Images like this, from the Auschwitz concentration camp, have been seared into our consciousness during the 20th century and have given us a new understanding of who we are, where we've come from and the times we live in. During the 20th century, we witnessed the atrocities of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Rwanda and other genocides, and even though the 21st century is only seven years old, we have already witnessed an ongoing genocide in Darfur and the daily horrors of Iraq. This has led to a common understanding of our situation, namely, that modernity has brought us terrible violence, and perhaps that native peoples lived in a state of harmony that we have departed from, to our peril.
Prizori poput ovog iz koncentracijskog logora Auschwitz, urezali su se u našu svijest tijekom 20. stoljeća i pružili su nam novo shvaćanje o tome tko smo, odakle dolazimo i o vremenu u kojemu živimo. Tijekom 20. stoljeća svjedočili smo zločinima Staljina, Hitlera, Maoa, Pol Pota, genocidu u Ruandi i drugdje, a iako 21. stoljeće traje tek sedam godina već smo svjedočili genocidu u Darfuru, koji je u tijeku, i svakodnevnim užasima Iraka. To je oblikovalo opće mišljenje o našoj situaciji, kako je suvremeno doba donijelo užasnu razinu nasilja i kako su možda primitivni ljudi živjeli u skladu kojeg smo mi, na svoju pogibelj, izgubili. Evo primjera:
Here is an example from an op-ed on Thanksgiving, in the "Boston Globe" a couple of years ago, where the writer wrote, "The Indian life was a difficult one, but there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly nonexistent. What warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter." Now you're all familiar with this treacle. We teach it to our children. We hear it on television and in storybooks. Now, the original title of this session was, "Everything You Know is Wrong," and I'm going to present evidence that this particular part of our common understanding is wrong, that, in fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are, that violence has been in decline for long stretches of time, and that today, we are probably living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
komentar povodom Dana zahvalnosti u Boston Globeu prije par godina, u kojem autor piše: "Život Indijanaca bio je težak, ali nije bilo problema s nezaposlenošću, društvo je bilo skladno, nije bilo ovisnosti, kriminal gotovo da i nije postojao, a ako bi izbio rat među plemenima bio je uglavnom ritualan i rijetko je vodio neselektivnom ili masovnom pokolju." Svi ste upoznati s ovim romantičnim viđenjem. Prenosimo ga djeci, čujemo na televiziji i čitamo u pričama. Izvorni naslov ovoga predavanja bio je "Sve što znate je pogrešno" i predstaviti ću dokaze da je ovo konkretno opće uvjerenje pogrešno: da su naši preci zapravo bili daleko nasilniji od nas, da se razina nasilja kroz dugo vrijeme smanjivala te da danas vjerojatno živimo u najmirnijem razdoblju postojanja naše vrste. U desetljeću Darfura i Iraka
Now in the decade of Darfur and Iraq, a statement like that might seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene, but I'm going to try to convince you that that is the correct picture. The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years, although there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the 16th century. One sees it all over the world, although not homogeneously. It's especially evident in the West, beginning with England and Holland around the time of the Enlightenment.
takva se tvrdnja može činiti zaluđenom ili čak opscenom. Ali pokušat ću vas uvjeriti kako je ispravna. Smanjivanje razine nasilja fraktalni je fenomen. Možete ga pratiti kroz tisućljeća, kroz stoljeća, kroz desetljeća i kroz godine, iako je, izgleda, došlo do prekretnice početkom Doba razuma u 16. stoljeću. Primjetna je u cijelom svijetu, iako ne podjednako. Posebno je vidljiva na Zapadu, isprva u Engleskoj i Nizozemskoj oko razdoblja Prosvjetiteljstva.
Let me take you on a journey of several powers of 10 -- from the millennium scale to the year scale -- to try to persuade you of this. Until 10,000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers, without permanent settlements or government. And this is the state that's commonly thought to be one of primordial harmony. But the archaeologist Lawrence Keeley, looking at casualty rates among contemporary hunter-gatherers, which is our best source of evidence about this way of life, has shown a rather different conclusion.
Povesti ću vas na putovanje od nekoliko faktora 10 - s tisućljetne razine na godišnju - kako bi vas pokušao uvjeriti u to. Do prije 10.000 godina, svi ljudi živjeli su kao lovci-skupljači, bez trajnih naseobina ili vlada. Ovo stanje općenito se smatra društvom izvornog sklada. Međutim, arheolog Lawrence Keely, istražujući učestalost smrti među suvremenim lovcima-skupljačima - što je naš najbolji izvor činjenica o njihovom načinu života - došao je do drugačijeg zaključka.
Here is a graph that he put together, showing the percentage of male deaths due to warfare in a number of foraging or hunting and gathering societies. The red bars correspond to the likelihood that a man will die at the hands of another man, as opposed to passing away of natural causes, in a variety of foraging societies in the New Guinea highlands and the Amazon rain forest. And they range from a rate of almost a 60 percent chance that a man will die at the hands of another man to, in the case of the Gebusi, only a 15 percent chance. The tiny little blue bar in the lower left-hand corner plots the corresponding statistic from the United States and Europe in the 20th century, and it includes all the deaths of both World Wars. If the death rate in tribal warfare had prevailed during the 20th century, there would have been two billion deaths rather than 100 million.
Na ovome grafu prikazao je postotak muškaraca umrlih kao posljedica ratovanja u više skupljačkih i lovačko-skupljačkih društava. Crvene crte odgovaraju vjerojatnosti da je čovjeka ubio drugi čovjek, nasuprot vjerojatnosti smrti od prirodnih uzroka, u raznim skupljačkim društvima na visoravnima Nove Gvineje i u prašumama Amazone. Postoci su u rasponu od gotovo 60% vjerojatnosti smrti kao posljedice ubojstva do, u slučaju Gebusija, samo 15%. Mala plava crta u donjem lijevom kutu označava odgovarajuću statistiku za SAD i Europu u 20. stoljeću i uključuje sve smrti u oba svjetska rata. Da se smrtnost plemenskog ratovanja održala i tijekom 20. stoljeća, poginule bi dvije milijarde ljudi, umjesto 100 milijuna.
Also on the millennium scale, we can look at the way of life of early civilizations, such as the ones described in the Bible. And in this supposed source of our moral values, one can read descriptions of what was expected in warfare, such as the following, from Numbers 31: "And they warred against the Midianites as the Lord commanded Moses, and they slew all the males. And Moses said unto them, 'Have you saved all the women alive? Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him, but all the women children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.'" In other words: kill the men, kill the children. If you see any virgins, then you can keep them alive so that you can rape them. And you can find four or five passages in the Bible of this ilk. Also in the Bible, one sees that the death penalty was the accepted punishment for crimes such as homosexuality, adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, talking back to your parents --
Također, na razini tisućljeća možemo uočiti način života ranih civilizacija, poput onih opisanih u Bibliji. U tom tobožnjem izvoru naših moralnih vrijednosti može se pročitati što se očekivalo u ratu, kao na primjer u Brojevima 31: "I pođoše u boj proti Midjanaca, kako je bio Gospod zapovjedio Mojsiju, i pobiše sve muške osobe. Reče im Mojsije: "A što ostaviste na životu sve žene? Zato sada pobijte svu djecu mušku i sve žene udate. A sve mlade djevojke, koje još nijesu udate, ostavite za sebe na životu." Drugim riječima, ubijete muškarce, ubijte djecu, a ako vidite djevice možete ih ostaviti na životu kako bi ih mogli silovati. Možete pronaći četiri ili pet ovakvih odlomaka u Bibliji. Također, u Bibliji je smrtna kazna prihvatljiva za zločine poput homoseksualnosti, preljuba, bogohulstva, idolatrije, drskog odgovaranja roditeljima -
(Laughter)
(smijeh) - i skupljanje granja na šabat
and picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Well, let's click the zoom lens down one order of magnitude and look at the century scale. Now, although we don't have statistics for warfare throughout the Middle Ages to modern times, we know just from conventional history that the evidence was under our nose all along that there has been a reduction in socially sanctioned forms of violence.
Približimo se sada za jedan red veličine i pogledajmo razinu stoljeća. Iako nemamo statistike ratovanja za razdoblje od srednjeg vijeka do suvremenog doba, znamo iz konvencionalne povijesti - cijelo vrijeme su nam pod nosom bili dokazi da se smanjivala razina društveno prihvatljivog nasilja.
For example, any social history will reveal that mutilation and torture were routine forms of criminal punishment. The kind of infraction today that would give you a fine, in those days, would result in your tongue being cut out, your ears being cut off, you being blinded, a hand being chopped off and so on. There were numerous ingenious forms of sadistic capital punishment: burning at the stake, disemboweling, breaking on the wheel, being pulled apart by horses and so on. The death penalty was a sanction for a long list of nonviolent crimes: criticizing the king, stealing a loaf of bread. Slavery, of course, was the preferred labor-saving device, and cruelty was a popular form of entertainment. Perhaps the most vivid example was the practice of cat burning, in which a cat was hoisted on a stage and lowered in a sling into a fire, and the spectators shrieked in laughter as the cat, howling in pain, was burned to death.
Na primjer, društvena povijest nam kazuje kako su sakaćenje i mučenje bili rutinski oblici kažnjavanja kriminalaca. Prekršaj zbog kojega bi danas dobili novčanu kaznu, u to doba bio bi kažnjen odsjecanjem jezika, ušiju ili osljepljivanjem, odsijecanjem ruke i slično. Postojali su brojni domišljati oblici sadističkih smrtnih kazni: paljenje na lomači, vađenje utrobe, lomljenje na kotaču, četvorenje i tako dalje. Smrt je bila kazna za čitav niz nenasilnih zločina: kritiziranje kralja, krađu kruha. Ropstvo je, naravno, bilo omiljen način uštede na radnoj snazi, a okrutnost je bila popularan oblik zabave. Možda je najzorniji primjer praksa paljenja mačaka, kada bi mačku objesili na pozornici i spustili u vatru, a publika bi vrištala od smijeha dok bi mačka, zavijajući od boli, bila spaljena na smrt.
What about one-on-one murder? Well, there, there are good statistics, because many municipalities recorded the cause of death. The criminologist Manuel Eisner scoured all of the historical records across Europe for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county that he could find, and then he supplemented them with national data when nations started keeping statistics. He plotted on a logarithmic scale, going from 100 deaths per 100,000 people per year, which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages, and the figure plummets down to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year in seven or eight European countries. Then, there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. The people who said that rock and roll would lead to the decline of moral values actually had a grain of truth to that. But there was a decline from at least two orders of magnitude in homicide from the Middle Ages to the present, and the elbow occurred in the early 16th century.
Što je s pojedinačnim ubojstvima? Za to postoje dobre statistike jer su mnoge općine bilježili uzroke smrti. Kriminolog Manuel Eisner pretražio je sve povijesne zapise diljem Europe, tražeći stope ubojstva u svim selima, zaseocima, gradovima i okruzima koje je mogao naći i nadopunio ih je podacima na nacionalnoj razini od vremena kad su se počele voditi. Unio ih je na logaritamsku skalu, počevši sa 100 smrti na 100.000 ljudi na godinu, što je otprilike stopa ubojstava u srednjem vijeku. Vrijednost se obrušila na manje od jednog ubojstva na 100.000 ljudi godišnje u sedam ili osam europskih zemalja. Postoji manji porast tijekom 1960-ih. Tvrdnje kako će rock dovesti do pada moralnih vrijednosti zapravo su imale zrno istine u sebi. No, došlo je do pada stope ubojstava od barem dva reda veličine od srednjeg vijeka do sadašnjosti, a do prijeloma je došlo početkom 16. stoljeća.
Let's click down now to the decade scale. According to nongovernmental organizations that keep such statistics, since 1945, in Europe and the Americas, there has been a steep decline in interstate wars, in deadly ethnic riots or pogroms and in military coups, even in South America. Worldwide, there's been a steep decline in deaths in interstate wars. The yellow bars here show the number of deaths per war per year from 1950 to the present. And, as you can see, the death rate goes down from 65,000 deaths per conflict per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 deaths per conflict per year in this decade, as horrific as it is. Even in the year scale, one can see a decline of violence. Since the end of the Cold War, there have been fewer civil wars, fewer genocides -- indeed, a 90 percent reduction since post-World War II highs -- and even a reversal of the 1960s uptick in homicide and violent crime. This is from the FBI uniform crime statistics. You can see that there's a fairly low rate of violence in the '50s and the '60s, then it soared upward for several decades and began a precipitous decline, starting in the 1990s, so that it went back to the level that was last enjoyed in 1960. President Clinton, if you're here: thank you.
Spustimo se na razinu desetljeća. Prema nevladinim organizacijama koje su vodile takve statistike, od 1945. u Europi i Amerikama došlo je do naglog smanjenja broja međudržavnih ratova, smrtonosnih etničkih nereda ili pogroma i vojnih udara, čak i u Južnoj Americi. U cijelom svijetu, naglo je smanjen broj smrti u međudržavnim ratovima. Žuti stupci pokazuju broj smrti po ratu po godini od 1950. do danas. Kao što možete vidjeti, stopa smrtnosti pala je sa 65.000 smrti po sukobu po godini 1950. na manje od 2.000 smrti po sukobu po godini u ovome desetljeću, iako je i to tragično. Čak je i na razini godina primjetan pad razine nasilja. Od kraja Hladnoga rata manje je građanskih ratova, manje genocida - pad od 90% od vrhunca u godinama nakon Drugoga svjetskog rata, a čak je i preokrenut porast stope ubojstava i nasilnih zločina iz 1960-ih. Ovo je prema unificiranim statistikama kriminala FBI-a: kao što vidite razina nasilja prilično je niska 50-ih i 60-ih, zatim je porasla kroz nekoliko desetljeća i počela strmo padati, počevši od '90-ih te se vratila gotovo na razinu iz 1960. Predsjedniče Clinton, ako ste ovdje, hvala vam.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So the question is: Why are so many people so wrong about something so important? I think there are a number of reasons. One of them is we have better reporting. The Associated Press is a better chronicler of wars over the surface of the earth than 16th-century monks were.
Dakle pitanje je: zašto je toliko ljudi u krivu u nečemu tako važnome? Smatram kako postoji niz razloga. Jedan je taj što imamo bolja izviješća: "Associated Press bolji je kroničar ratova na Zemlji no što su to bili redovnici iz 16. stoljeća."
(Laughter)
There's a cognitive illusion. We cognitive psychologists know that the easier it is to recall specific instances of something, the higher the probability that you assign to it. Things that we read about in the paper with gory footage burn into memory more than reports of a lot more people dying in their beds of old age. There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets; no one ever attracted advocates and donors by saying, "Things just seem to be getting better and better."
Postoji spoznajna iluzija: mi kognitivni psiholozi znamo da što se je lakše prisjetiti konkretnih primjera nečega, tome pripisujemo veću vjerojatnost. Svari koje pročitamo u novinama sa krvavim snimkama zapeku nam se u sjećanje snažnije nego izvješća o smrti daleko većeg broja ljudi od starosti. Tržišta zagovaranja su dinamična: nitko ne privlači promatrače, zagovornike i donatore govoreći "čini se da se situacija stalno poboljšava."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life, and an unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture. And, of course, our change in standards can outpace the change in behavior. One of the reasons violence went down is that people got sick of the carnage and cruelty in their time. That's a process that seems to be continuing, but if it outstrips behavior by the standards of the day, things always look more barbaric than they would have been by historic standards. So today, we get exercised -- and rightly so -- if a handful of murderers get executed by lethal injection in Texas after a 15-year appeal process. We don't consider that a couple of hundred years ago, they may have been burned at the stake for criticizing the king after a trial that lasted 10 minutes, and indeed, that that would have been repeated over and over again. Today, we look at capital punishment as evidence of how low our behavior can sink, rather than how high our standards have risen.
Prisutan je osjećaj krivnje u modernom intelektualnom životu zbog našeg tretmana domorodaca i nespremnosti na priznanje kako bi moglo biti nečega dobrog u zapadnjačkoj kulturi. I naravno, promjene naših standarda mogu preteči promjene u ponašanju. Jedan od razloga zašto se razina nasilja smanjila je taj što je ljudima bilo dosta pokolja i okrutnosti u njihovo doba. Taj se proces, izgleda, nastavlja, ali ako pretiće ponašanje u odnosu na suvremene standarde, stvari uvijek izgledaju barbarskije nego što bi bile po povijesnim mjerilima. Stoga se danas uznemirujemo - i to s pravom - ako se nekoliko ubojica pogubi smrtonosnom injekcijom u Teksasu nakon 15-ogodišnjeg žalbenog postupka. Ne uzimamo u obzir činjenicu da bi prije nekoliko stoljeća možda bili spaljeni na lomači zbog kritiziranja kralja nakon suđenja koje bi trajalo 10 minuta - i da bi se to uvijek iznova ponavljalo. Danas smrtnu kaznu smatramo dokazom niske razine na koju se naše ponašanje može spustiti, umjesto dokaza kako su se naši standardi povisili.
Well, why has violence declined? No one really knows, but I have read four explanations, all of which, I think, have some grain of plausibility. The first is: maybe Thomas Hobbes got it right. He was the one who said that life in a state of nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Dakle, zašto se razina nasilja smanjila? Nitko zapravo ne zna, ali pročitao sam četiri objašnjenja, i mislim da je svako od njih donekle uvjerljivo. Prvo od njih je: možda je Thomas Hobbes bio u pravu. On je rekao da je život u prirodnom stanju bio "usamljenički, siromašan, gadan, nasilan i kratak." Ne zato, tvrdio je, što su
(Laughter)
Not because, he argued, humans have some primordial thirst for blood or aggressive instinct or territorial imperative, but because of the logic of anarchy. In a state of anarchy, there's a constant temptation to invade your neighbors preemptively, before they invade you.
ljudi po prirodi krvožedni, ili zbog agresivnog instinkta ili teritorijalnih pitanja, nego zbog logike anarhije. U stanju anarhije postoji stalno iskušenje preventivnog napada na susjeda, prije no što on napadne tebe. Kasnije je Thomas Schelling
More recently, Thomas Schelling gives the analogy of a homeowner who hears a rustling in the basement. Being a good American, he has a pistol in the nightstand, pulls out his gun, walks down the stairs. And what does he see but a burglar with a gun in his hand? Now, each one of them is thinking, "I don't really want to kill that guy, but he's about to kill me. Maybe I had better shoot him before he shoots me, especially since, even if he doesn't want to kill me, he's probably worrying right now that I might kill him before he kills me." And so on. Hunter-gatherer peoples explicitly go through this train of thought and will often raid their neighbors out of fear of being raided first.
iznio analogiju s kućevlasnikom koji čuje buku u podrumu. Kao dobar Amerikanac, ima pištolj uz krevet, uzima ga i spušta se niz stube. Tamo vidi provalnika koji također drži pištolj. I jedan i drugi misle, "Zapravo ne želim ubiti tog tipa, no on se sprema ubiti mene. Možda je bolje da ga upucam prije nego on mene, pogotovo zato što, čak i ako me ne namjerava ubiti, vjerojatno također brine da bi ja mogao ubiti njega prije nego što on ubije mene." - i tako dalje. Lovačko-skupljačka plemena eksplicitno prolaze kroz takav tok misli i često će napasti susjede iz straha da ne bi sami bili napadnuti.
Now, one way of dealing with this problem is by deterrence. You don't strike first, but you have a publicly announced policy that you will retaliate savagely if you are invaded. The only thing is that it's liable to having its bluff called, and therefore can only work if it's credible. To make it credible, you must avenge all insults and settle all scores, which leads to the cycles of bloody vendetta. Life becomes an episode of "The Sopranos." Hobbes's solution, "Leviathan," was that if authority for the legitimate use of violence was vested in a single democratic agency -- a leviathan -- then such a state can reduce the temptation of attack, because any kind of aggression will be punished, leaving its profitability zero. That would remove the temptation to invade preemptively out of fear of them attacking you first. It removes the need for a hair trigger for retaliation to make your deterrent threat credible, and therefore, it would lead to a state of peace. Eisner -- the man who plotted the homicide rates that you failed to see in the earlier slide -- argued that the timing of the decline of homicide in Europe coincided with the rise of centralized states. So that's a bit of a support for the leviathan theory. Also supporting it is the fact that we today see eruptions of violence in zones of anarchy, in failed states, collapsed empires, frontier regions, mafias, street gangs and so on.
Jedan od načina rješavanja ovog problema je odvraćanje: ne napadate prvi, ali javno obznanite politiku kako ćete se divljački osvetiti ako netko napadne vas. Jedini problem s takvom politikom je njena ranjivost na prozivanje blefa, i može funkcionirati jedino ako je uvjerljiva. Da bi bila uvjerljiva morate osvetiti sve uvrede i podmiriti sve račune, što dovodi do ciklusa krvnih osveta. Život postaje epizoda Sopranosa. Hobbesovo riješenje, "Levijatan," počiva na povjeravanju ovlasti za legitimnu uporabu sile jednom demokratskom organu - levijatanu - tada takvo stanje umanjuje iskušenje za napad, jer bi svaka agresija bila kažnjena, što bi poništilo njenu isplativost. To bi uklonilo i iskušenje preventivnog napada zbog straha da ćete biti napadnuti. Također, uklanja potrebu za brzim osvetama kojima se prijetnja odmazde čini uvjerljivom. Stoga bi to dovelo do stanja mira. Eisner - čovjek koji je zabilježio stope ubojstava koje niste mogli vidjeti na ranijoj slici - tvrdio je kako je pad stope ubojstava u Europi istovremen sa usponom centralizirane države. To donekle podržava teoriju levijatana. Također, podržava je i činjenica što danas svjedočimo erupciji nasilja u anarhičnim zonama: neuspjelim državama, palim carstvima, graničnim regijama, mafijama, uličnim bandama itd.
The second explanation is that in many times and places, there is a widespread sentiment that life is cheap. In earlier times, when suffering and early death were common in one's own life, one has fewer compunctions about inflicting them on others. And as technology and economic efficiency make life longer and more pleasant, one puts a higher value on life in general. This was an argument from the political scientist James Payne.
Drugo objašnjenje je da u mnogim dobima i mjestima postoji rašireni osjećaj da je život jeftin. U prijašnjim vremenima, kada je patnja i preuranjena smrt bila uobičajna u životu pojedinca, bilo je manje grižnje savjesti oko nanošenja istih drugima. Kako tehnologija i gospodarska učinkovitost čine život dužim i ugodnijim, pojedinac više vrednuje život. To je bio argument politologa Jamesa Paynea.
A third explanation invokes the concept of a nonzero-sum game, and was worked out in the book "Nonzero" by the journalist Robert Wright. Wright points out that, in certain circumstances, cooperation or nonviolence can benefit both parties in an interaction, such as gains in trade when two parties trade their surpluses and both come out ahead, or when two parties lay down their arms and split the so-called peace dividend that results in them not having to fight the whole time. Wright argues that technology has increased the number of positive-sum games that humans tend to be embroiled in, by allowing the trade of goods, services and ideas over longer distances and among larger groups of people. The result is that other people become more valuable alive than dead, and violence declines for selfish reasons. As Wright put it, "Among the many reasons that I think that we should not bomb the Japanese is that they built my minivan."
Treće objašnjenje poziva se na koncept "igre nenultog zbroja," i razrađeno je u knjizi "Nonzero" novinara Roberta Wrighta. Wright ističe da u određenim okolnostima suradnja, uključujući nenasilje, može koristiti objema stranama u interakciji, npr. u trgovini kada dvije strane razmjenjuju svoje viškove obje zarađuju, ili kada dvije strane polože oružje i podijele tzv. dividendu mira, rezultat toga što se ne moraju stalno boriti. Wright tvrdi da je tehnologija povećala broj igara pozitivnog zbroja u koje se ljudi uključuju omogućavajući trgovinu dobrima, uslugama i idejama preko većih udaljenosti i između većih grupa ljudi. Kao rezultat toga, drugi ljudi postaju vredniji živi nego mrtvi, a razina nasilja opada zbog sebičnih razloga. Kako se Wright izrazio, "Među brojnim razlozima zašto smatram da ne bi trebali bombardirati Japance je i taj što su napravili moj karavan."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
The fourth explanation is captured in the title of a book called "The Expanding Circle," by the philosopher Peter Singer, who argues that evolution bequeathed humans with a sense of empathy, an ability to treat other people's interests as comparable to one's own. Unfortunately, by default, we apply it only to a very narrow circle of friends and family. People outside that circle are treated as subhuman and can be exploited with impunity. But, over history, the circle has expanded. One can see, in historical record, it expanding from the village, to the clan, to the tribe, to the nation, to other races, to both sexes and, in Singer's own arguments, something that we should extend to other sentient species. So the question is: If this has happened, what has powered that expansion?
Četvrto objašnjenje izraženo je u naslovu knjige "Šireći krugovi" filozofa Petera Singera, koji tvrdi da je evolucija podala ljudima osjećaj empatije: sposobnost odnošenja prema tuđim interesima usporedivo kao s vlastitima. Nažalost, obično ga primjenjujemo samo na vrlo uski krug prijatelja i obitelji. Ljude izvan tog kruga tretiramo kao podljude, koji se mogu iskorištavati bez posljedica. Ali tijekom povijesti, krug se širio. U povijesnim zapisima je vidljivo njegovo širenje od sela na klan, pa na pleme, na naciju, na druge rase, na oba spola, a prema Singeru trebali bi ga proširiti i na druge svjesne vrste. Pitanje je, ako je do toga došlo, što je potaklo to širenje?
And there are a number of possibilities, such as increasing circles of reciprocity in the sense that Robert Wright argues for. The logic of the Golden Rule -- the more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you. You can't say that my interests are special compared to yours any more than you can say the particular spot that I'm standing on is a unique part of the universe because I happen to be standing on it that very minute. It may also be powered by cosmopolitanism, by histories and journalism and memoirs and realistic fiction and travel and literacy, which allows you to project yourself into the lives of other people that formerly you may have treated as subhuman, and also to realize the accidental contingency of your own station in life, the sense that "There but for fortune go I."
Postoji niz mogućnosti. Proširenje krugova reciprociteta u smislu koji zagovara Robert Wright. Logika zlatnog pravila: što više razmišljate o drugim ljudima i dolazite u susret s njima, to više shvaćate da je neodrživo davati prednost vlastitim interesima nad njihovima, barem ako želite da vas slušaju. Ne možete reći kako su moji interesi posebni u usporedbi s tvojim kao što ne možete reći ni da je određeno mjesto na kojem stojite jedinstveno u svemiru jer se slučajno nalazite na njemu u tom trenutku. Širenje je mogao potaći i kozmopolitizam: putem historiografija, novinarstva, memoara, realističke beletristike, putovanja i literaturu, koji su vam omogućili da projicirate sebe na živote drugih koje ste možda prije smatrali podljudima, te da shvatite slučajnost svoje životne situacije, osjećaj "da nisam bio ovakve sreće, to sam mogao biti ja."
Whatever its causes, the decline of violence, I think, has profound implications. It should force us to ask not just, "Why is there war?" but also, "Why is there peace?" Not just, "What are we doing wrong?" but also, "What have we been doing right?" Because we have been doing something right, and it sure would be good to find out what it is. Thank you very much.
Koji god bili uzroci, pad razine nasilja ima značajne posljedice. Trebali bi se zapitati ne samo "Zašto postoji rat?" nego i "Zašto postoji mir?" Ne samo "Što činimo krivo?" nego i "Što smo činili ispravno?" Jer nešto jesmo činili ispravno, i svakako bi bilo dobro znati što. Puno vam hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
Chris Anderson: I loved that talk. I think a lot of people here in the room would say that that expansion you were talking about, that Peter Singer talks about, is also driven just by technology, by greater visibility of the other and the sense that the world is therefore getting smaller. I mean, is that also a grain of truth?
Chris Anderson: Uživao sam u izlaganju. Smatram da bi mnogi ovdje rekli da je proširenje o kojemu ste govorili, o kojemu govori i Singer, također poticano samom tehnologijom, većom vidljivosti drugih i osjećajem da svijet postaje manji. Mislim, ima li nešto i u tome?
Steven Pinker: Very much. It would fit both in Wright's theory, that it allows us to enjoy the benefits of cooperation over larger and larger circles. But also, I think it helps us imagine what it's like to be someone else. I think when you read of these horrific tortures that were common in the Middle Ages, you think, "How could they possibly have done it, how could they not have empathized with the person that they're disemboweling?" But clearly, as far as they're concerned, this is just an alien being that does not have feelings akin to their own. Anything, I think, that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else means that it increases your moral consideration to that other person.
Steven Pinker: Svakako. To bi se uklopilo u Wrightovu teoriju, jer nam omogućuje uživati dobrobiti surađivanja u sve većim i većim krugovima. Ali mislim i da nam pomaže zamisliti kako je biti netko drugi. Mislim da kada čitate o stravičnim mučenjima koja su bila uobičajena u srednjem vijeku mislite, kako li su to uopće mogli činiti, kako nisu osjećali empatiju prema osobi kojoj su vadili utrobu? Ali očito, što se njih ticalo, to je tek jedno strano biće koje nema osjećaje poput njihovih. Smatram da sve što olakšava zamisliti zamjenu mjesta s nekim drugim istovremeno povećava obzirnost prema toj drugoj osobi. CA: Pa Steve, volio bih da svi vlasnici medija čuju ovo izlaganje
CA: I'd love every news media owner to hear that talk at some point, it's so important.
tijekom sljedeće godine. Mislim da je stvarno bitno. Puno vam hvala.
CA: Thank you. SP: My pleasure.
SP: Bilo mi je zadovoljstvo.