Goldstein and Pinker both use similar evidence and reasoning to explain their theories on a worldwide decline of violence. Goldstein even quotes Pinker in parts of his article. Their evidence does not just rest in modern history, but travels as far back as five thousand years ago. Both point to specific eras in history that in which certain types of violence was reduced. Goldstein tends to use the more recent examples, with his oldest just reaching 19th century Europe. Pinker basically covers from the beginning of written human history to current times. Pinker espouses that there are six distinct periods of human history that can be used to prove that we, as humans, are becoming less violent. The first he calls the Pacification Process. He …show more content…
This era stretched from 17th century to the 18th century, over lapping the Civilizing Process and the European Enlightenment and Age of Reason. This era had no defined statistics that proved a reduction in violence, but rather a movement away from former legal and socially acceptable forms of violence. During this age most of Europe created laws that made it illegal to own another person, to kill another outside of combat (combat in name of their country no for their own amusement), torture, and many other forms of violence. It was also the era of peace, as no major conflicts were carried out between major powers of the time. Goldstein alludes to this when he comments on the changes of current global powers and how they are becoming similar to that of this time frame. This spans the ends of both the Civilizing Process and the Humanitarian …show more content…
In this era there has been a change in how violence is viewed and how it is been when used against others, such as minorities. Pinker claims, and Goldstein quotes, “The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence.” With this understanding that using violence to end conflict or to gain power has is seen as more of a harm to society than ever before. These changing norms of society have driven the world towards peaceful resolution. Pinker claims that “aggression is not a single motive, let alone a mounting urge” and that it is used to for gain of power, as a means to an end, to gain revenge, to find pleasure in another suffering, or as a justification for utopia. We, as humans, gain control over these urges by using self-control, empathy, a moral sense, and reason. There are also outside forces that help to contain aggression. Commerce, which is often associated with democracy, allows people to win without truly creating losers, as culture begin to respect women there become less of a violence based society, a central “monopoly [of] the legitimate use of force”, as people become more educated and have the ability to see the world on a larger scale, and to knowledge that violence is a problem to be solved and not just a means to an
¬¬¬Though most American people claim to seek peace, the United States remains entwined with both love and hate for violence. Regardless of background or personal beliefs, the vast majority of Americans enjoy at least one activity that promotes violence whether it be professional fighting or simply playing gory video games. Everything is all well and good until this obsession with violence causes increased frequency of real world crimes. In the article, “Is American Nonviolence Possible” Todd May proposes a less standard, more ethical, fix to the problem at hand. The majority of the arguments brought up make an appeal to the pathos of the reader with a very philosophical overall tone.
The Middle Ages lasted approximately 1,000 years, from the 5th to 15th century. The early part of the Middle Ages is also known as the Dark Ages. The Middle Ages has many nicknames including the Golden Ages and Medieval Times. One of the most accurate nicknames for the Middle Ages is, the Age of Faith. When one thinks of the Golden Ages, famine, plague, economic depression, crusades, disease, bloody wars, Vikings, persecution, and torture all come to mind. Torture during the Medieval Times was viewed differently than it is viewed today. Today, torture is viewed as cruel, inhuman, and degrading. In the U.S. torture is illegal but is sometimes used by the CIA and correctional facilities without public acknowledgement. As Schild said, “ In general, there are many indication that the people living at the time did not perceive the brutality of execution in the same way we would perceive it today, because they were filled with a deep sense of sin and thus were open to torture” (Thedeus).
Conflict is constant. It is everywhere. It exists within one’s own mind, different desires fighting for dominance. It exists outside in nature, different animals fighting for the limited resources available, and it exists in human society, in the courts. It can occur subtly, making small changes that do not register consciously, and it can occur directly and violently, the use of pure strength, whether physical, social, economic, or academic, to assert dominance and achieve one’s goals; this is the use of force. Yet, with the use of force, the user of force is destined to be one day felled by it. “He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.”
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton proves the point that violence can be justified if necessary. To inflict change in their lives people often fight with violence instead of peace to evoke change. The world strives for change everyday whether or not you like it. How the people create a change in society whether they use peace or war, it is up to them to decide how to modify our ever changing world. Violence and fight between the Socs and Greasers tells us that both can be justified if it inflicts positive change in society. ‘
Violence in all of its manifestations is based on an exercise of power. It represents a means to gain power, to maintain power, or as a response to a threat to one's power. As long as a society maintains the legitimacy of social hierarchies, of the right of some people to have power over others, there will be violence. One can either seek to diffuse the concentration of power or to control violence. By its very character, the attempt to control violence is self-defeating. The control will itself become violent.
As long as there have been men and women on this planet there has been violence. This is an immutable fact. In all likelihood, there will always be violence within the human race. Robert Heinlein said, "Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." Indeed this is plausible. The premise of these arguments is that giving a creature with a proven track record of violence a phenomenally powerful tool of destruction is less than wise. As an alternative, this paper proposes to limit access to such powerful devices (semi-automatic firearms) through the use of tracking methods, restricted sales, and heavier penalties for illegal possession of firearms. The firearms most specifically addressed are semi-automatic weapons including repeating rifles and handguns.
To the extent that one takes the values of Renaissance and Enlightenment as positive developments in human history, the Middle Ages will be viewed as “dark.” From another perspective, in order to dismiss the negative image of the Middle Ages, one has to deconstruct the wholly positive image of the Enlightenment, thereby questioning the presuppositions behind these descriptions. According to the Encylopedia Britannica, the post-Medieval world can be considered to have “invented the Middle Ages in order to distinguish themselves from it.” (2014) The description of the Middle Ages as Dark Ages can therefore be understood according to the shift of values that occurred from the Middle Ages to the post-Medieval world.
Violence causes a great deal of suffering and harm in the world today and yesterday (Cross 2013). Peace and conflict researchers are undeniably justified in their selection of inter and intra-state violence as objects of study because the social context for both the performance and understanding of violence is of central importance (Cross 2013). However it is surprisingly rare to find a definition of violence (Moore 2003). Thus uncertainty prevails as to whether violence is limited to physical abuse or includes verbal and psychological abuse (Moore 2003). Agreeing with Moore (2003), Galtung (1969) said it is not important to arrive at a definition of violence because there are obliviously many types of violence. Violence is not
Violence will be with us forever. We cannot change that. However, we can, and must change the way our children and we relate to it. Leonard Pitts Jr., columnist for the Miami Herald, explains it this way:
Children that are raised in a violent environment are more likely to grow up and become violent. “Albert Bandura ...
The Elizabethan Era is the period of time over which Queen Elizabeth I reigned over England and Ireland. The crime and punishment techniques that were once considered normal and necessary are now considered violent and cruel. Crimes were met with punishments and executions witnessed by many people. The lower class and upper class had separate crimes and punishments with levels of extremity.
If King defines violence as “immoral and destructive means” (King, 400), and Mitchell claims that violence can be used to bring about peace and equality. And King further states that “immoral and destructive means” (King, 400), can only bring about immoral and destructive ends. Then it is possible to infer that peace and equality are immoral and destructive. This is an error brought about through a lack of a definition to the terms violence and non-violence. As with the time King found new terms to differentiate between the types of love, he must find a number of new terms with which we may differentiate between the types of violence. The lack of variety has led to confusion that can possibly be eased through an ability to discriminate meanings. A possible distinction King could make between his violence and Mitchell’s violence is by using the terms brutality and brouhaha. A brouhaha could be what King calls non-violence, and brutality being what King calls violence. Brutality being a physical, forceful and damaging act of cruelty. A brouhaha is an enthusiastic act of abnormal behavior for the purpose of causing discomfort in others. An example of a brouhaha would be what King would call a non-violent protest. An example of brutality would be smashing in the windows of a store that refused to serve someone. To fix the claim “the type of peace King predicts from non-violence is better than one from violence,” Dr. King need only add a disclaimer stating the fact that such a claim is purely conjecture and wrought with bias. These changes could cause the essay to lose some of its power over the public, a group that has to think very little about the information that moves them, but it is personally believed that the changes would make the document more accurate for the people who
The first research that I encountered was James Gilligan’s M.D. book (1996) titled, "VIOLENCE." Gilligan separates the "epidemic" of violence into three areas; "The Pathology of Violence," "The ‘Germ Theory’ of Violence," and "The Epidemology of Violence." His research shows that people act violently as a means to attain, what to them is, justice. Gilligan found that most violent males, on an individua...
When considering the concepts of human rights and state sovereignty, the potential for conflict between the two is evident. Any humanitarian intervention by other actors within the international system would effectively constitute a violation of the traditional sovereign rights of states to govern their own domestic affairs. Thus, the answer to this question lies in an examination of the legitimacy and morality of humanitarian intervention. While traditionally, the Westphalian concept of sovereignty and non-intervention has prevailed, in the period since the Cold War, the view of human rights as principles universally entitled to humanity, and the norm of enforcing them, has developed. This has led to the 1990’s being described as a ‘golden
Paul de Man once said, “Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure.” But what is he really trying to say? Modernity takes out the old and brings in the new, continually upgrading to something else? Modernity appears as a concept of change. It most commonly refers to the social conditions, processes, and discourses resulting from the Age of Enlightenment. The concept of modernity captures the progress of societies, from primitive civilizations, which evolved gradually through discrete stages, reaching a modern age characterized by industrialization and capitalism, concluding in the current, post-modern state of globalization which shapes contemporary society with ever increasing coercion. Modernity can be placed into many different time periods. There are two, however, that are the most relevant: Early modernity and Classical modernity. Early modernity consisted of theorists such as Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville. Classical modernity consisted of theorists such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Many theorists have defined their own form of “modernity” which will be discussed throughout this paper.