In my previous entry I cautioned that acknowledging increasingly peaceful conditions (i.e. a decline in violence) will fix our gaze too much on the Better Angels of our Nature, thereby deafening our ears to the sound and spectacle of an army goose stepping.
Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea since 1994, died of a heart attack on December 17, 2011. Video montages shown during his reign show large processions of soldiers goose stepping in front of their leader. Each clip shows images of the Supreme Leader as the focal point in a setting completely militarized. The goose stepping formations leave a trail that our better angels should fear to tread.
Pinker's studies showing the decline in violence by inference positions Kim Jong-il's as a relic, whose megalomaniacal donning of a military uniform shows dictatorship is equally a fashion faux-paus as it is bad statecraft. Plus, his reported eccentricities provide easy material to parody. But, his reign is defined by one thing that cannot be parodied: his nuclear weapon development program.
Opposition to nuclear weapons is concentrated within two distinct groups. First, the most vocal group is the U.S. government serving in its self appointed role of final arbiter determining under what conditions other nations can develop nukes. The anti-nuke movement who calls for a complete abolition and ban of all nukes is the second group. The hypocrisy of the former and the unrealistic demands of the latter are irrelevant to this discussion, but each reveals a troubling observation. It seems that most people living in countries possessing nukes see them as just one of many accoutrements of modern life.
Pinkers' thesis offers no consolation to the twin dangers comprised of of the world's most powerful state possessing nukes and its citizens who possess such indifference to them. The indifference further liberates the state to promote a discourse that sterilizes and normalizes nukes as products that can be improved with each newer version like IPads. Read this passage from a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan:
For example, American missile warheads of the 1980s are only one seventh as destructive as the warheads of the 1960s, and Soviet warheads seem to have dropped in size by about one third. The total destructive power of the U.S. arsenal has declined over the last 20 years from 12,000 megatons to well under 4,000. This trend was achieved not through arms control but through nuclear testing and through the increased use of computer technologies to refine the accuracy of weapons. As the aim improved from a radius of miles to a few hundred feet, the need for heavy explosives declined apace. The development of 'smart' warheads will improve accuracies by a still greater measure and allow still more drastic future reductions in explosive power. 1
This rhetorical flourish paradoxically praising how specific weapons serve civilized nations forms an axis of insanity around which dictators and speechwriters of freely elected heads of state coalesce. Rates of violence may decline. But, this progress occurs in permanent tenuousness, induced by the development of nuclear weapons. Orwell foreshadowed this tenuousness in 1945 when discussing the geopolitical effect of the atom bomb:
Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a 'peace that is no peace' (9-10). 2
Today we see two narratives justifying wars as a legitimate method to prevent mushroom clouds from looming. First, rogue nations possessing nuclear weapons imperil civilization. Second, an increasing economy of scale making the development of nukes much easier helps terrorists operating within rogue states to acquire them-or their cheaper equivalent. Consequently, nations possessing nukes wage preemptive wars-i.e. the U.S. war in Iraq and constant disputes with Iran and North Korea because both nations are pursuing nukes-to prevent others from acquiring such weapons. Therefore, Pinker's research may show declines in rates of violence. But, paradoxically, reduced violence occurs in a fulcrum of "peace that is no peace." That tenuous peace morphs angels of our better nature into spectators of imperialism, imbalanced between states of anxiety and somnambulism.
I guess this phenomenon of our willfully turning blind eyes to the twin dangers of neo-imperialism and neo-liberalism is because we prefer the more appealing twins of bread of circus. The circus, though, is increasingly becoming the primary diversion. This observation is nothing but polemic. But, the ideological narratives cluttering public discourse leaves only enough space for polemic. (Just look at the various analyses attempting to explain the causes of the Arab Spring, for instance.)
Evidence of the diversionary circus is shown in the ubiquity of realty shows. Additional evidence is shown by both major U.S. parties expressing no concerns within their platforms that America's self-appointed rule of determining which nations can acquire nukes can cause more instability. Yes, they both talk about the process of "arms control negotiations"; but, such discussions presuppose that the U.S. acting as gatekeepers over which nations can acquire nukes poses no danger.
In conclusion, Pinker's research shows we are becoming less violent. This decreased violence should not dull our questioning of authority. Pensioners' savings in Europe rotting away each day to prop up derivatives' regimes offer one more example of the power elite's ease with which it violates its Social Contracts, which is a term and a concept Americans rarely invoke. Bismarck, however, created the first modern safety net in Germany in 1880, which gave him political cover to wage wars. I close with a cynic's lament: more so than love, our questioning of authority better serves humanity.
1. Gilder, George. Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
2. Orwell, George. The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: IV In Frond of Your Nose 1945-1950. Eds. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus: New York: Harcourt, 1968.
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