DECLINE IN VIOLENCE: MYTH OR SOMETHING ELSE?

DECLINE IN VIOLENCE: MYTH OR SOMETHING ELSE?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 3, 2012

REFERENCE:

My reaction to Steven Pinker’s “Angels of our Nature” (2012), which deals with the decline in violence, has generated considerable interest, none of which was totally supportive or contrary to Pinker’s thesis. 

It is apparent that those who have experienced violence directly or indirectly in the course of their lives have trouble with his thesis.  Others find his thesis reassuring. 

Sorting through these responses, I am impressed with the intelligence, empathy and perceptive skills of people who visit this website.  Individuals, as Gustave Le Bon insists, think, crowds do not.  The psychology of the crowd is driven by the irrational, something like what we are seeing in the Occupy Wall Street moment. 

Occasionally, the herd mentality visits these pages, but only rarely.  My point is personal and observable and based on my empirical evidence.  Studies take comfort in being impersonal and therefore more legitimate.  I differ with this characterization.  That said I think this reader contributes meaningfully to the dialogue.

A READER WRITES:

Hi Jim,

It's doubtful there is a case to be made for the decline in world violence. Genocide seems rampant in African countries. It moves from one country to the next leaving millions of dead bodies.

Bombs destroy lives of harmless citizens around the world only to make an illiterate argument against perceived mistreatment of religion or opposition to political ideology.

Those murdered have no knowledge of the argument in which they had become inadvertent pawns. There are no big wars. Instead, there are many small ones.

The big wars were obvious and there likely was a realistic anticipation of violence. Those citizens near the front could prepare or leave. The "war" of today puts everyone on the front line. As such, the terror is deeper and broader at the same time.

Local violence, as experienced in the US, is declining. Statistics bear this out. Police are quick to take credit for their "innovative" approaches.

As much as it discomforts me to accept it, the pop statistics lay out by Levitt and Dubner in Freakonomics (2010) along with some stretch of sociological connections, make sense. It has to do with abortions and a reduction of unplanned births, who then become un-parented, undisciplined children and, ultimately, amoral adults.

Philosophical treatments of this topic are nice, but can lose their meaning in the face of data. Maybe some balance between the two is needed. 

Abortion is an emotionally charged act. In the interest of full disclosure, I have always believed a woman has the right to choose whether or not she will host a fetus for nine months with the lifetime commitment that follows.

The arguments too often ignore the second part of that choice. We do not have a social network capable of stepping in or even desiring to pick up that lifetime commitment.

Too many people will go overseas to adopt a Chinese or Russian or anything baby before they look around the corner to adopt a crack baby. Unfortunately, twenty years later, that unloved, unwanted baby may end up killing the foreign one the parents' adopted. I know, that sounds like a bad knock-off of a Dickensian novel.

Think about it. There are less police in big cities because they can't afford them. There are fewer capable teachers in schools because public school systems can't afford new ones and can't fire union-protected bad ones. 

I could never advocate what is implied by the statistics Levitt and Dubner advance. But it is difficult to ignore.

Michael  

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Michael,

Thank you for your reasoned response to this “decline in violence” thesis. 

You imply a social network is missing to husband this problem effectively.  For the past few thousand years, that problem has been designated as the responsibility of the family.  Religion institutions were the bulwark of support to sustain and stabilize that social unit.

It has failed.  Perhaps it was a responsibility that was not realistic given the dynamics of the change process. 

When people, generation after generation, changed little, and religions had the support of social stigma and ostracism for violation of its precepts, order and predictability of behavior fill somewhat in line.  That has not been the case in an ever-accelerating process of change through the twentieth and now into the twenty-first century. 

Religious institutions are anachronistic and those that head them are atavistic.  But religion is not alone in this regard as William L. Livingston points out so boldly in his works, especially DESIGN FOR PREVENTION (2011). 

Name an institution and you will see that institution attempts to reinforce the past through fear, cunning and momentum.  We are seeing this played out in a bazaar way in the present high jinx of Republican politics looking for a presidential candidate to oppose President Barak Obama in the fall.

You address a specific aspect of violence and I hear you, but it is symptomatic of a much broader problem, and that is no one is in control.  I am speaking in a general as well a particular sense.  Gustave Le Bon would say we have retreated to the primitive as the mark in the sand, which kept us somewhat rational, has blown away and we cannot find our bearings. 

We dance around the problem, write books on “decline of violence” and have ample data to support our thesis, which reassures a good segment of the reading public, but it changes nothing. 

That is why I come back to William Livingston and his writings.  He has a body of work that speaks to the causes and the problem solving: THE NEW PLAGUE (1985), HAVE FUN AT WORK (1988), FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES (1990), as well as his current work, which is at once an engineering manual and a primer on our times.  Not enough attention has been paid to him because he is not slotted with HYPE (Harvard, Yale, Princeton elitism) credentials.

If it seems I am minimizing your concerns and reflections, I am not.  You have identified some of the symptoms that are consistent with those I’ve shared. 

We constantly are telling the world “we have the best university system in the world,” and I keep asking myself, “What is that supposed to mean?” 

We are operating with a “cut and control” philosophy, obsessed with the new, paying little attention to what has been lost forever, while our institutions act as if we are still in the nineteenth century.  Our only hope, from my point of view, is people such as yourself looking at reality as you experience it, and behaving accordingly.

Be always well,

Jim

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