Appeals to the supposed superiority of the past and nature together encompass the vast majority of objections to transhumanism, but are based on romantic revisionism, not reason and reality. Believe it or not, and I know most people do not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and today, we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species existence. The decline in violence has not been steady, it has not brought rates of violence down to zero, and it is not guaranteed to continue, but I hope to persuade you it is a persistent historical development visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the treatment of children and animals. Im going to walk you through six major historical declines of violence, and try to offer explanations for the declines, in terms of the psychological mechanisms that impel us toward violence, the psychological mechanisms that inhibit us from violence (what Abraham Lincoln called The Better Angels of Our Nature), and the historical changes that have favored our better angels.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 20:46:50 +0000
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