introduction

Chapter 1: A Strange Country
Prehistoric times
Homeric Greece
Hebrew Bible
The Roman Empire and Early Christianity
medieval knights
Early modern Europe
European and early American honors
20th century

Chapter 2: The Peace Process
The logic of violence
The violence of our ancestors
Types of human society
Rates of violence in state and non-state societies
The Dissatisfaction of Civilization

Chapter 3: The Process of Civilization
Europe's homicide rate declines
Explaining Europe's Declining Murder Rate
Violence and class
violence in the world
Violence in the United States
Uncivilization in the 1960s
Recivilization in the 1990s

Chapter 4: The Humanitarian Revolution
Superstitious killings: human sacrifice, witches, and blood libels
Superstitious Murder: Violence Against Blasphemy, Heresy, and Apostasy
cruel and bizarre punishment
capital punishment
Slavery, p. 280, Despotism and Political Violence
war between major powers
Why a humanitarian revolution?
Growth in empathy and respect for life
The Republic of Literature and Enlightenment Humanism
Civilization and Enlightenment
Blood and Soil 3

Chapter 5: The Long Peace
Statistics and Narratives
Was the 20th century really the worst century?
Statistics of Fatal Combat Part 1: The War Years
Statistics of the Deadly Battle, Part 2: The Scale of War
The trajectory of war between the great powers
The trajectory of the war in Europe
Hobbesian Background, and the Age of Dynastic and Religious Ages
Three trends revealed in the era of sovereign states
The Age of Counter-Enlightenment Ideologies and the Nation-State
Humanitarianism and Totalitarianism in the Age of Ideology
The Long Peace: Some Numbers
The Long Peace: Attitudes and Events
Is the long peace a nuclear peace?
Is the long peace a democratic peace?
Is the Long Peace a Liberal Peace?
Is the Long Peace a Kantian Peace?

Chapter 6: A New Peace
The trajectory of the war in the rest of the world
Trajectory of mass murder
The trajectory of terrorism
A place where even angels fear to tread

Chapter 7: The Rights Revolution
Civil rights, and the decline of lynchings and racial pogroms
Women's rights and the reduction of rape and assault
Children's rights and the reduction of infanticide, corporal punishment, child abuse, and bullying
Gay rights, persecution of gays, and the decriminalization of homosexuality
Animal Rights and the Reduction of Cruelty to Animals 7
Why did the rights revolution happen?
From history to psychology

Chapter 8: The Demons Within
dark side
The Moral Gap and the Myth of Pure Evil
Organs of violence
Predatory
Competition for dominance
plural
sadism
ideology
Pure evil, inner demons, and the decline of violence

Chapter 9: Good Angels
empathy
self-control
Recent biological evolution?
Morality and Taboo
Reason

Chapter 10 Riding on Angel's Wings
Important but irrelevant factors
The Pacifist's Dilemma
Leviathan
mild commerce
feminization
Expanding the scope of empathy
Escalator of Reason
Consideration

main(
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References
Translator's Note
Search

“This is the most important book I’ve ever read.” —Bill Gates
A future classic that will shatter the prejudice and illusion that the 20th century was the most violent century!
★ The latest work by Steven Pinker, the world-renowned scholar and one of the greatest minds of our time.



“This is the most important book I have ever read in my life.
“It’s a massive book, over 1,000 pages long, but as someone who is very strict with my time, I can say that it’s well worth the time.”
—Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft

“It is not only truly fascinating, but also a significant contribution to the study of history.”
—Niall Ferguson, historian at Harvard University

“This is an incredibly important book.
“It is a masterful work that skillfully handles a wide range of academic fields and vast amounts of data.”
―The New York Times Book Review

“This book brings together a surprisingly wide range of research findings and challenges us to let go of one of our own biases.
“It’s the prejudice that ‘yesterday was better than today.’”
―The Wall Street Journal

“While reading this book, two novels came to mind.
William Golding's Lord of the Flies and Cormac McCarthy's The Road.
“Everyone should read Steven Pinker’s remarkable book on the historical decline of violence.”
―The Guardian

“This book highlights one of the most peaceful species on Earth.
“That’s us humans.”
-"slate"


Are we living in the worst of times for humanity? The reports of major wars that emerged alongside human civilization, especially the two world wars and the Holocaust that modern humanity witnessed firsthand in the past century, seem to prove that the 20th century was the most violent of any century.
Anthropology restores the peaceful and noble savagery of the distant hunter-gatherer era, claiming that 'the world until yesterday' was better than 'today'.
The civil wars, border conflicts, terrorism, and acts of violence in urban slums, schools, the military, and homes we see in real time on global media fuel the belief that we live in a society of increasing violence.

Are we truly living in the most horrific moment in human history? As history, anthropology, and sociology all point out, has humanity fallen from a peaceful past and escalated into an increasingly violent world? Did we, as we navigated the bloody 20th century, or even earlier, in that moment when the hamster wheel of civilization was turning, succumb to our inner impulse toward violence, losing the very foundation of our nature that gives us hope for the future?
Steven Pinker, one of the world's most influential psychologists and cognitive scientists, and one of the greatest minds of our time, selected as one of the "100 Most Influential Thinkers" by Prospect Magazine, one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" by Time Magazine, and one of the "100 Most Intellects in the World" by Foreign Policy, challenges the "conventional beliefs surrounding violence" that dominate our society in his new book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature."
Questioning the notion of "the most horrific day in history" and "increasing violence by the day," Pinker reconstructs a "history of violence" by analyzing a vast amount of data, including historical documents documenting various atrocities such as war, plunder, abuse, rape, murder, and torture, as well as archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, and literary works.
And by following the long historical trajectory of violence from the distant and unfamiliar past of 8000 BC to the 20th century, it presents the shocking report that violence is not increasing throughout human history, as commonly believed, but rather decreasing, and that we live in a less brutal, less violent, and more peaceful era than ever before.

Published by Science Books, The Better Angels of Our Nature is a unique empirical study that analyzes violence in human society based on a vast amount of data that transcends time, region, race, culture, and civilization. It is also the culmination of the author's in-depth exploration of the science of human nature in his previous works, the mind trilogy: How the Mind Works (1997), The Blank Slate (2002), and The Stuff of Thought (2007).
Pinker demonstrates, with over a hundred graphs and tables, that violence has steadily declined throughout human history, and makes the compelling argument that behind this decline lies the better angels of our nature, who have constantly tempered and tamed our inner demons through alliances with external forces fostered by human civilization.

Let's discover new and shocking truths about human violence and the history of human civilization in "The Better Angels of Our Nature," a controversial work that shatters the prejudice and illusion that the 20th century was the most violent century, and examines human nature through the chronicle of war, barbarism, and violence spanning thousands of years.


Romanticized past, demonized present
As the 21st century began with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq War, and as the flames of local wars continue to burn across the globe, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the civil wars in Syria and Ukraine, the claim that we are living in a time of great peace can easily sound like absurd nonsense.
Pinker attributes our innate cognitive tools and moral psychology to the illusion that violence is always present.

Humans estimate the probability of an event based on how easily they can recall specific instances, and violent deaths and atrocities are more deeply etched in memory.
Moreover, fueled by the media's daily coverage of violent incidents as top news, we develop an impression of violence that is far removed from the actual rate of violence, a mistaken belief that violence is constantly present around us.
Another cause has to do with a phenomenon that originally contributed to reducing violence throughout human history.
The decline in violent acts has been paralleled by, and sometimes preceded by, a decline in attitudes that condone or glorify violence.
Some of the violent incidents occurring today may not seem particularly serious by historical standards of brutality, but in the eyes of modern humanity, which has undergone a shift in its sensibility to violence, they are seen not as evidence of a higher standard, but as evidence of our own depravity.

Pinker seeks to awaken us to the fact that modern people's thoughts about violence are nothing more than prejudices and preconceptions. He first examines the "world until yesterday"—from 8000 BC to the Greco-Roman era, the Middle Ages, and modern times—from a phenomenal perspective, based on the Bible and contemporary literary works.
Then, by mobilizing specific dates and data collected from a vast array of sources, including archaeology, anthropology, history, and ethnography, the historical trajectory of violence is redrawn.


The World Until Yesterday: A Strange Country Called the Past
An examination of a wide range of literary works from the written age—including ancient epics, medieval chivalry, fairy tales, and oral nursery rhymes—as well as the Old and New Testaments, fossil hominids, and non-state societies, including living hunter-gatherers, reveals that humanity's past was a bloody world far more horrific than we imagine, with violence and cruelty deeply ingrained in everyday life.
The bones of prehistoric humans bear the scars of violence—bludgeoning, strangulation, and stabbing—and the Iliad and the Odyssey are filled with massacres, rape, pillaging, and the devastation of war.
Torture, the sadistic mutilation of the body, has been systematically practiced for over a thousand years, and even lullabies for children frequently feature beatings, starvation, and abuse.
Countless intellectuals and noble men have lost their lives in duels for honor and pride over the centuries.
Until very recently, children and women were openly considered legitimate targets of violence.

The romanticized past, hunter-gatherers also frequently displayed intertribal warfare, individual-to-individual revenge, pillage, rape, and murder in their daily lives.
Non-state societies are far more violent than modern Western states, with an average war death rate four times higher than the average in the war-torn past century, and ten times higher in the most violent non-state societies.
The past was not the peaceful paradise we knew, but a strange country stained with violence.

The Historical Trajectory of Violence: Six Tendencies
Pinker not only presents impressive episodes showing the decline in violence in all its dimensions—inter-state wars, inter-tribal bloodshed, inter-group conflicts, individual murders, brutal punishments like the death penalty or flogging, and practices that cruelly treat the socially vulnerable like women, children, and homosexuals—but also analyzes a data set collected from a vast literature and presents it in over 100 graphs, figures, and tables.
And in the historical trajectory of violence reconstructed based on precise figures and statistics, we note six periods or trends: (1) the pacification process from a non-state society to a state society; (2) the civilization process following the development of social norms; (3) the humanitarian revolution led by the Enlightenment; (4) a long period of peace during which wars decreased through trade and democratization between nations; (5) a new period of peace during which even small-scale conflicts such as mass killings and terrorism steadily decreased; and (6) the phenomenon of a decrease in violence following periods of rights revolutions during which civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, and animal rights movements developed in succession.

(1) Peace process
The first changes took place on a scale of thousands of years.
It is the transition from anarchic hunting, gathering, and horticultural societies that occupied most of human evolutionary history to the first agricultural civilizations with cities and governments about 5,000 years ago.
In addition, the chronic attacks and bloodshed that characterized life in the past in a natural state have decreased, and the rate of violent deaths has fallen by a fifth.


(2) Civilization process
The second change, a process that took place over 500 years, is best documented in Europe.
From the late Middle Ages to the 20th century, homicide rates in European countries fell to between one-tenth and one-fiftieth of their former levels.
Sociologist Norbert Elias, in his classic work The Process of Civilization, argued that this remarkable decline was due to the consolidation of fragmented feudal territories into large kingdoms with central powers and commercial infrastructure.
Pinker, agreeing with Elias, calls this tendency the civilizational process.

(3) Humanitarian Revolution
The third shift unfolded over centuries, beginning in the Age of Reason and the European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries (though there were similar precedents in ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and elsewhere in the world).
Organized movements to abolish socially sanctioned forms of violence, such as despotism, slavery, dueling, judicial torture, superstitious killings, sadistic punishments, and cruelty to animals, first emerged at this time, as did systematic pacifism.
Following the opinion of historians who call this change the humanitarian revolution, Pinker also names this third trend the humanitarian revolution.


(4) A long period of peace
The fourth major change occurred after the end of World War II.
Over the next 50 to 60 years, humanity witnessed unprecedented progress in history.
The great powers and most developed countries did not go to war with each other.
Historians call this blessed period the Long Peace.

(5) A new era of peace
The fifth tendency is also about combat, but on a smaller scale.
It may be hard for many people to believe today, but since the end of the Cold War in 1989, there has been a global decline in organized conflicts of all kinds, civil wars, mass killings, oppression by dictatorships, and terrorism.
Pinker calls this fortunate change a new peace, recognizing its temporary nature.


(6) Rights Revolution
Finally, the postwar era, marked by the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, saw a growing outcry against smaller-scale aggression, such as violence against minorities, women, children, homosexuals, and animals.
From the late 1950s to the present, people have advocated for rights derived from the concept of human rights (civil rights, women's rights, children's rights, gay rights, animal rights) through a series of movements.
Pinker calls this trend the rights revolution.


The angels and demons that coexist within us
Pinker argues that the decline in violence offers important clues to understanding human nature.
A look back at the long history of humanity, from 8000 BC to the present day, reveals that violence has existed at every point in our species' recorded and prehistoric history.
There is no evidence that violence was invented in one place and spread to another.
We can also abandon the dichotomies that have persisted for thousands of years and have played a major role in obstructing our understanding of our nature and violence: are humans fundamentally evil or good? Are we typical Hobbesian lowly beasts or Rousseauian noble savages?
The fact that violence has always existed in human society, but has shown a declining curve over the course of history, allows us to realize that within human nature, there are inner demons—motivations that drive us toward violence, such as predatory tendencies, superiority, and revenge—along with good angels that, under the right circumstances, can lead us to peace.

In this book, Pinker synthesizes the science of human nature that he has explored in depth in his previous works, "How the Mind Works," "The Blank Slate," and "Food for Thought," referred to as the Mind Trilogy, and lists the good angels and cruel demons that coexist within our nature.


Five Inner Demons
Existing theories explaining human violence have mainly discussed internal drives toward aggression (death instinct or bloodthirst), destructive desires, and needs, and have maintained that these build up over time and explode outward when they reach a certain limit.
But Pinker says the psychology of violence revealed by modern science is completely different.
Aggression is not a single motive, much less a growing desire.
Aggression is the product of multiple psychological systems with different environmental triggers, internal logic, neurobiological underpinnings, and social distributions.

Pinker argues that human violence is not a result of internal pressures, but rather a trait that is strategically used depending on the environment. Based on scientific research from various fields such as evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, social psychology, and game theory, he presents five motivations that drive humans to violent situations.


(1) Predatory violence
It can also be called exploitative, instrumental, or pragmatic violence.
It is violence mobilized simply as a practical means to an end, without any destructive motive such as hatred or anger.
It's in the same vein as the aggression for profit that Thomas Hobbes cited as the first cause of conflict, and it's also when Richard Dawkins' survival machines treat other survival machines as part of the environment, like rocks, rivers, or food.
It refers to the cold-blooded violence that is committed without any empathy towards the target, as if preying on prey.


(2) Competition for dominance
The competition for dominance is the desire for authority, prestige, honor, and power, and can manifest as macho bravado between individuals or as a competition for hegemony between racial, ethnic, religious, or national groups.
Despite having no concrete gain at stake, it is the most lethal form of human conflict, having a wide range of distribution, from the age of dynasties and monarchies to the age of nationalism and World War I.


(3) Revenge
Revenge is a major cause of violence, fueling moralistic desires for retaliation, punishment, and justice.
Ninety-five percent of the world's cultures explicitly recognize revenge, and 10 to 20 percent of murders worldwide are motivated by revenge.
When the target is a group rather than an individual, it becomes a motive for urban riots, terrorism, retaliation for terrorism, and war.


(4) Sadism
It is the most heinous and indiscriminate form of human depravity, deriving pleasure from the suffering of others.
Torture and serial murder are typical examples of sadistic violence.


(5) Ideology
Ideology refers to a shared belief system.
They usually have a utopian outlook and justify unlimited violence in the pursuit of unlimited happiness (good).
Like predatory violence, ideological violence is a means to an end, and it is the motivation behind some of the worst human atrocities committed against human beings in human history: the Crusades, the wars of religion, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and so on.
It can also manifest as compliance and obedience to authority or groups.


Four Good Angels
Pinker refutes existing theories that explain violence, such as the "myth of pure evil" and the explosive desire to attack due to internal pressure, and argues that violence arises from ordinary motivations that most of us harbor.
And they say that violence has decreased throughout human history because we humans have evolved to exercise that motivation more sparingly, less fully, and only in more special circumstances.
Pinker identifies four psychological capacities that have kept us away from violence, the good angels that have led us to suppress our inner demons and pursue cooperation, altruism, and peace.


(1) Empathy
Empathy, particularly in the sense of empathic concern, allows us to feel the suffering of others and connect their understanding with our own.
Empathy is possible thanks to theory of mind, an innate cognitive tool of human beings—the ability to take another's perspective and infer their thoughts and feelings based on their facial expressions, actions, and circumstances.


(2) Self-control
It helps us anticipate the consequences of our impulsive actions and then exercise appropriate restraint accordingly.
Most violence is a matter of loss of self-control, and the greatest decline in violence in history, the one-thirtieth decrease in the murder rate from medieval Europe to modern Europe, is interpreted as being due to self-control.


(3) Moral sense
Moral sense is a double-edged sword, as it sets out a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions of members of the same culture, sometimes reducing violence, but sometimes increasing it, as in the case of tribal, authoritarian, and puritanical norms.
Although its overall impact on human well-being is negative, it is sometimes used appropriately and can lead to monumental advances, such as the humanitarian revolution of the Enlightenment or the recent rights revolution.


(4) Reason
The power of reason allows us to break free from our own narrow perspectives, reflect on the way we live, and find ways to improve.
It also serves as a guide when utilizing other good angels of nature, such as self-control and moral sense.
Pinker mentions Peter Singer's "escalator theory of reason," which states that "the driving force behind the continued expansion of the scope of ethics is not soft empathy but hard reason," and argues that the expansion of reason has gradually made humanity smarter, leading to moral progress and a decrease in violence.


Riding on the Wings of Good Angels: Five Historical Forces
The final chapter examines specifically the extrinsic forces that have led to a multifaceted reduction in violence by suppressing inner demons and favoring the better angels of our nature.
Because good and evil motives have always existed within our nature, external conditions were also very important in suppressing evil motives and bringing out good motives.
They had to be forces that were not inherent in the decline in violence, but rather, while being completely independent of the phenomenon of decline, acted as causes and preceded the phenomenon, and were elements that appeared repeatedly and commonly in the six tendencies of the decline in violence (the pacification process, the civilization process, the humanitarian revolution, the long peace, the new peace, and the rights revolution).

In a novel attempt to combine the science of the human mind—game theory, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology—with human history, Pinker identifies five exogenous forces that have helped angels.
And the five describe how self-control, empathy, morality, and reason suppress predation, dominance, revenge, sadism, and ideology.


(1) Leviathan
A state and judicial system that monopolizes the legitimate use of force reduces the temptation to exploitative aggression and restrains the impulse to revenge.
Leviathan also avoids the self-serving bias of stakeholders who believe they are on the side of the angels.
The most consistently appearing exogenous factors have supported the pacification and civilization processes.
As armies, tribes, and chiefdoms came under the control of the first states, raids and bloodshed were suppressed, reducing violent death rates by a factor of five; and as European fiefdoms were fused into kingdoms and sovereign states, unifying their legal systems, the murder rate fell by a factor of 30.

(2) Commerce
Commerce is a positive-sum game where everyone wins.
As technological advancements allow us to exchange goods and ideas with more trading partners and over greater distances, we become less likely to demonize or dehumanize others, because they are more valuable to us alive than dead.
This is supported by criminological findings that violent death rates have fallen since the late Middle Ages, when commerce expanded, and by analyses showing that countries that are more open to the global economy experience fewer mass killings and civil wars.


(3) Feminization
Feminization refers to a cultural shift toward greater respect for women's interests and values.
Because violence is largely a male pastime, a culture that empowers women easily diverges from a culture of masculine honor—a culture that sanctions violent retaliation for insults, toughens boys through corporal punishment, and celebrates military glory.
Various forms of feminization (direct political empowerment, the dismantling of masculine pretensions to honor, marriages of women's choice, the right of girls to be born, women's control over their own reproductive tracts, etc.) have been shown to reduce violence, especially in modern societies.


(4) Globalism
The forces of globalism, such as literacy, mobility, and mass media, force us to take on the perspectives of others different from our own and broaden our scope of empathy to include even such individuals.
The development of publishing and transportation technologies that began in the 17th century gave birth to a republic of letters and a reading revolution, thus sprouting the seeds of a humanitarian revolution. The global village and electronic revolution of the 20th century helped advance a long peace, a new peace, and a revolution in rights.


(5) Escalator of Reason
The ability to apply more knowledge and rationality to human affairs—the escalator of reason—makes us realize the futility of the cycle of violence, reduces the tendency to prioritize our own interests over those of others, and reframes the concept of violence, making it a problem to be solved rather than an act to be won in competition.

A Hopeful Report on Human Nature: From a World of Violence to a World of Peace!
Pinker says recognizing that violence has historically declined is crucial to understanding human nature.
Often, biologically based theories of human nature are associated with a fatalism about violence, and theories that view the mind as a blank slate are associated with progress.
But is that really true, Pinker asks?
What was life like naturally when our species first emerged and history began? Those who believe violence has increased suggest that we have become irreversibly corrupted by the world we have created.
On the other hand, those who believe that violence has decreased say that, although we had humble beginnings, thanks to the benefits of civilization, we have advanced in a noble direction and we can hope that this will continue.

The moment we recognize the decline in violence, we abandon the false dichotomies that have long obscured our understanding of human nature, realizing that within us exist both cruel demons and good angels, and that there are exogenous factors that draw out the good angels and turn them away from violence.
As our planet orbits the universe, obeying the fixed laws of gravity, our species has continually sought ways to reduce the number of deaths from kidnappings, torture, rape, murder, and war.
Because older generations were appalled by the violence of their time and worked tirelessly to reduce it, we now live in a world that is less violent, less cruel, and more peaceful than at any time in human history.

A controversial work that examines violence throughout human history, "The Better Angels of Our Nature" offers a hopeful report on human nature through in-depth scientific analysis and insights that transcend time and discipline.
If we, as we have done in the past, strive to reduce the violence that remains in our time, there is hope that the civil wars, terrorism, abuse, rape, murder, and other atrocities happening around the world will begin to decline.