A contribution by Rich Carlson, in response to an earlier article by Hazel Henderson, quoting Steve Pinker’s work on the decline in violence:

“Using Steven Pinkers “Better Angels” is a precarious support for a view of “progressive human evolution” or of the species advance in mass learning capabilities that Hazel Henderson seems to champion in this article.

Pinker’s linear narrative of human progress omits much from its consideration foremost is a clear definition of what violence actually is. In his study of violence and violent crimes he fixates on murder as his yardstick perhaps, because it is something that can be measured to neatly fit his quantitative analysis and support his liberal humanist narrative of rational scientific progress.

But does the reduction of per capita murders or per capita violent crime rates mean we should congratulate ourselves for our evolutionary expertise? I would argue that would be a very precarious conclusion to draw.

Among other the things Pinker refuses to admit as violence are what are actually credited in most instances as its causes namely: social inequality, neglect and poverty.
Nor does he take into consideration the incarceration rates in American prisons, –the vast majority of which are of African Americans – that stem from inequality, neglect, poverty is unprecedented in human history. According to the New Yorker: In 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one…. No other country even approaches that. Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S. more than were in Stalin’s gulags” http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz25K8Nec00

But from what I have read of Pinker he supports those very programs that lead to the incarceration of so many at the lower end of the socio-economic strata. In the following quote he seems to endorse programs like the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) “stop and frisk policy” which in targeting especially young African American and Latino males result in a disproportionate number of them imprisoned for minor possession of street drugs like marijuana. Pinker writes:

“A regime that trawls for drug users or other petty delinquents will net a certain number of violent people as a by-catch, further thinning the ranks of the violent people who remain on the streets.”

Is simply incarcerating vast numbers of the population of those who come from the underclass a feature of the liberal humanist values Pinker champions?

Moreover isn’t debt and the form of it that has been imposed on the world by the Austrian-Anglo-American economic model of neo liberal capitalism also a form of violence? And if so haven’t the forms of violence and crime merely shifted to what we now refer to as non-violent or white collar crimes such as those of crony capitalism on the streaming steroids of information networks? Since the amounts that have been lost in the past few years are in the trillions of dollars are unprecedented in human history shouldn’t we credit our liberal humanist heritage and the lack of “mass learning capabilities” for these as well?

In fact, the shift in the need to use violence as a mean of controlling populations was well document by Michel Foucault. The evolution of disciplinary techniques of the centralized Panopticon that operates within the spaces of institutional enclosures explains how the molding of docile bodies replaced the need for the actual assertion of physical violence required by the pre-modernist “Societies of the Sovereign”.

Deleuze extends this analysis of the replacement of violence by other means in his Postscript on Societies of Control. In it he describes how the extremely rapid decentralized free floating and continuous forms of control that rely on information technology under the sign of the Corporation allow for the supervision of individuals (dividuals) in more open environments and replace the need for the centralized gaze of a State or Institutional apparatus to compel our behavior.

Bernard Stiegler performs a similar analysis of this evolution from disciplinary to control societies –although the two actually overlap- in “From Bio-power to Psycho-power”…. (http://antwerp.academia.edu/NathanVanCamp/Papers/360709/From_bio-power_to_psycho-power._The_pharmacology_of_disciplinary_technologies)

In fact, I think Ms. Henderson would do well to study Stiegler’s “Contribution Societies or Economy of Contribution” which he proposes as a pharmakon or remedy to the Control Societies of networked capitalism.

Returning to Pinker, his championing of the Enlightenment and liberal humanism as somehow the pinnacle of civilizational progress also ignores the consequence of its civilizing mission that contains the specter of colonialism, genocide, totalitarianism, not to mention the very development and application of technologies of mass destruction that have made the past century the actual bloodiest on record.

Even if Pinker skirts the issue of the past century largely by talking in terms of per capita rather than aggregate deaths or the sheer numbers of people killed in such a short time in both world wars. (50 to 70 million in the six years of WWII) indicates that a linear analysis of per capita violence in human history is insufficient to yield a result that is meaningful in anticipating the future or for championing a “mass advance in learning”.

In fact the data support a view of the non-linear nature of human history in that yes, perhaps the evolution of human reason may constrain our impulse toward violence but its instrumental application that harnesses the power of nature through technology has created an arsenal of weapons that if ever were deployed on a planetary scale could end the evolution of humanity once and for all.

There are two very good counters to Pinker which I will provide links to here the first by John Gray includes in his response to Pinker’s claims that increasing standards of Western wealth can be directly correlated with the decrease in violence, is critiqued as follows:

“The formation of democratic nation-states was one of the principal drivers of violence of the last century, involving ethnic cleansing in inter-war Europe, post-colonial states and the post-communist Balkans. Steadily-growing prosperity may act as a kind of tranquilliser, but there is no reason to think the increase of wealth can go on indefinitely — and when it falters violence will surely return. In quite different ways, attacks on minorities and immigrants by neo-fascists in Europe, the popular demonstrations against austerity in Greece and the English riots of the past summer show the disruptive and dangerous impact of sudden economic slowdown on social peace”
(http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review/)

The second review by Ben Law called “Against Pinker’s Violence” takes issue with the very definition of Pinker applies to Violence as well as the way he uncritically applies it to societies that existed hundreds and Thousands of years before ours. Here he also quotes Foucault:

“What do we achieve by placing our morality and values onto the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Victorians, Byzantines, Mayans etc? Is it attempting to compare the incomparable? But, is this not, how a misguided history beings? It assumes that ‘words have kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic, [and it ignores the fact that] the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys.’ Indeed, to comprehend and interpret the ideas of a period we have to stare into the face of the singularity of individual events — without stating that tempting urge for finality, for grand themes across the evidence. “ (http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=702)

The other disappointment in Ms. Henderson’s article is that her lack of concise definition and holistic approach to economic problems at times seem to devolve into New Age Jargon such as:

“Planetary leaders including Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King, Jr., Wangari Maathai, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dr. Elise Boulding inspired people, along with today’s visionaries Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Vandana Shiva, Dr. Michelle Bachelet, Daisaku Ikeda, Ervin Laszlo, Deepak Chopra, Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard and many more from all spiritual traditions. The Mayan Calendar sparked erroneous fears among populations that the world was ending. Instead, humanity is becoming conscious that ‘we are all one,’ as taught in most religious traditions and books, including The Ways and Power of Love by Pitirim Sorokin”

Positing of the title of planetary leaders – on people who no matter how noteworthy their accomplishments- is akin to the vague New Age language that would label people like Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen as “New Thought Leaders”

If by Planetary leadership we mean those influencing the Earth’s destiny – if for any mortal that were even possible- then we could also include on this list such famous and infamous figures as the Koch Brothers, Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, King Abdulla, as well as the deceased Osama Bin Laden. We can also include Barack Obama whose planetary leadership relies on the use of a global surveillance network and an arsenal of drones. Is the sanitized violence of drone warfare also something we should be self-congratulatory for in demonstrating our liberal humanist values?

Moreover, although I don’t know all the folks she cites as being visionaries I’d also take issue with some (though not all) of the people she mentions here especially the last three beginning with Deepak Chopra and see them as cites purveyors of Integral Ideology. http://www.integralworld.net/carlson.html

Lastly although I am sympathetic to the alternative global economic regime Ms. Henderson favors and applaud her life long work as an economist in response to:

“This is why Ethical Markets Media produces our Green Transition Scoreboard® mapping the shift from the fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the Solar Age. As investors realize the nature of real wealth, they are moving their money tokens to invest in the cleaner, greener, information-rich green sectors worldwide. The first wave of venture capitalists rushed into “green” investments.”

all I can say at this point is I am more than 50K poorer to have bought into to this line of thinking …… Ah but hope springs eternal 😉