‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ (Summary)

by Steven Pinker

One of my fears of reading is the size of a book, particularly how many pages. So you can only imagine my feelings when I saw how big this book was. In order to keep up, I decided to listen on Audible. I thought it would speed things up; that was until I saw it was 34 hours of audio. Zuck made it known that the book was long, and he might take up to a month to finish it. However, that wasn’t going to slow down the pace of the book club, two books a month was still the goal. He kept his word, the 3rd book was released, and I now have one week to finish (if I want to stay on track).

This book was long. Real long. I’ll try to do my best to sum it up.

Pinker opens the book with a few key statements, one of them being that violence has significantly declined over the last century. Not just violence related to war, but violence with your family, friends, neighborhoods, states, and even yourself. He spends hundreds of pages letting his words blossom into a convincing masterpiece. Throughout the book he leaves no room for question, he asks us to stop contemplating “why there is war?” instead, let’s ask, “why is there peace? ” stop wondering what is wrong and evaluate what is right.

At the beginning of the book, we learn how violence plummeted, yet the public opinion will, and is, a reflection of our news sources. Those sources will always have enough violence to throw our way, and for some odd reason, we can’t get enough (maybe another book can explain this phenomenon). Because our access to violence is immediate, our society thinks it’s getting far worse. Think about it, watch the news for a few days, check Facebook and Twitter, your digital cup is full of stories about, or related to, violence. We click, scroll, and consume, and we can’t stop. I found myself wondering how accurate some of his theories were, until he swiss-army-knifed his way past each doubt with raw facts, this is why his research is so valuable, and, why the book was so freaking long.

Pinker’s moxie persists through the middle of the book. He continues the journey through the history of violence and along the way he delivers a hefty amount of numbers and dates (it felt like AP History class). Luckily, I jotted down the ones I was most interested in, maybe they’ll come in handy for the holidays when I’m playing catchphrase, yeah…right.

My favorite part of the book was a hypothetical situation he painted — check it, he sets a scene and says (something like this), imagine you lived in the 1970s, and the commencement speech was this:

“Now is a time of great challenges but is also a time of great opportunities, I call on you to give something back to your community, work for a brighter future, and work to make the world a better place. On your 34th reunion, technology will have effects that you can barely see, 2011 will be a dangerous place, over the next 35 years there will be wars and genocides, nuclear weapons will be a threat, and violent regions of the world will still be violent. “

AND — then the speech concludes with:

“Nuclear Doomsday came to an end. China will fall off the military radar and become our trading partner, for the next 35 years there will be no wars between major nations. There is more good news: East Germany will open its borders, the iron curtain will vanish. The soviet union will abandon communism.”

If you lived in the 70s, you would have laughed at this looney tune giving some impractical snippet into a future that you are certain won’t exist. You would be wrong. Those words are stone — that happened. Pinker struck a personal chord here; he places the immense value on optimism, which has has been my north star throughout my life. Here, he challenges us all, individually, and collectively, to believe in the betterment of our world. Keep making a difference, he says, we owe it to our ancestors, and most importantly, our kids.

He closes the book with a splash of hope and invites us to walk through the door of optimism — of course, following him. What can you do to keep violence rolling downhill? Pinker’s research paved the way with reminders from our past, and predictions for our future.

What will you do?

Thanks for following along! Two books down, twenty-four to go.

Additional Thoughts:

• While reading this, I secretly wanted a filter on FB and Twitter to rid my feeds of violence. But then, maybe I’d feel weird and think the world was full of unicorns and happiness…hmm, nah, I’m good.
• This could serve as the one and only history book of violence. So. Many. Percentages.

Should you read this book? It truly was an interesting book, I think he could have gotten his point across in half the amount of pages.