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Lädt ... The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012. Auflage)von Steven Pinker (Autor)
Werk-InformationenGewalt: Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit von Steven Pinker
  
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 heindl | Oct 8, 2012 | 
 But in its confidence and sweep, the vast timescale, its humane standpoint and its confident world-view, it is something more than a science book: it is an epic history by an optimist who can list his reasons to be cheerful and support them with persuasive instances. I don't know if he's right, but I do think this book is a winner.  The biggest problem with the book, though, is its overreliance on history, which, like the light on a caboose, shows us only where we are not going.  “The Better Angels of Our Nature” is a supremely important book. To have command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of that decline.  While Pinker makes a great show of relying on evidence—the 700-odd pages of this bulky treatise are stuffed with impressive-looking graphs and statistics—his argument that violence is on the way out does not, in the end, rest on scientific investigation. He cites numerous reasons for the change, including increasing wealth and the spread of democracy. For him, none is as important as the adoption of a particular view of the world: “The reason so many violent institutions succumbed within so short a span of time was that the arguments that slew them belong to a coherent philosophy that emerged during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. The ideas of thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, David Hume, Mary Astell, Kant, Beccaria, Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and John Stuart Mill coalesced into a worldview that we can call Enlightenment humanism.” Gehört zu VerlagsreihenBeinhaltet暴力の人類史 上 von スティーブン・ピンカー 暴力の人類史 下 von スティーブン・ピンカー AuszeichnungenPrestigeträchtige AuswahlenBemerkenswerte Listen
We've all asked, "What is the world coming to?" But we seldom ask, "How bad was the world in the past?" In this startling new book, cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the past was much worse. Evidence of a bloody history has always been around us: genocides in the Old Testament, gory mutilations in Shakespeare and Grimm, monarchs who beheaded their relatives, and American founders who dueled with their rivals. The murder rate in medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were common features of life for millennia, then were suddenly abolished. How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? Pinker argues that thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.--From publisher description. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.609Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Conflict and conflict resolution ; ViolenceKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (4.13)
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Are we living in the most peaceful era of world history?
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Schon diese Meldung, die nirgends in den Medien gekommen ist, hat mich erstaunt. Aber das Buch belegt mit faszinierenden Fakten über das verschwinden der Gewalt in allen Lebensbereichen, vom Völkermord über Kindererziehung bis zum vegetarischen Leben, dass sich Grundlegendes ändert.
Die einzelnen Gewaltformen werden systematisch untersucht, warum, woher, wie viel, wohin geht die jeweilige Entwicklung.
Und es ist schon erstaunlich, es wird immer weniger, auch in verschiedenen Zeitskalen, ob Jahrtausende, Jahrhunderte oder nur die letzten Jahrzehnte, immer der gleiche Trend.
Wo liegen die Ursachen?
Letztendlich ist es die Aufklärung mit Bildung und der Einfluss der Naturwissenschaft, aber auch etwas Wohlstand und weniger Männlichkeitswahn, der diese sehr positive Veränderung bewirkt.
Obwohl das Buch mit über 1000 Textseiten etwas üppig geraten ist, ist es nie zu weit schweifend, die einzelnen Tatsachen sind einfach faszinierend. Gewalt ist, wie jeder Krimileser weis, ein Thema, wo man ein Buch nicht gleich wieder weglegt.
Nach dem Lesen des Buchs hat man nie wieder den Wunsch in früheren Zeiten zu leben, einfach viel zu gefährlich und grausam! (