Collapse, stagnation, and explosion – Myspace, Yahoo!, and, Facebook | Gene Expression. Open Thread – December 4th, 2010 | Gene Expression. Long-term-historical-trends-of-violent-crime.pdf (application/pdf Object) A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE By Steven Pinker. In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.
" Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: 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. In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene.
Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. At one time, these facts were widely appreciated. Scholars and Rogues » What would a progressive society look like? The Tricentennial Manifesto. One of my lists is currently engaged in a fairly dynamic discussion about “what is a progressive?” In thinking about the issue, I realized that it might help to ask the question a slightly different way: what would a progressive society look like? Maybe I can better understand what it means to be progressive in 2010 if I reverse-engineer the definition from a vision of the future where things work the way they ought to. I have argued that the success of the progressive movement hinges on seriously long-term thinking. It’s not about the 2012 elections or the 2016 elections or even the 2020 elections – those fights are about the battle, not the war. Instead, if we do things properly, if we concentrate on and win the war, what does America look like on our Tricentennial?
The Tricentennial Manifesto, v1.0 In 2076, every citizen should be educated to his or her highest potential. Feel free to suggest additions or amendments. Cat White and Mike Sheehan contributed to this document. The Web Means the End of Forgetting.