Credit: Pixabay/John Hain. CC0 Public Domain.
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, psychologist Steven Pinker argues that we may be living through the most peaceable era in human existence. As evidence for this remarkable assertion, Pinker cites the fact that the death rate from violence in the twentieth century—at around three percent of the global population—was only a fraction of the 15 percent estimated for pre-modern societies. Even with the catastrophic wars and genocides of the twentieth century there has been a five-fold reduction in violence when measured in the aggregate, though this conclusion ignores the fact that certain groups and communities, and certain forms of violence, may have risen—against women, Muslims, and black males in the USA for example.
