Pinker writes, “Believe it or not … violence has declined over long stretches of time, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era of our species' existence.” If you lived in what he described as the “pre-state” era, you had a 1-in-6 chance of dying in conflict. In the last century, for all its horrific violence, that number fell to just a 3 percent chance. And the current period is the most violence-free in history. Pinker offers six major civilizing factors, ranging from the rise of institutions and the rule of law to our current respite from global conflicts, to help explain why.
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