i bought a copy of straw dogs after watching this video last month, which i finished reading a couple of weeks ago. i was on the train to reading last week with the book in my bag to lend to a friend when i saw john gray get on at bristol. i couldn't be sure it was him so i went for a piss, but by the time i finished he was about to get off at bath! i said sorrytobotheryou pleasecanyousignmybook and ran and got it and he very graciously signed it. great book & great man.

Jonathon Swift wrote a letter to Alexander Pope explaining what he believed was the error in the idea of progress: we are not rational creatures, merely creatures capable of reason.

@benwilterdink5075

Жыл бұрын

Really great quote.

Thank god (metaphorically speaking of course) for John Gray.

Thanks for the suggestions, from Toronto.

This guy makes Zizek look like a rambling madman.

@bubsadoozy

4 жыл бұрын

Which is exactly what a philosopher should be perceived as. Nietzsche said as much. Zizek's thought is tenfold more ambitious/interesting. If you're merely comparing their tone/speech during lectures I might agree but in terms of their written thought Gray doesn't hold a candle to Zizek.

@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885

4 жыл бұрын

Zizek is stuck in Platonic philosophy - he is deluded by Westernization. I wrote a critique of Zizek in 1996 and Zizek sent me a postcard in response, "Looks very interesting, I'll read it and get back to you." His 1997 book, "Plague of Fantasies" was his "straw man" attempt to critique my critique of him. So Zizek was attacking Ecofeminism and New Ageism, etc. Why? He is against non-western cultures - he claims to understand Buddhism for example. So I posted on a Zizek website - that Zizek needs to read Master Nan, Huai-chin - a best-seller in China. Instead of responding - the Zizekians just took down the website. haha. John Gray embraces nonwestern views - like Daoism.

@thesmellofyou

4 жыл бұрын

theyre both nutjob cases

@ashleybennett4418

3 жыл бұрын

zizek is word salad.

This is why I take a geological time frame for it: all human values don't exist at that scale. A lot of human fighting is petty and absurd against this immensity of time.

@All4Randomness1

4 жыл бұрын

Another myth designed to console

@sailawayteam

6 ай бұрын

This kind of insight will not pass when one is on the receiving end of that fight.

I think that people are foremost pragmatic in living through their problems. There's no moral code except whatever is helpful at the moment. This is not to suggest that our moral values are arbitrary, but they are context-dependent. I also think that conflicts have a touch of idealism around them, coupled with the usual territorial defense that we share with other non-humans. Our ambiguous natures stem from the myriad values, situations and history that we have to cope with. For better or worse.

There is a photograph online... Bing...Buffalo Skulls (images) A mountain of Buffalo Skulls from 1870 when there was a campaign to destroy the lifeline of the American Indian. It worked of course. Depending on whether or not you subscribe to the myth that John Gray describes, as most "civilized" people do. When you consider the extreme measures it took to drive the indigenous people off this continent, "winning" was no picnic. And it brings into question what "winning" ultimately looks like.

@the81kid

5 жыл бұрын

History is written by the winners. The "civilization" of the Americas was genocide and mass killing. Then the same culture writes about "progress" and how much more peaceful we are. Look for Andy Rhodes' comments here. He's a true believer in "progress".

Authoritarianism on the rise (check), Barbarism on the rise (check), and work transitioning revolution style (check) I would say it is about time for a reversion from the higher ideas of the enlightenment. I just hope we are able to stave off the ‘great leveler’ like we did in the 30’s

Good point!

cont. Changing environment = changing behaviors. So even if we are just behaviors (that's debatable,) then it's a leap to assume we will always act on the same collection of behaviors instead of new ones.

before youtube I was a mere animal

@mmendi1114

13 күн бұрын

😅 we were animals who chose to watch KZread....nevertheless

Our sense of morality is a case of marking differences that count to us. Hence violence at times. Our sense of self has transmogrified into delusions of power, helped no less than the over-valuation of individualism in capitalistic societies worldwide.

Yes. You have to consider that we shape the world based on our desires, biological and psychological. As long as these desires conflict, we conflict. If you recognize the general trend we have towards resolving these conflicts, and the desire to shape the world into a place where many of these conflicts are obsolete, then it doesn't matter if we are beasts, it would make no difference. And that's only if you think we can change our own biology, which we ARE doing. Behaviors vs. Environment, cont

I think that jelly peanut butter sandwich is the best invention

@keithhunt5328

2 жыл бұрын

it tastes like crap.

wired by evolution to have a balance of moral and amoral traits, even if we revert to animals in the right environment, we have undoubtedly progressed in that sphere. You can't erase the psychological impact of the concept of morality that has shaped our growth as individuals. If everything about us was hardwired, we would not be the species that we are.

I agree with everything except your term Beyond recognition. I suppose that's just me being picky, but there are plenty of things we still use now that a human living many centuries ago would recognize. Not just common objects such as clothes, and cups and beds either. Even advanced technologies have aspects an ancient person could readily identify with, the writing I'm doing now, the images on the screen, and sounds are not completely alien but adapted to the basic way we interact with theworld

Granted the particular truth in that statement, that 'whatever happens to be in vogue..' which basically means what I've been saying. Your adaptation to your culture of family unit exerting great influence on your 'morality' it does nothing to suggest lack of moral advancement. It merely reflects that we are 1st biological, 2nd psychological, both generate needs which either conflict or are in harmony. We do not make decisions based only on our biological needs or baseline animal natures.

I started by liking the quiet, un-edginess of Gray's delivery, but after 10 minutes my eyes were closing. He probably said some interesting things, but I'll never know (because I won't be going back to this video any time soon). Sorry mate - got to spice it up!

@user-sq3up1jo9l

5 жыл бұрын

it's thrilling when u get his points, read a book of him first

The problem with the dichotomy between "civilized" and "barbaric" is that we are presupposing that civilized principals, which are thought to be based on reason, are in fact "true". Were the ancient civilized Britains sitting in their monasteries rational? When the barbaric Vikings came, tore down their structures, and forced them to rebuild, were the Britains not made strong from it? Sometimes it takes more than reason and rationality to wash away what is old and rotten. It takes brute force.

(Cont.) So to imply our morality is somehow hardwired and fixed is to ignore our origins as animals, and vitally, ignore the clear direction of our evolution towards more morally-intelligent beings. As self-aware animals we can now look at this big picture and take action to accelerate this process. Moral progress is anything but a myth, it's just been slower compared to the progress of technology and society (which I believe has improved beyond recognition compared to just a few centuries ago).

Why the hell does it keep skipping? It makes the whole lecture rendered rather incoherent! :P

.. 'the whole idea of a peace meal or incremental progress is of step by step and that presupposes that what was there before remains largely in place. But historically speaking that's not the case … what is gained is very easily lost and over a longer period, will be lost'.

Moral progress (and I'll add technology, ignore that if that's not what you meant,) has not improved beyond recognition. I agree that it has improved, but not beyond recognition. I say this because many of our moral concepts and philosophies found their origins more then a few centuries ago. I agree though, even if it is only because environment and the advantage of being more moral, our philosophy of morality and its application has evolved, quite like technology. Even if we are still hard...

Please do, condescending tone aside. Tell me why you dislike this video, how have we exactly progressed. Also tell me if you are over weight or not

thats exactly what he said

well, can't argue with that 'logic'. Pure and simple. pure. and. simple.

have you not read Minima Moralia? - a beautiful, sad, and passionate book, and one of the key philosphical-literary texts of the post second world war period… oh, as an aside, if he never said anything in a better way than any other human being, (but then each human being would speak its own truth), AND he 'expressed things needlessly stupid' (?), doesn't that make all of our expressions 'needlessly stupid'? In a strange kind of way, I agree...

So humankind is not evolving as some would claim? I tend to agree with this, we have however made great strides in our understanding of a sort of moral objectivity and the lives of many people have improved for it. But it seems like a never ending process, we'll never reach a utopia here on earth I suspect. People have tried and usually those attempts have resulted in catastrophic results.

I suppose by animals they mean "animal spirits"?

Did you actually WATCH the video? Everything you write after "i would have to disagree" is EXACTLY what he says!

I'm not sure if I accept that conclusion. I'd actually say that your Britains were either irrational(Unable to see a real threat), inept(Saw a threat but were incapable of defending) or wrong(Simply didn't believe there was a threat). If they really saw such a threat, and were able, then reason and rationality would lead them to make decisions to build corresponding defenses.

His argument is besides the point. No one claims, that progress can't be lost. But simply compared to the past less and less people are living in absolute poverty. It seems that at the moment a lot of things are improving instead of getting worse, that is something you could call progress. No one is "believing" in progress, but hoping and working towards further progress, as oposed to having a nihilistic world view, that claims "everything is shitty anyways, so who cares?". A hope and an effort towards more progress is not a false belief, thus his argument doesn't make any sense.

@WTG194

4 жыл бұрын

I don't think he is saying who cares, he's merely pointing out the phenomenon.

@keithhunt5328

2 жыл бұрын

What if the actions you undertake as result of belief in progress makes things worse and not better?

3:34

could it be that people per se are not boring but the things people talk about?

The changing conditions of history touch only the surface of the show. The altered equilibriums and redistributions only diversify our opportunities, and open chances to us for new ideals. But with each new ideal that comes into life, the chance for a life based on the old ideal will vanish: and he would needs be a presumptuous calculator who should with confidence say that the total sum of significance is positively and absolutely greater at any one epoch that at any other of the world

Of course we are. I'll tell you why your example does not apply: Change is not instantaneous. You can have more or less of goodness and evil in the world, citing bad examples does not prove that we are advancing. But neither does good examples. Instead you examine the basic cultural psychology of nations and their notions of what those mean. Are these notions becoming more moral? If so, then it must be as a result of adaptation to a changing world, evolution is not a constant, flexibility and..

Interesting but i would have to disagree on a fundamental level i believe that things like moral and ethics are nice as long as you have the luxury to keep them. As soon as you no longer can keep that up they will be dropped without regret. Torture for example is something that will be seen as useful in times of war so they luxury of human rights gets dropped and you turn back to "efficient" methods.

We realy need serious philosophers like him, and not those people like Sam Harris, who justifies torture in the name of progress.

So what to make of these thoughts now post brexit and trump and the rise of extremes?

@user-sq3up1jo9l

5 жыл бұрын

realise that barbarism is normal and can come back any time. live and hope accordingly

14:00 It took all of ten minutes to get up to speed on Herbert Spencer. To paraphrase, he was somewhat of a Karl Marx figure within the incipient tradition of classical liberalism. I was strongly tempted to write classical neoliberalism, because if Spencer is an illustration of old ideas becoming new again, it would be the modern return to neoliberal thinking. Before Marx, political manifestos summing up the "big picture" from an consistent and broadly developed ideological vantage point were far from the norm. Only a few years apart, Spencer essentially penned the first such document from what later culminated as the neoliberal side of the aisle-call his _Social Statistics_ a strong start on neoliberalism version 0.1. Spencer argued by analogy that if the public sector took over all aspects of public health (egads, Obamacare!) there was a clear and present danger of the state evolving into a form of material nannyism to rival moral nannyism in the religious sphere, as already established over the centuries by the Anglican and Catholic churches on a tap root system a mile deep. _There is a manifest analogy between committing to government-guardianship the physical health of the people, and committing to it their moral health. The two proceedings are equally reasonable, may be defended by similar arguments, and must stand or fall together. If the welfare of men’s souls can be fitly dealt with by acts of parliament, why then the welfare of their bodies can be fitly dealt with likewise. He who thinks the state commissioned to administer spiritual remedies, may consistently think that it should administer material ones. The disinfecting society from vice may naturally be quoted as a precedent for disinfecting it from pestilence._ (via David Hart) The other half of Spencer's argument was that for the terrible social price of behavioural micromanagement as corrupted to the core by regulatory capture, society would see half as much done, extended over twice as much time. The half of the argument that Spencer failed to advance is that while the private sector will descend on your current pain point with twice the alacrity and vigour as any governmental body, and that the private sector will surely sustain this alacrity by any necessary means on an indefinite basis, this later point amounts to a bug not a feature, because with more big-picture foresight, the big-picture solution might have involved a large bridge with fewer pillars (each one admitted slow and cumbersome and covered in red tape) vs a large bridge with many, many small pillars (cash on the barrel for each and every one of these, with procurement of same as fast as you can say "and now to collect our payment for the next one ..."). I'm just commenting here that alacrity and vigour are the performance art of the private sector extracting regular and consistent payment, and that _this_ is the controlling failure mode of the private sector to set against the lethargy and red tape of the public sector, as a legitimate devil-in-the-details VS damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't cage match (tonight only!) Lord's Prayer as updated for the Greek Jerusalem of Scylla and Charybdis: Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into public-sector thrall, But deliver us from plodding evil; And lead us not into private-sector thrall, But deliver us from precipitate evil; Unfortunately, when this lucidity-enhanced version was workshopped by the Nicaeanean Proving Group, it was discovered to lead nodding heads to drift into thought rather than slumber, and as such was immediately renounced by all involved (including a comment from God himself during public consultation concerning perhaps "setting the bar of deliverance a little too high").

transcript :))

they will watch this after the decline of the next age of barberism

I hate this connotation of evolution with progress. Evolution has been distorted through a humanist (christianity-lite) lens as if it were a teleological design rather than just chance subtraction.

@Firespectrum122

3 жыл бұрын

@thevso Agreed.

this man has to learn to be non-BORIIIIIIIIIING.

@ajs41

4 жыл бұрын

He isn't boring.

@deanerhockings-reptilianhu8701

4 жыл бұрын

@@ajs41 He is a bit boring. Takes sooooo long to get to his point and even then, it's not a very worthwhile one.

If you ask me, being interesting is overrated.

splittin hairs

the exegesis on conrad was a little undergraduate... but i suppose he's a philosopher, not a literary critic or theoretician. a good lecture nonetheless.

As I just said in my last post, Pinker doesn't say that human DNA has changed. Human behavior has been changed by other means. I listed those means, according to his book. What is basis of your strident rejection of academics? To assume that because university professors don't load packages at UPS or fire machine gun bullets at ISIS each day, therefore they have no ability to assess and summarize the data from points in history is to chose beliefs that are opposite from reality. First, many professors have worked blue collar jobs in the past and/or, as part of their research, interacted regularly with people who work those types of jobs. Second, a "practically-minded", "non intellectual" or "down-to-earth" person (or whatever other term you prefer) doesn't have access to any information other than their own anecdotal experience and that from the general culture (that last part is heavily influenced by the "experts" in colleges). Where are you getting your knowledge of history from? Every history book available is directly or indirectly impacted by or even grounded upon the research and writings of previous historians, at least as far back as Herodotus (400s BCE) up through people like Edward Gibbon (1700s CE) and on to our time. Much of the violence statistics for cities comes from police departments. Are they living in an ivory tower? The data shows that in the US, for example, crime is currently half of what it was in the early 1990s. Aside from local police statistics, the FBI and other sources confirm these facts. The substantially downward trend applies to metropolitan areas known for being more dangerous: Washington D.C., New Orleans, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. According to the FBI, from 2001-2010, the crime rates went down in categories of violent crime (20%), forcible rape (13.8%), robbery (19.7%), aggravated assault (20.8%) and motor vehicle theft (44.5%). Nationally, compared to 1973, the rape rate is 80% less and the murder rate is 40% less. That's amazing. To take it further, the murder rate in modern Britain is thirty-five times less than in the Middle Ages. And although the 20th century was horribly violent at many points, the death toll in crime or war was still only 3% of the global population. Contrast that to the American Wild West, where the percentages ranged up to 30% or more in each town. Or consider pre-state societies where, at over two dozen archaeological sites around the world from 30,000 CE to tribal societies on the planet now, 15% of corpses found showed clear signs of murderous death (strangulation, stabbing, blunt hit to skull, etc.)

Gray says there will never be a point at which the appeal of barbarism disappears. I can see how any argument against that statement could be refuted by changing the definition of barbarism. But what I can't see how he can know that. What is he? A prophet? Absolute predictions of the future should invoke an extreme skepticism. Nobody is that smart. He seems to be saying that human progress in the area of politics and ethics is impossible in the long run. We should hope and try to prove him wrong as much of history does.

@promich7194

7 жыл бұрын

History repeats. No prophets required.

@myothersoul1953

7 жыл бұрын

P Romich History does repeat but that doesn't mean everything always repeats and it never exactly duplicates. History evolves. Two or 3 hundred years ago slavery was a common and accepted practice today it's outlawed by every nation. Will slavery return? It's possible but it's also possible that it will not. Humans are too unpredictable for us to know for certain. Same with appeal of "barbarism" however "barbarism" is defined.

@Brokensteel216

7 жыл бұрын

"Two or 3 hundred years ago slavery was a common and accepted practice today it's outlawed by every nation." This is one of the most ignorant statements I've ever read in my life. Slavery and human trafficking are far from gone, and probably never will be. There are at least 30 million slaves in the world, and that's excluding the glorified slaves in American prisons and Third World sweatshops. Get off your utopian high horse.

@AnaLiMFT

5 жыл бұрын

Brokensteel216 excellent

@keithhunt5328

2 жыл бұрын

Much of history proves his claims.

let's hope the robots win out.

@the81kid

5 жыл бұрын

I hope that's a joke.

Dont feed him... I think

I see a big contradiction in this guy's reasoning. He makes the observation that all humans have this inherent tendency to savagery (the animal consciousness) and the opposing tendency to civilisation and cooperation (more recently evolved human consciousness). That is: less moral to more moral (or as I prefer, ignorance versus wisdom). Is it not clear that during its short history humanity has become less savage, less ignorant, and less amoral in our transition to self-awareness?

Really quite banal - Nietzche, Weber, Adorno, and others said this better, and much ore besides, a long tome ago. Only somebody seriously naive would believe in what he calls the 'myth of progress', it's a complete straw man. If you want to read a real nihilist try Cioran, if you want a real academic study of power, knowledge and western society try Foucault.

@shaft9000

6 жыл бұрын

...and Foucault was really quite anal. What a difference a "b" makes.

@keithhunt5328

3 жыл бұрын

Read his book. He combines all of the above together.

Look at the apostle Paul. He set up a plan to eradicate Christians then became one. This phenomena still happens today. It could happen to Gray.

impossible to tell who you are replying to, but I'll have a go… I've already said why i don't like the video, check the early comments, as with a lot of Gray's work, it is derivative and really quite banal. Out of interest, what has my - or anyone's - weight got to do with anything?! Bizarre. As for tone, you probably shouldn't mention this, given that your first post called anyone who disagreed with you a 'jackass'.

I hope that anyone who reads John Gray's books "Straw Dogs" and/or "The Silence of Animals" will, as a counterweight, also read "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" by Steven Pinker. This remarkable book shows that, contrary to Gray's pessimistic imagery of future and continual barbarism, things like warfare, rape, murder, legal slavery, bullying, lynchings, racism, sexism and animal abuse are all in radical decline. This process started when societies began to organize away from hunter-gatherer communities between 7,000-10,000 years ago into structured civilizations, but shifted to an accelerated level of reform during the 18th century’s Age of Enlightenment. In Gray's very hostile and bitter review of Pinker's text, he never challenges the data. Instead, he attacks the philosophy of Enlightenment humanism that Pinker says is one of the factors that led to our far less violent world today. As Wikipedia notes: Pinker identifies five "historical forces" that have favored "our peaceable motives” and “have driven the multiple declines in violence.”[2] They are: The Leviathan - The rise of the modern nation-state and judiciary "with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force,” which “can defuse the [individual] temptation of exploitative attack, inhibit the impulse for revenge, and circumvent…self-serving biases.” Commerce - The rise of “technological progress [allowing] the exchange of goods and services over longer distances and larger groups of trading partners,” so that “other people become more valuable alive than dead” and “are less likely to become targets of demonization and dehumanization”; Feminization - Increasing respect for "the interests and values of women.” Cosmopolitanism - the rise of forces such as literacy, mobility, and mass media, which“can prompt people to take the perspectives of people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them”; The Escalator of Reason - an “intensifying application of knowledge and rationality to human affairs,” which “can force people to recognize the futility of cycles of violence, to ramp down the privileging of their own interests over others’s, and to reframe violence as a problem to be solved rather than a contest to be won.”[5]

@bondapovon

10 жыл бұрын

I have read both. I find Pinker, despite previous great work he did (such as the blank slate-itself a great rebuttal of the free-will mythology of liberalism and/or christianity) not as apparent in 'better angels'. Proportionally speaking, less people died as societies became complex, but to draw positive conclusions from one and only one variable is ridiculous. Most data shows that while you were less likely to violently die, your living standards, diet, and arguably personal freedom decreased with the growth of civilization until the late 1800s. So did environmental destruction increase which eventually will make this happy bubble we presently live in collapse. Sure, rape and murder are going down, but Pinker's assumption that because we have a trend now it thus will continue is asinine. We mock Romans and Incans for thinking they were eternal stable empires today while we engage in the same delusions about ourselves. Mali used to be the most wealthy kingdom in the world, Europe once was poor and backward. History is clearly cyclic, not progressive. Only in temporary bubbles can we pretend otherwise. We havent escaped the trend of delusional optimism, we have perfected it. All these people will have a rude wake up call, just like the educated classes of 1913 who thought that a shared financial system, strong states, a faith in progress, and an upper class who can all communicate in French would stop major war forever...then came the world wars, the various communist experiments (themselves ultra-progressive optimists) and fascism.

@AndyRhodes1

10 жыл бұрын

Hector Hung Hector, why is there such an angry and acerbic tone in your writing? Pinker is an academic trying to understand an important issue. If you don't agree with him, fine, but I don't see the need to get so aggressively worked up and even condescending about it. Why did you say "one and only one variable"? It's an 800 page book that collects data from dozens of historians (including all categories of physical violence) and attempts to explain why violence has declined. Gray's review of this book doesn't address the data at all. He just challenges the philosophy of secular Enlightenment humanism that Pinker says was one of the major factors affecting the startling change from the mid-1700s onward. You said, "Most data shows that while you were less likely to violently die, your living standards, diet, and arguably personal freedom decreased with the growth of civilization until the late 1800s." What I've seen shows exactly the opposite. Can you please direct me how to see this data? (I recognize, for example, that Americans have a poor diet often resulting in obesity, but that doesn't mean that they don't have the option to eat differently. In contrast, nearly all pre-modern peoples had very little choice on diet, had to work most of the day to keep from starving and had almost no understanding of balanced nutrition, proper food storage or germs.) Pinker says that human nature has not changed. But, the historical factors listed above (and/or other reasons) that have altered the structure and habits of society, along with the long pattern of history (though not inevitably progressive), make a possible reversal of these trends much less likely. It becomes a lower and lower probability the more humans get used to living a different and more satisfying way. I don't think that Pinker is illustrating "delusional optimism". Instead, he's engaging the numbers that historians have added up and quantifying the probability that the trends will continue. I agree that much of history is a cyclical mess of violent upheavals and misery. Much of Pinker's book explores in detail through statistics and anecdotes from around the world and illuminates this fact. However, that pattern has been radically changed in the past 300 years in an unprecedented way. So, the potential for a relatively sustainable peace is worth pondering. Regarding environmental devastation, I agree that this is a massive problem. However, many people since the 1960s, including businesses and governments, have changed their lifestyles so that eventually humanity may reverse course on a large scale. Much destruction is irrepairable, but all is not lost. The fact that humans are part chimpanzee and part bonobo, among other possible common ancestors, reveals how far we've come. Yes, we have a very violent and excessively competitive side. But, we also have genetic dispositions toward peace and cooperation. Therefore, it's reasonable to attach this biological understanding to our potential as a species and look at the last 300 years as an example of altered behavior patterns.

@AndyRhodes1

10 жыл бұрын

Hector Hung It's perfectly reasonable to debate just what Enlightenment humanism is and where it came from. The original proponents of it and similar movements had a lot of different things to say about what needed to be valued and done. It didn't show up suddenly in history as a tightly coherent philosophy. It evolved. Regardless of the many qualifying and critical statements that can be legitimately made about the history of Enlightenment humanism, its overall influence has worked during the past 300 years in making the world much more livable. I don't dispute that some of this philosophy came from Christianity, along with Greco-Roman traditions. But, much of it was new, in that it discarded many perceived inhumane beliefs/practices from these earlier models. I think it's very important to distinguish the rationalist-empiricist members of the Enlightenment from the romantics, communists, fascists and nationalists (or at least those sensibilities) who went off in a quite different direction (sometimes described as the counter-Enlightenment) and concluded things that don't necessarily follow from the basis of secularism. Let's recognize the ease by which these other movements ignored what was considered humane behavior/morality by the mainstream(?) of Enlightenment humanism that directly shaped the US Constitution, United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Conventions and Unitarian Universalism. I don't challenge the common observations that secular epistemology is sometimes a precarious place from which to openly explore various lifestyles, especially given that it doesn't offer transcendent ethics from on high. Instead, it emphasizes a trial and error process that attempts to find the most effective system toward a high quality of life where severe suffering is avoided whenever possible and happiness is pursued as the interests and needs of everyone are taken into account. Given that secular humanism is in its infancy, only beginning a few centuries ago, the progress made in its name and arguably largely due to its unique framework of values and parameters is remarkable (outstandingly so).

@AndyRhodes1

10 жыл бұрын

Hector Hung When I said, "I agree that much of history is a cyclical mess of violent upheavals and misery," I didn't mean that in a strict literal sense. Instead, I was appealing the common feeling that humans get about the repeatedly sufferings we endure. It seems like it goes on and on. I generally agree with Pinker that violent expressions and patterns are not hydraulic, thus needing a regular release. There is not a build-up amount of violence during peaceful eras just waiting for the right opportunity or provocation to explode.

@AndyRhodes1

10 жыл бұрын

Andy Rhodes Aside from their legitimate concerns and objections, I think most critics of this book are uncharitable and presumptuous toward Pinker. He's an academic, who by my observation, is trying hard to understand a very important topic that most people are too intimidated or pessimistic to even serious engage. Why are so many people often being so aggressively rude to him and his ideas? Why not recognize the spirit of what he's saying and stop getting so overly distracted by quibbles with his particular way of explaining what he considers plausible reasons why the changes have occurred? Contrary to many critics, I think that Pinker is quite cautious in his conclusions. His long book considers and explores many options of interpretation. Why do so many people assume that because he comes up with a firm personal conclusion on such a charged topic as a decline in global violence that this automatically means he's not aware of the complexities, nuances and ambiguities involved with these topics? Isn't possible that the strong human proclivities (both modern and perennial) toward cynicism, pessimism, fatalism, personal fears/pains and negativity are driving much of the resistance to this text? He's a Harvard and MIT professor of world renown. Give the guy a break. Sure, challenge him, but give him the benefit of the doubt. Look how much massive research he's done. He's largely summarizing others' viewpoints. He didn't simply make all of this up. There are at least as many positive review of his book as negative. See below (from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Reception): ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Reception Positive The philosopher Peter Singer positively reviewed The Better Angels of Our Nature in The New York Times.[13] Singer concludes: "[It] is a supremely important book. To have command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of that decline".[13] Political scientist Robert Jervis, in a long review for The National Interest, states that Pinker "makes a case that will be hard to refute. The trends are not subtle - many of the changes involve an order of magnitude or more. Even when his explanations do not fully convince, they are serious and well-grounded.".[14] In a review for The American Scholar, Michael Shermer writes, "Pinker demonstrates that long-term data trumps anecdotes. The idea that we live in an exceptionally violent time is an illusion created by the media’s relentless coverage of violence, coupled with our brain’s evolved propensity to notice and remember recent and emotionally salient events. Pinker’s thesis is that violence of all kinds-from murder, rape, and genocide to the spanking of children to the mistreatment of blacks, women, gays, and animals-has been in decline for centuries as a result of the civilizing process.... Picking up Pinker’s 832-page opus feels daunting, but it’s a page-turner from the start."[15] In The Guardian, Cambridge University political scientist David Runciman writes, "I am one of those who like to believe that... the world is just as dangerous as it has always been. But Pinker shows that for most people in most ways it has become much less dangerous". Runciman concludes "everyone should read this astonishing book".[16] In a later review for The Guardian written when the book was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, Tim Radford wrote, "in its confidence and sweep, the vast timescale, its humane standpoint and its confident world-view, it is something more than a science book: it is an epic history by an optimist who can list his reasons to be cheerful and support them with persuasive instances....I don't know if he's right, but I do think this book is a winner."[17] Adam Lee writes, in his blog review for Big Think, that "even people who are inclined to reject Pinker's conclusions will sooner or later have to grapple with his arguments".[18] In a long review in The Wilson Quarterly, psychologist Vaughan Bell calls it "an excellent exploration of how and why violence, aggression, and war have declined markedly, to the point where we live in humanity’s most peaceful age.... powerful, mind changing, and important."[19] Bill Gates wrote about the book that "Steven Pinker shows us ways we can make those positive trajectories a little more likely. That's a contribution, not just to historical scholarship, but to the world". He considers it one of the most important books he's ever read.[20] In a long review for the Los Angeles Review of Books, anthropologist Christopher Boehm (Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California and co-director of the USC Jane Goodall Research Center ) called the book "excellent and important"[21] Political scientist James Q. Wilson, in the Wall Street Journal, called the book "a masterly effort to explain what Mr. Pinker regards as one of the biggest changes in human history: We kill one another less frequently than before. But to give this project its greatest possible effect, he has one more book to write: a briefer account that ties together an argument now presented in 800 pages and that avoids the few topics about which Mr. Pinker has not done careful research." (Specifically, the assertions to which Wilson objected were Pinker's writing that (in Wilson's summation), "George W. Bush 'infamously' supported torture; John Kerry was right to think of terrorism as a 'nuisance"; 'Palestinian activist groups' have disavowed violence and now work at building a 'competent government.' Iran will never use its nuclear weapons... [and] Mr. Bush ... is 'unintellectual.' " [22] Brenda Maddox, in The Telegraph, called the book "utterly convincing" and "well-argued"[23] The Economist called it "a subtle piece of natural philosophy to rival that of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. He writes like an angel too."[24] Clive Cookson, reviewing it in the Financial Times, called it "a marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling, demonstrating how fortunate the vast majority of us are today to experience serious violence only through the mass media." [25] The science journalist John Horgan called it "a monumental achievement" that "should make it much harder for pessimists to cling to their gloomy vision of the future" in a largely positive review in Slate Magazine [26] In The Huffington Post, Neil Boyd, Professor and Associate Director of the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, strongly defended the book against its critics, saying "While there are a few mixed reviews (James Q. Wilson in the Wall Street Journal comes to mind), virtually everyone else either raves about the book or expresses something close to ad hominem contempt and loathing.... At the heart of the disagreement are competing conceptions of research and scholarship, perhaps epistemology itself. How are we to study violence and to assess whether it has been increasing or decreasing? What analytic tools do we bring to the table? Pinker, sensibly enough chooses to look at the best available evidence regarding the rate of violent death over time, in pre-state societies, in medieval Europe, in the modern era, and always in a global context; he writes about inter-state conflicts, the two world wars, intra-state conflicts, civil wars, and homicides. In doing so, he takes a critical barometer of violence to be the rate of homicide deaths per 100,000 citizens.... Pinker's is a remarkable book, extolling science as a mechanism for understanding issues that are all too often shrouded in unstated moralities, and highly questionable empirical assumptions. Whatever agreements or disagreements may spring from his specifics, the author deserves our respect, gratitude, and applause." [27] Boyd specifically takes to task a number of the book's critics. The book also saw positive reviews from The Spectator,[28] The Courier-Journal,[29] and The Independent.[30] Negative In his review of the book in Scientific American,[31] psychologist Robert Epstein criticizes Pinker's use of relative violent death rates - that is, of violent deaths per capita - as an appropriate metric for assessing the emergence of humanity's "better angels"; instead, Epstein believes that the correct metric is the absolute number of deaths at a given time. (Pinker strongly contests this point; throughout his book, he argues that we can understand the impact of a given number of violent deaths only relative to the total population size of the society in which they occur, and that since the population of the planet has increased by orders of magnitude over history, higher absolute numbers of violent death are certain to occur even if the average individual is far less likely to encounter violence directly in their own lives, as he argues is the case.) Epstein also accuses Pinker of an over-reliance on historical data, and argues that he has fallen prey to confirmation bias, leading him to focus on evidence that supports his thesis while ignoring research that does not. Several negative reviews have raised criticisms related to Pinker's humanism and atheism.[32] John N. Gray, in a critical review of the book in Prospect, writes, "Pinker's attempt to ground the hope of peace in science is profoundly instructive, for it testifies to our enduring need for faith."[33] New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, while "broadly convinced by the argument that our current era of relative peace reflects a longer term trend away from violence, and broadly impressed by the evidence that Pinker marshals to support this view," offered a list of criticisms and concludes Pinker assumes almost all the progress starts with "the Enlightenment, and all that came before was a long medieval dark."[34] Theologian David Bentley Hart wrote that "one encounters [in Pinker's book] the ecstatic innocence of a faith unsullied by prudent doubt." Furthermore, he says, "it reaffirms the human spirit's lunatic and heroic capacity to believe a beautiful falsehood, not only in excess of the facts, but in resolute defiance of them."[35] Craig S. Lerner, a professor at George Mason University School of Law, in a mixed review in the Winter 2011/12 issue of the Claremont Review of Books[36] does not dismiss the claim of declining violence, writing, "...let's grant that the 65 years since World War II really are among the most peaceful in human history, judged by the percentage of the globe wracked by violence and the percentage of the population dying by human hand," but disagrees with Pinker's explanations and concludes that "Pinker depicts a world in which human rights are unanchored by a sense of the sacredness and dignity of human life, but where peace and harmony nonetheless emerge. It is a future - mostly relieved of discord, and freed from an oppressive God - that some would regard as heaven on earth. He is not the first and certainly not the last to entertain hopes disappointed so resolutely by the history of actual human beings." In a sharp exchange in the correspondence section of the Spring 2012 issue, Pinker attributes to Lerner a "theo-conservative agenda" and accuses him of misunderstanding a number of points, notably Pinker's repeated assertion that "historical declines of violence are 'not guaranteed to continue'"; Lerner, in his response, says Pinker's "misunderstanding of my review is evident from the first sentence of his letter" and questions Pinker's objectivity and refusal to "acknowledge the gravity" of issues he raises[37] The book has also been attacked from the political left. Economist and media analyst Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, together with independent journalist David Peterson, wrote detailed negative reviews of the book for the International Socialist Review [38] and for Znet [39] concluding "...terrible book, both as a technical work of scholarship and as a moral tract and guide", and describing Pinker as pandering to the "demands of U.S. and Western elites at the start of the 21st century". Two critical reviews have been related to postmodern approaches. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a critical review in The New Yorker,[40] to which Pinker posted a reply.[41] (Razib Khan posted a defense of Pinker and critique of Kolbert on his "Gene Expression" blog for Discover Magazine[42] ) Kolbert states that "The scope of Pinker's attentions is almost entirely confined to Western Europe"; Pinker replies that his book has sections on “Violence Around the World," “Violence in These United States," and the history of war in the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Japan, and China. Kolbert states that "Pinker is virtually silent about Europe’s bloody colonial adventures"; Pinker replies that "a quick search would have turned up more than 25 places in which the book discusses colonial conquests, wars, enslavements, and genocides." Kolbert concludes, "Name a force, a trend, or a ‘better angel’ that has tended to reduce the threat, and someone else can name a force, a trend, or an ‘inner demon’ pushing back the other way.” Pinker calls this "the postmodernist sophistry that the The New Yorker so often indulges when reporting on science." An explicitly postmodern critique - or more precisely, one based on perspectivism - is made at CTheory.net by Ben Laws, who argues that "if we take a 'perspectivist' stance in relation to matters of truth would it not be possible to argue the direct inverse of Pinker's historical narrative of violence? Have we in fact become even more violent over time? Each interpretation could invest a certain stake in 'truth' as something fixed and valid -- and yet, each view could be considered misguided." Pinker argues in his FAQ page that economic inequality, like other forms of "metaphorical" violence, "may be deplorable, but to lump it together with rape and genocide is to confuse moralization with understanding. Ditto for underpaying workers, undermining cultural traditions, polluting the ecosystem, and other practices that moralists want to stigmatize by metaphorically extending the term violence to them. It's not that these aren't bad things, but you can't write a coherent book on the topic of 'bad things.'.... physical violence is a big enough topic for one book (as the length of Better Angels makes clear). Just as a book on cancer needn't have a chapter on metaphorical cancer, a coherent book on violence can't lump together genocide with catty remarks as if they were a single phenomenon." Quoting this, Laws argues that Pinker suffers from "a reductive vision of what it means to be violent." [43] John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School criticized the book in a 3 December 2012 article in Foreign Policy for using statistics that he said did not accurately represent the threats of civilians dying in war: "The problem with the conclusions reached in these studies is their reliance on "battle death" statistics. The pattern of the past century-one recurring in history-is that the deaths of noncombatants due to war has risen, steadily and very dramatically. In World War I, perhaps only 10 percent of the 10 million-plus who died were civilians. The number of noncombatant deaths jumped to as much as 50 percent of the 50 million-plus lives lost in World War II, and the sad toll has kept on rising ever since".[44] Statistician and philosophical essayist Nassim Taleb coined the term "Pinker Problem" after corresponding with Pinker regarding the theory of great moderation [45] "Pinker doesn’t have a clear idea of the difference between science and journalism, or the one between rigorous empiricism and anecdotal statements. Science is not about making claims about a sample, but using a sample to make general claims and discuss properties that apply outside the sample." [46] In a reply, Pinker denied that his arguments had any similarity to "great moderation" arguments about financial markets, and states that "Taleb’s article implies that Better Angels consists of 700 pages of fancy statistical extrapolations which lead to the conclusion that violent catastrophes have become impossible... [but] the statistics in the book are modest and almost completely descriptive" and "the book explicitly, adamantly, and repeatedly denies that major violent shocks cannot happen in the future."[47]

Dreadful...

...extreme, overly pessimistic, doesn't take into account the direction of spiritual development that accelerates the natural process of coming out of our animal-based ignorant behaviour, and worst of all, tacitly depicts mankind as a hopeless case and removing the need for a target for society, such as living in equilibrium with our environment. All in all, really not very impressed with this philosopher, it's cynical sensationalism and you don't have to believe a word of it.

Why doesn't Gray research something useful, rather than indulge in navel-gazing?

@DenianArcoleo

9 жыл бұрын

If you feel that understanding the truth is navel-gazing then that is your choice.

@geoffpoole483

9 жыл бұрын

Denian Arcoleo John Gray is the "Screaming Lord Sutch of academia" (Francis Wheen). Gray wrote a very critical review of one of Wheen's books but failed to mention that Wheen devoted a chapter of the book to criticising Gray's writings and his inconsistencies of opinion. Given the choice of sitting through this or playing my guitar, I will always reach for the guitar.

@badparrotproductions4054

9 жыл бұрын

Geoff Poole Playing in 3 chords no doubt.

@badparrotproductions4054

9 жыл бұрын

Why dont you go back to the toy guitar and leave thinking to others.