Friday, October 28, 2011
Lucid interval
Been working hard on courseware, not much spare brainpower for other realms. For some reason a halfway decent thought popped up when I was commenting at Uncommon Descent this morning. Might as well copy it here for my own reference if nothing else.
The context is Steven Pinker's recent claim that overall human violence is going down in the last century or so.
Seems false from many different angles. My angle:
In the 20th century mass-produced violence overwhelmed individually crafted violence, just as mass-produced stuff overwhelmed individually crafted stuff. Small-scale warlords were priced out of the market. As Germany, Russia, China, and America roared into various parts of the world with huge forces and huge bribes, the warlords found that their resources were consumed by the big powers, and found that the local appetite for violence was either totally suppressed or mercenarized by the big powers.
After the Cold War ended, some of those warlords resumed serious fighting, but others found an outlet for their power-hunger in illegal commerce of drugs and weapons. See IRA or Taliban for examples. ¶ 5:52 AM
The context is Steven Pinker's recent claim that overall human violence is going down in the last century or so.
Seems false from many different angles. My angle:
In the 20th century mass-produced violence overwhelmed individually crafted violence, just as mass-produced stuff overwhelmed individually crafted stuff. Small-scale warlords were priced out of the market. As Germany, Russia, China, and America roared into various parts of the world with huge forces and huge bribes, the warlords found that their resources were consumed by the big powers, and found that the local appetite for violence was either totally suppressed or mercenarized by the big powers.
After the Cold War ended, some of those warlords resumed serious fighting, but others found an outlet for their power-hunger in illegal commerce of drugs and weapons. See IRA or Taliban for examples. ¶ 5:52 AM
