At least 33 people were killed yesterday, including a gunman, and at least 27 were injured, at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA. It was the deadliest mass civilian shooting in US history (NYT reg-free link).
Tragic.
But. Is it possible that society is becoming less violent?
Steven Pinker, Johnstone family professor at Harvard, has an interesting thesis:
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 under-appreciated 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.
Listen here on NPR.
1 comment:
Needless to say our "friends" at the NRA will tell us that if the kids who were murdered had had concealed carry permits they could have "taken out" the shooter.
And our spineless politicians will continue to be silent on the fact that the 2nd Amendment in no way gives random individuals the right to own guns.
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