pity and mercy" for vagrants. It also made provisions for branding and hanging. An Act of 1564 aimed to suppress the "roaming beggar" by empowering parish officers to "appoint meet and convenient places for the habitations and abidings" of such classes — one of the first references to what was subsequently to evolve into the workhouse. Under the reign of Henry VIII alone it is estimated that 40,000 people were hanged for committing the crime of being unemployed.

States are more crafty these days. There's no use in murdering vast numbers of people, as that doesn't lead to good wealth production. Far better to enslave people both psychologically and financially such that most of their existence is concerned with trading the meagre resources they have (their own labour) for even greater wealth at the top end of society. I actually don't find that very civilised.

In light of what I posted here, what do you prefer?

Does Pinker provide a source for his statistics on tribal peoples? The phrase "tribal peoples" is an extremely broad brush.

For those who have not read his book (that includes me) Pinker's TED Talk on the subject may be useful. Near the start he remarks that those statistics are necessarily conjectural and explains how he derived them.

[charlou]

Mine is that violence - at least in democratic, capitalist nations - has definitely declined over the centuries. We no longer burn witches or heretics. Today we are content with ridiculing new ageism and arguing with theists of whatever colour. Homosexuals are no longer gaoled and women are protected from rape within marriage.

And take a look at the treatment of the unemployed: The Enclosures in England and Wales resulted in massive unemployment. These unemployed hordes started to wander about the lands, looking for work. Measures were taken to handle this problem. Among them were these: In 1388, the Statute of Cambridge introduced regulations restricting the movements of all labourers and beggars. Labourers wishing to move out of their own county "Hundred" needed a letter of authority from the "good man of the Hundred" — the local Justice of the Peace — or risked being put in the stocks. In 1494, the Vagabonds and Beggars Act determined that: "Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." the Statute of Legal Settlement in 1547 enacted that a "sturdy beggar" could be whipped and branded through the right ear with a hot iron, or made a slave for two years — or for life if he absconded. The Act condemned "...foolish pity and mercy" for vagrants. It also made provisions for branding and hanging. An Act of 1564 aimed to suppress the "roaming beggar" by empowering parish officers to "appoint meet and convenient places for the habitations and abidings" of such classes — one of the first references to what was subsequently to evolve into the workhouse. Under the reign of Henry VIII alone it is estimated that 40,000 people were hanged for committing the crime of being unemployed.

States are more crafty these days. There's no use in murdering vast numbers of people, as that doesn't lead to good wealth production. Far better to enslave people both psychologically and financially such that most of their existence is concerned with trading the meagre resources they have (their own labour) for even greater wealth at the top end of society. I actually don't find that very civilised.

In light of what I posted here, what do you prefer?

False dichotomy?

[Hermit]

Mine is that violence - at least in democratic, capitalist nations - has definitely declined over the centuries. We no longer burn witches or heretics. Today we are content with ridiculing new ageism and arguing with theists of whatever colour. Homosexuals are no longer gaoled and women are protected from rape within marriage.

And take a look at the treatment of the unemployed: The Enclosures in England and Wales resulted in massive unemployment. These unemployed hordes started to wander about the lands, looking for work. Measures were taken to handle this problem. Among them were these: In 1388, the Statute of Cambridge introduced regulations restricting the movements of all labourers and beggars. Labourers wishing to move out of their own county "Hundred" needed a letter of authority from the "good man of the Hundred" — the local Justice of the Peace — or risked being put in the stocks. In 1494, the Vagabonds and Beggars Act determined that: "Vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." the Statute of Legal Settlement in 1547 enacted that a "sturdy beggar" could be whipped and branded through the right ear with a hot iron, or made a slave for two years — or for life if he absconded. The Act condemned "...foolish pity and mercy" for vagrants. It also made provisions for branding and hanging. An Act of 1564 aimed to suppress the "roaming beggar" by empowering parish officers to "appoint meet and convenient places for the habitations and abidings" of such classes — one of the first references to what was subsequently to evolve into the workhouse. Under the reign of Henry VIII alone it is estimated that 40,000 people were hanged for committing the crime of being unemployed.

States are more crafty these days. There's no use in murdering vast numbers of people, as that doesn't lead to good wealth production. Far better to enslave people both psychologically and financially such that most of their existence is concerned with trading the meagre resources they have (their own labour) for even greater wealth at the top end of society. I actually don't find that very civilised.

In light of what I posted here, what do you prefer?

False dichotomy?

How so?

[JimC]

Perhaps Charlou was wondering whether it categorically has to be one or the other...

So, we don't have to "prefer" either the violence of the past, or the psychological constraints rEv was alluding to...

[Audley Strange]

I grant you this: You are very good at waffling and sprouting platitudes.

Cheers! I wish could pay you a compliment of some form in return but it would simply be spouting platitudes.

What exactly is your opinion in regard to the opening post?

My opinion is that The Western Democracies, when not blowing each other up for the better part of the last century, used and still use their technological advantage to outsource massive amounts of violence against anyone weak enough not to fight back.

Sure life might be safer for the citizens in their own country. However the globe is not safer from those countries. My opinion is that historically speaking the Theocratic Imperial and now Democratic states of the West are oblivious to the suffering they have consistently caused globally and have some form of cognitive dissonance which allows them to spend decades weeping about a couple of thousand casualties of terrorism while being oblivious to the suffering they have caused.

The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people they have killed maimed and tortured all over the globe in this century, let alone the last makes it seem self evident to me that the most civilised countries, whether it be Rome Germany Britain or America are, because of technological advantage, the most violent states globally and as such claiming they are less violent because they are civilised is blinkered idiocy. They have just channelled their propensity to be violent away from themselves after learning the lessons that using violence against their own people tended to end up with their family lines being violently executed.

Also the fact that any who transgress the rules of such civilisations or are even suspected to can lose their liberty or be executed either judicially or extra-judicially in order to preserve whatever societal or ideological norms, through the rule of law suggests strongly to me that civilisation can only exist when those who are considered "uncivilised" are dealt with, which has lead to increasing numbers in the prison population through punitive sentencing. The inherent violence in that is ignored and the violence that goes on within that system is often left uncommented on.

So in short, civilised countries may be less violent towards their own citizens than in the recent past (and in certain states that is still debatable) but they have channelled that outwards almost perpetually.

[JimC]

Audley Strange wrote:

The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people they have killed maimed and tortured all over the globe in this century

Presuming you mean so far in the 21st century, I'd like you to back up those facts. I think they are vastly over-inflated. The Iraqi civilian casualties are a classic example - various liberal organisations have firstly claimed absurd death figures, using very dodgy methods, then secondly put the entire blame for the over-inflated figures solely onto the US, when it in fact was down to the vicious lunacy of sectarian conflict between the 2 branches of Islam...

[Audley Strange]

Audley Strange wrote:

The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people they have killed maimed and tortured all over the globe in this century

Presuming you mean so far in the 21st century, I'd like you to back up those facts. I think they are vastly over-inflated. The Iraqi civilian casualties are a classic example - various liberal organisations have firstly claimed absurd death figures, using very dodgy methods, then secondly put the entire blame for the over-inflated figures solely onto the US, when it in fact was down to the vicious lunacy of sectarian conflict between the 2 branches of Islam...

Well I will grant that certainly the sectarian civil war in Iraq is actually responsible for more deaths than the Coalition. Here's a (ugh) Guardian piece... http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablo ... eport-data

I have no doubt anti-war activists would be likely to inflate the numbers and I have no doubt coalition forces would deflate such numbers when they did finally get round to starting to count them properly. The numbers can range anywhere from 900,000 dead to about 120,000 dead. Let's be generous to the NATO forces, since they are better trained and have more efficient technologies to kill and say about 150,000. The IBC site is lambasted by many people as being anti-war and others as being a propaganda creation. Wiki doesn't help much either... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties ... casualties

There are still a lot, a LOT of deaths that are unaccounted for. However, whether or not this is a civil war or not, it was created by the conditions in Iraq caused by the coalition and sustained by the coalition's insistence in interfering with the political process, not to mention the whole idea of drawing Islamist Terror Cells and Jihadists into the already unstable region. While I cannot say for certain that the civil war would not have happened under Hussein's regime, the fact remains that it was a consequence of the invasion and it was known well in advance that removing Hussein would be likely to cause such frictions if not handled properly.

And that is only Iraq and only the Iraqi dead. Not the maimed nor the rendered.

Afghanistan seems less extreme but I cannot find accurate figures from prior to 2007. However since then it seems there has been in the region of 12 to 25 thousand death by coalition forces since then. Again, deaths, not maimed or rendered. Nor does this include the deaths by non-coalition regional allies. Both stats are again questionable, but let's err on the side of the "good guys" shall we? and say 15 thousand dead since 2007 and lets add that again from 2003 to 2007 when the fighting was heaviest. 30K seem too much or too little? This does not include foreign insurgents. I cannot find any numbers for those deaths. Could be twelve could be thirty thousand. I can't say.

Then we have all the drone strikes in Pakistan which escalated under Obama. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan, so lets say 2500.

So we have a very conservative fatality figure of around 182,500 and at the opposite end of the scale we have claims upwards of about a million.

Again this does not include the maimed or rendered.

Nor does it include Israel's (which considers itself and is considered by its allies a peaceful democracy) conflicts in Gaza Lebanon and Syria.

Nor does it include the other theatres of the "War On Terror" or the clandestine services interferences in places like Haiti, Georgia, Yemen, Eritrea and Somalia.

That is why I said hundreds of thousands if not millions. Hope that suffices.

[JimC]

Pinker's book (which I've read, but don't have on me at the moment, since I lent it to my son) looks carefully at the figures for deaths by violence, and puts them in perspective of deaths per 100,000, which is the fairest way of viewing deaths by violence in a population sense. When you see the graphs over, lets say 200 years, the trend is a saw-tooth graph heading steadily and strongly downwards. Even the world wars are blips (large blips) on the trend line, and the Iraqi war represents a small one.

I offer none of that as a political excuse for the clearly dodgy actions of western military powers in some circumstances since 2001, but more as a salutary reminder that, via media exposure, it is easy to view recent years as carnage personified, whereas objectively, the world is getting overall a less violent place, and has been for millennia. The probability of dying by a violent act is a very uneven figure around the world, but is nonetheless a figure that has definitely decreased on average from tribal times onwards.

I thoroughly recommend having a read of Pinker's book - he writes clearly and well, and supplies a big range of well-referenced figures and graphs.

[Audley Strange]

Pinker's book (which I've read, but don't have on me at the moment, since I lent it to my son) looks carefully at the figures for deaths by violence, and puts them in perspective of deaths per 100,000, which is the fairest way of viewing deaths by violence in a population sense. When you see the graphs over, lets say 200 years, the trend is a saw-tooth graph heading steadily and strongly downwards. Even the world wars are blips (large blips) on the trend line, and the Iraqi war represents a small one.

I offer none of that as a political excuse for the clearly dodgy actions of western military powers in some circumstances since 2001, but more as a salutary reminder that, via media exposure, it is easy to view recent years as carnage personified, whereas objectively, the world is getting overall a less violent place, and has been for millennia. The probability of dying by a violent act is a very uneven figure around the world, but is nonetheless a figure that has definitely decreased on average from tribal times onwards.

I thoroughly recommend having a read of Pinker's book - he writes clearly and well, and supplies a big range of well-referenced figures and graphs.

Certainly I should give it a read. I only heard him speak on it during a promotional tour.

I was only stating my opinion based on the information I've gleaned over the last decade or so (w/r to the "War on Terror") rather than attempt to state facts. Nor did I think for one second you were flag waving for the policies of NATO. In fact I'm not even going to say it was wrong or apologise for it, simply that it happens. If someone could give me concrete evidence rather than propaganda (which is sickening on both sides, using the dead to promote your ideology, as far as I'm concerned) then I'm more than willing to concede I'm talking shit. The problem is there is no concrete evidence, both sides are exploiting the situation, which seems in itself to me to refute the idea of "better angels of our nature."

I don't even think it's a blip. I think we are an inherently violent species. One only has to look at the last century after the end of WW2, the shambles of Korea, Vietnam, the coups and destabilisations in South America, the brutal interferences by former imperialist forces in the self determination of previous colonies. Remember the Soviet Union? Those loons used to think they were for and of the people and were democratic too.

Dying by a violent act may in itself be reduced currently, but one has to take into consideration the increase in age of the population and the massive increase in live births and youth in general, who while may be victims of such violence are not prone to be instigators of it. If there are more children and old folk then there are less people committing violence per capita (a generalisation, I know.) We also have to take into account our efficiency to do violence. That doesn't mean we are less violent, it means we're better at it. We're only 14 years into this century, do you really think our behaviour is better than it was 100 years ago based solely on a lower body count? I'm not so sure it is.

To me for example, having four burly thugs break down your door, kidnap you and have someone stick you in a cell because you grew some forbidden plants or said something negative about a religious group or a government is violence. The whole point of which is to deter others from doing it. I'm not just speaking of murder It's not all about deaths per hundred thousand.

States supporting totalitarian regimes is a violence against its citizens, exploiting their willingness to use slave labour, child labour, indentured servitude for cheap goods while allowing your citizens comforts these "allies" citizens are not, is violence. Allowing your own business abroad to do things that would be unthinkable back home is violence and it's no different whether it be the East India Company, Pepsico, Nike, Walmart or Apple.

What I'm saying is that violence is such an intrinsic part of humanity that saying we are less so is like saying we are less prone to humour. We just get better and more efficient.

[JimC]

I'll grant you we have an in-built propensity for violence, and always will. But there are also a variety of learned mechanisms which can reduce how readily it is triggered. Pinker makes a good case for saying that these processes, at least for the majority, operate quite effectively in the west, at least. In that sense, our "behaviour" is truly better, even if we are a seething mass of hominid potential violence underneath...

In terms of state control via the threat of violence, there are certainly many places in the world where that is common, but even there, I suspect that the degree of has moderated, at least in places.

[Blind groper]

To put a number on it, as a global total.

Deaths in battle each year currently run to 35,000 plus or minus a bit. That is the lowest global figure since records began.

We do not know how many extra deaths occur as a result of war. Like disease, or deaths among civilians who die as a result of displacement. However, a fair guess is another 35,000 per year globally. This is also the lowest number estimated since any form of record became available.

[pErvinalia]

How does he work out his figures for tribal violence? I wouldn't have thought there were many records kept.

[JimC]

How does he work out his figures for tribal violence? I wouldn't have thought there were many records kept.

Archeological evidence of skeletal remains that show clear forensic evidence of being clubbed or speared, plus anthropological data from a range of tribal societies that have been studied in Africa, South America, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere...

[Hermit]

How does he work out his figures for tribal violence? I wouldn't have thought there were many records kept.

Does Pinker provide a source for his statistics on tribal peoples? The phrase "tribal peoples" is an extremely broad brush.

For those who have not read his book (that includes me) Pinker's TED Talk on the subject may be useful. Near the start he remarks that those statistics are necessarily conjectural and explains how he derived them.

[Audley Strange]

To put a number on it, as a global total.

Deaths in battle each year currently run to 35,000 plus or minus a bit. That is the lowest global figure since records began.

We do not know how many extra deaths occur as a result of war. Like disease, or deaths among civilians who die as a result of displacement. However, a fair guess is another 35,000 per year globally. This is also the lowest number estimated since any form of record became available.

I don't think that's a fair guess at all. The number of people wounded or maimed in war is of a different magnitude to those who die.Just look at the number of coalition deaths and compare that to the number of coalition who were maimed or wounded. So if we consider that medical advances keep many many more people alive who would have in previous eras died from those wounds again it shows we are not less violent, we are more efficient. Also considering that the U.N. states that over 1.2 million people in Iraq alone have been displaced I think your "fair guess" of those dying from disease or complications is nothing of the sort and again why the fixation on body count? Consider that in a war in the 17th Century one may have to lay siege to a town to remove a warlord, now we can send in a drone to kill that warlord. This does not make us less violent, our behaviour is exactly the same, we are just better at it because being civilised gives us a technological advantage and vice versa. If the oil ran out tomorrow, you could be damn sure the body count in battle would rise again given we'd have to resort to more primitive means in which to carry out our violence.

I'm not convinced at all by the statistical argument.