Our seemingly troubled times are routinely contrasted with idyllic images of hunter-gatherer societies, which allegedly lived in a state of harmony with nature and each other. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like, for example, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who argued that ‘war is not an instinct but an invention.’
But now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.
—
Steven Pinker, here; hat tip to Radley Balko (via ayjay)
I agree with this, but it’s still difficult to fathom that—in terms of sheer numbers—the 20th century was the bloodiest in history.
Notes
posted 8 / 24 / 2009
hilker:
so i’m going to central VA next week & want to see the coast in an afternoon. where should i go? williamsburg? jamestown?
Jamestown is a mosquito-infested bog and you’ll probably get dysentery.
Wait. Strike that. I was thinking of 200 years ago.
Notes
posted 8 / 18 / 2009
James Taranto sums up the Israel/Palestinian conflict in 7 paragraphs
We didn’t see President Obama’s big “Muslim outreach” speech in Cairo, as it turned out he was delivering it at 6 a.m. Who knew Muslims were such early risers? But we’ve read the text, and it seems to be a fairly typical Obama speech. By and large it strikes us as conciliatory but not to the point of cravenness. He says some tough things, though not toughly enough for our liking. And as is his wont, he is often quite vague. We’d have liked to see more clarity, but we concede that in statesmanship, vagueness has its uses.
One passage, though, bothers us, because Obama is presenting an ignorant or dishonest account of history:
Threatening Israel with destruction—or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews—is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people—Muslims and Christians—have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations—large and small—that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.
To hear this, you’d think that Palestinians have lived under Israeli “occupation” for 60 years. In fact, the West Bank and Gaza were under Arab occupation (by Jordan and Egypt, respectively) until 40 years ago (we’re following Obama’s convention of rounding to the nearest decade).
What happened 60 years ago was that the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Jewish and Arab states in what was then Palestine. The existing Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria—rejected the plan, declared war on Israel, and urged Palestinian Arabs to flee their homes, promising their return upon the Arabs’ victory.
Israel won instead. Palestinians remain in “refugee camps” in large parts because Arab states, except for Jordan, refuse to allow them to resettle. (By contrast, Israel has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing persecution in Arab countries.) Rather than accept their share of responsibility for the Palestinians’ plight, the Arab states still promise the “right of return” upon Israel’s defeat.
The president continues:
For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers—for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.
Obama presents a false choice: between seeing the conflict “only from one side or the other” and treating Palestinian complaints about “the displacement brought by Israel’s founding” and Israeli ones about “the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond” as equivalent and offsetting.
In truth, Israel’s founding was not sufficient to bring about Palestinian displacement. Also necessary for the latter was the Arab states’ violent rejection of the former. And the perpetuation of the Palestinians’ plight is far more the fault of the Arab states (joined recently by Iran), not only for refusing to permit Palestinian immigration but also for giving both material and rhetorical support to Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
Probably it would have been diplomatically unwise for Obama in Cairo to put the matter as bluntly as we have done here. But no real resolution of the conflict is possible so long as the Arab states remain major players and are held to no standard of responsibility for their own actions.
James Taranto
Notes
posted 6 / 8 / 2009
Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls. Without a theology commited to reason, progress and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: A world with astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys, and pianos. A world where most infants do not live to the age of five and many women die in childbirth - a world truly living in the ‘dark ages.’
—
Rodney Stark (via azspot)
Stark’s Victory of Reason is on my to-read-eventually list.
Notes
posted 6 / 8 / 2009
The "Holy" Alliance: The United States and the Vatican In Yugoslavia, 1945-1949
Considering the scope of the alliance Truman wished to create, it is not surprising that the United States wanted to involve itself with the global reaches of the Catholic Church and its central leadership as located in the Vatican. The Church had interests as well. Following the end of World War II, the expansion of the USSR caused the Church to feel threatened. The taking of Eastern Europe had set over thirteen million Catholics behind the “iron curtain” and unrest in Greece and Turkey threatened to take even more. Eager to not allow this to happen, the Vatican became a willing partner to the United States.
This union between the United States and the Vatican was brief, though its existence is clearly witnessed in the former Eastern European state of Yugoslavia. There, the State Department worked closely with high officials of the Catholic Church to both gain intelligence about the Yugoslav government and to stand firmly against the existence of communism. Yet this relationship lasted only a few years before the two partners diverged; the United States’ religious motives for its anti-communist stance were opportunistic and changed when the situation provided a better option. The Vatican, which by nature was entirely religious, could not support such a new stand and the alliance reached its end.
From a fascinating two-part essay by Kyle Bingman.
Strike that: there are now third and fourth parts.
Notes
posted 6 / 3 / 2009
hilker:
Henry Hudson’s Voyages On A Google Map
“Henry Hudson never did find the Northwest passage to India, but this year marks the 400th anniversary of his third voyage—the one where he came to New York and sailed up what is now the Hudson River (he made it as far as modern-day Albany). Hudson showed that often it is what you stumble upon on your way to somewhere else that turns out to be your great discovery. To celebrate the anniversary, the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation has charted all of Hudson’s voyages onto a Google map, along with overlays of historical maps.”
File under “awesome.”
Notes
posted 5 / 4 / 2009
(via thedaytheytriedtokillme)
The Great Game was a term used for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813 to the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 a second, less intensive phase followed.
The term “The Great Game” is usually attributed to Arthur Conolly, an intelligence officer of the British East India Company’s Sixth Bengal Light Cavalry.[1] It was introduced into mainstream consciousness by British novelist Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (1901).
Notes
posted 4 / 14 / 2009
