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July 6, 2012
Q. With all the violence in the world today, whatever happened to “the better angels of our nature”?
A. Actually, they've become even better over time, though anecdotes about single violent events like 9/11, Columbine, child molestation obscure the fact, argues Harvard University social scientist Stephen Pinker in “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” as reported by Michael Shermer in Scientific American magazine. For example, “violent deaths of all kinds have declined from around 500 per 100,000 people per year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to around 6-8 today worldwide,” Pinker says. Even in the U.S., with its relatively high homicide rate (for developed nations), the figure is about 5.
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