The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (30 page)
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Authors: Steven Pinker
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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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The 1990s civilizing offensive also sought to glorify the values of responsibility that make a life of violence less appealing. Two highly publicized rallies in the nation’s capital, one organized by black men, one by white, affirmed the obligation of men to support their children: Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March, and a march by the Promise Keepers, a conservative Christian movement. Though both movements had unsavory streaks of ethnocentrism, sexism, and religious fundamentalism, their historical significance lay in the larger recivilizing process they exemplified. In
The Great Disruption
, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama notes that as rates of violence went down in the 1990s, so did most other indicators of social pathology, such as divorce, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, sexually transmitted disease, and teenage auto and gun accidents.
181
The Great Disruption
, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama notes that as rates of violence went down in the 1990s, so did most other indicators of social pathology, such as divorce, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, dropping out of school, sexually transmitted disease, and teenage auto and gun accidents.
181
The recivilizing process of the past two decades is not just a resumption of the currents that have swept the West since the Middle Ages. For one thing, unlike the original Civilizing Process, which was a by-product of the consolidation of states and the growth of commerce, the recent crime decline has largely come from civilizing offensives that were consciously designed to enhance people’s well-being. Also new is a dissociation between the superficial trappings of civilization and the habits of empathy and self-control that we care the most about.
One way in which the 1990s did
not
overturn the decivilization of the 1960s is in popular culture. Many of the popular musicians in recent genres such as punk, metal, goth, grunge, gangsta, and hip-hop make the Rolling Stones look like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Hollywood movies are bloodier than ever, unlimited pornography is a mouse-click away, and an entirely new form of violent entertainment, video games, has become a major pastime. Yet as these signs of decadence proliferated in the culture, violence went down in real life. The recivilizing process somehow managed to reverse the tide of social dysfunction without turning the cultural clock back to
Ozzie and Harriet
. The other evening I was riding a crowded Boston subway car and saw a fearsome-looking young man clad in black leather, shod in jackboots, painted with tattoos, and pierced by rings and studs. The other passengers were giving him a wide berth when he bellowed, “Isn’t anyone going to give up his seat for this old woman?
She could be your grandmother!
”
not
overturn the decivilization of the 1960s is in popular culture. Many of the popular musicians in recent genres such as punk, metal, goth, grunge, gangsta, and hip-hop make the Rolling Stones look like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Hollywood movies are bloodier than ever, unlimited pornography is a mouse-click away, and an entirely new form of violent entertainment, video games, has become a major pastime. Yet as these signs of decadence proliferated in the culture, violence went down in real life. The recivilizing process somehow managed to reverse the tide of social dysfunction without turning the cultural clock back to
Ozzie and Harriet
. The other evening I was riding a crowded Boston subway car and saw a fearsome-looking young man clad in black leather, shod in jackboots, painted with tattoos, and pierced by rings and studs. The other passengers were giving him a wide berth when he bellowed, “Isn’t anyone going to give up his seat for this old woman?
She could be your grandmother!
”
The cliché about Generation X, who came of age in the 1990s, was that they were media-savvy, ironic, postmodern. They could adopt poses, try on styles, and immerse themselves in seedy cultural genres without taking any of them too seriously. (In this regard they were more sophisticated than the boomers in their youth, who treated the drivel of rock musicians as serious political philosophy.) Today this discernment is exercised by much of Western society. In his 2000 book
Bobos in Paradise,
the journalist David Brooks observed that many members of the middle class have become “bourgeois bohemians” who affect the look of people at the fringes of society while living a thoroughly conventional lifestyle.
Bobos in Paradise,
the journalist David Brooks observed that many members of the middle class have become “bourgeois bohemians” who affect the look of people at the fringes of society while living a thoroughly conventional lifestyle.
Cas Wouters, inspired by conversations with Elias late in his life, suggests that we are living through a new phase in the Civilizing Process. This is the long-term trend of informalization I mentioned earlier, and it leads to what Elias called a “controlled decontrolling of emotional controls” and what Wouters calls third nature.
182
If our first nature consists of the evolved motives that govern life in a state of nature, and our second nature consists of the ingrained habits of a civilized society, then our third nature consists of a conscious reflection on these habits, in which we evaluate which aspects of a culture’s norms are worth adhering to and which have outlived their usefulness. Centuries ago our ancestors may have had to squelch all signs of spontaneity and individuality in order to civilize themselves, but now that norms of nonviolence are entrenched, we can let up on particular inhibitions that may be obsolete. In this way of thinking, the fact that women show a lot of skin or that men curse in public is not a sign of cultural decay. On the contrary, it’s a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don’t have to fear being harassed or assaulted in response. As the novelist Robert Howard put it, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.” Maybe the time has even come when I can use a knife to push peas onto my fork.
182
If our first nature consists of the evolved motives that govern life in a state of nature, and our second nature consists of the ingrained habits of a civilized society, then our third nature consists of a conscious reflection on these habits, in which we evaluate which aspects of a culture’s norms are worth adhering to and which have outlived their usefulness. Centuries ago our ancestors may have had to squelch all signs of spontaneity and individuality in order to civilize themselves, but now that norms of nonviolence are entrenched, we can let up on particular inhibitions that may be obsolete. In this way of thinking, the fact that women show a lot of skin or that men curse in public is not a sign of cultural decay. On the contrary, it’s a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don’t have to fear being harassed or assaulted in response. As the novelist Robert Howard put it, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split.” Maybe the time has even come when I can use a knife to push peas onto my fork.
4
THE HUMANITARIAN REVOLUTION
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
—Voltaire
T
he world contains a lot of strange museums. There is the Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Burlingame, California, which showcases more than five hundred of the cartoon-headed candy dispensers. Visitors to Paris have long stood in line to see the museum devoted to the city’s sewer system. The Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas, “presents every detail and aspect of barbed wire.” In Tokyo, the Meguro Museum of Parasitology invites its visitors to “try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.” And then there is the Phallological Museum in Húsavík, “a collection of over one hundred penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland.”
he world contains a lot of strange museums. There is the Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Burlingame, California, which showcases more than five hundred of the cartoon-headed candy dispensers. Visitors to Paris have long stood in line to see the museum devoted to the city’s sewer system. The Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean, Texas, “presents every detail and aspect of barbed wire.” In Tokyo, the Meguro Museum of Parasitology invites its visitors to “try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.” And then there is the Phallological Museum in Húsavík, “a collection of over one hundred penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland.”
But the museum that I would least like to spend a day in is the Museo della Tortura e di Criminologia Medievale in San Gimignano, Italy.
1
According to a helpful review in
www.tripadvisor.com
, “The cost is €8,00. Pretty steep for a dozen or so small rooms totalling no more than 100–150 items. If you’re into the macabre, though, you should not pass it by. Originals and reproductions of instruments of torture and execution are housed in moodily-lit stone-walled rooms. Each item is accompanied by excellent written descriptions in Italian, French, and English. No details are spared, including which orifice the device was meant for, which limb it was meant to dislocate, who was the usual customer and how the victim would suffer and/or die.”
1
According to a helpful review in
www.tripadvisor.com
, “The cost is €8,00. Pretty steep for a dozen or so small rooms totalling no more than 100–150 items. If you’re into the macabre, though, you should not pass it by. Originals and reproductions of instruments of torture and execution are housed in moodily-lit stone-walled rooms. Each item is accompanied by excellent written descriptions in Italian, French, and English. No details are spared, including which orifice the device was meant for, which limb it was meant to dislocate, who was the usual customer and how the victim would suffer and/or die.”
I think even the most atrocity-jaded readers of recent history would find something to shock them in this display of medieval cruelty. There is Judas’s Cradle, used in the Spanish Inquisition: the naked victim was bound hand and foot, suspended by an iron belt around the waist, and lowered onto a sharp wedge that penetrated the anus or vagina; when victims relaxed their muscles, the point would stretch and tear their tissues. The Virgin of Nuremberg was a version of the iron maiden, with spikes that were carefully positioned so as not to transfix the victim’s vital organs and prematurely end his suffering. A series of engravings show victims hung by the ankles and sawn in half from the crotch down; the display explains that this method of execution was used all over Europe for crimes that included rebellion, witchcraft, and military disobedience. The Pear is a split, spike-tipped wooden knob that was inserted into a mouth, anus, or vagina and spread apart by a screw mechanism to tear the victim open from the inside; it was used to punish sodomy, adultery, incest, heresy, blasphemy, and “sexual union with Satan.” The Cat’s Paw or Spanish Tickler was a cluster of hooks used to rip and shred a victim’s flesh. Masks of Infamy were shaped like the head of a pig or an ass; they subjected a victim both to public humiliation and to the pain of a blade or knob forced into their nose or mouth to prevent them from wailing. The Heretic’s Fork had a pair of sharp spikes at each end: one end was propped under the victim’s jaw and the other at the base of his neck, so that as his muscles became exhausted he would impale himself in both places.
The devices in the Museo della Tortura are not particularly scarce. Collections of medieval torture instruments may also be found in San Marino, Amsterdam, Munich, Prague, Milan, and the Tower of London. Illustrations of literally hundreds of kinds of torture may be seen in coffee table books like
Inquisition
and
Torment in Art
, some of them reproduced in figure 4–1.
2
Inquisition
and
Torment in Art
, some of them reproduced in figure 4–1.
2
Torture, of course, is not a thing of the past. It has been carried out in modern times by police states, by mobs during ethnic cleansings and genocides, and by democratic governments in interrogations and counterinsurgency operations, most infamously during the administration of George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks. But the sporadic, clandestine, and universally decried eruptions of torture in recent times cannot be equated with the centuries of institutionalized sadism in medieval Europe. Torture in the Middle Ages was not hidden, denied, or euphemized. It was not just a tactic by which brutal regimes intimidated their political enemies or moderate regimes extracted information from suspected terrorists. It did not erupt from a frenzied crowd stirred up in hatred against a dehumanized enemy. No, torture was woven into the fabric of public life. It was a form of punishment that was cultivated and celebrated, an outlet for artistic and technological creativity. Many of the instruments of torture were beautifully crafted and ornamented. They were designed to inflict not just physical pain, as would a beating, but visceral horrors, such as penetrating sensitive orifices, violating the bodily envelope, displaying the victim in humiliating postures, or putting them in positions where their own flagging stamina would increase their pain and lead to disfigurement or death. Torturers were the era’s foremost experts in anatomy and physiology, using their knowledge to maximize agony, avoid nerve damage that might deaden the pain, and prolong consciousness for as long as possible before death. When the victims were female, the sadism was eroticized: the women were stripped naked before being tortured, and their breasts and genitals were often the targets. Cold jokes made light of the victims’ suffering. In France, Judas’s Cradle was called “The Nightwatch” for its ability to keep a victim awake. A victim might be roasted alive inside an iron bull so his screams would come out of the bull’s mouth, like the bellowing of a beast. A man accused of disturbing the peace might be forced to wear a Noisemaker’s Fife, a facsimile of a flute or trumpet with an iron collar that went around his neck and a vise that crushed the bones and joints of his fingers. Many torture devices were shaped like animals and given whimsical names.
FIGURE 4–1.
Torture in medieval and early modern Europe
Torture in medieval and early modern Europe
Sources:
Sawing: Held, 1986, p. 47. Cat’s Paw: Held, 1986, p. 107. Impalement: Held, 1986, p. 141. Burning at the stake: Pinker, 2007a. Judas’s Cradle: Held, 1986, p. 51. Breaking on the wheel: Puppi, 1990, p. 39.
Sawing: Held, 1986, p. 47. Cat’s Paw: Held, 1986, p. 107. Impalement: Held, 1986, p. 141. Burning at the stake: Pinker, 2007a. Judas’s Cradle: Held, 1986, p. 51. Breaking on the wheel: Puppi, 1990, p. 39.
Medieval Christendom was a culture of cruelty. Torture was meted out by national and local governments throughout the Continent, and it was codified in laws that prescribed blinding, branding, amputation of hands, ears, noses, and tongues, and other forms of mutilation as punishments for minor crimes. Executions were orgies of sadism, climaxing with ordeals of prolonged killing such as burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, pulling apart by horses, impalement through the rectum, disembowelment by winding a man’s intestines around a spool, and even hanging, which was a slow racking and strangulation rather than a quick breaking of the neck.
3
Sadistic tortures were also inflicted by the Christian church during its inquisitions, witch hunts, and religious wars. Torture had been authorized by the ironically named Pope Innocent IV in 1251, and the order of Dominican monks carried it out with relish. As the
Inquisition
coffee table book notes, under Pope Paul IV (1555–59), the Inquisition was “downright insatiable—Paul, a Dominican and one-time Grand Inquisitor, was himself a fervent and skilled practitioner of torture and atrocious mass murders, talents for which he was elevated to sainthood in 1712.”
4
3
Sadistic tortures were also inflicted by the Christian church during its inquisitions, witch hunts, and religious wars. Torture had been authorized by the ironically named Pope Innocent IV in 1251, and the order of Dominican monks carried it out with relish. As the
Inquisition
coffee table book notes, under Pope Paul IV (1555–59), the Inquisition was “downright insatiable—Paul, a Dominican and one-time Grand Inquisitor, was himself a fervent and skilled practitioner of torture and atrocious mass murders, talents for which he was elevated to sainthood in 1712.”
4
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