Erin Sullivan Blog 2

    Nikitia Lalwani and San Winter-Levy's article, Is the World Getting Safer, which was published for the website, Foreign Policy, critiques the opinion of Steven Pinker that our world is becoming safer due to humans becoming less violent.  The book which Lalwani and Winter-Levy are analyzing is "The Better Angels of Our Nature, a bestseller with a bold thesis: Almost every form of violence, including war, was on the decline."  In this book, Pinker theorizes that due to the rise in popularity and the normalization of enlightenment values, the world is more peaceful than ever before.  Lalwani and Winter-Levy do not agree with this idea, countering that some of our largest conflicts have occurred within the last century.  They also add that "the Cold War was the most conflict-ridden period since the Napoleonic Wars; the end of the Cold War was the first time the rate of conflict initiation fell in nearly 200 years."  They do include that peaceful periods have occurred in the times in which enlightenment values have been more mainstream, however, they follow this with the point that these periods have ended and that the end of any peaceful period is inevitable.

    What I found most interesting about this article is Pinker's association between the abolition of slavery and increased peace and safety.  In my opinion, I feel that slavery still exists, just not in the same form.  A significant number of people worldwide are still exploited for their labor today and many would consider the low wage, exploitive work in sweatshops in parts of Asia, Central America, and South America to be a form of modern slavery.  There also was no mention of inequalities of race, gender, and religion around the world and how the cultural differences of states can cause conflicts.  How can peace exist when our differences still create divides?  I also was curious to know what Pinker’s opinion on the possibilities modern technologies bring to conflicts today and how these technologies can impact peace.  Even if humans are more peaceful today, there are now technologies which allow individual humans to create mass violence and harm; today, one human has the ability to create the same amount of harm as an entire army in centuries past.  This article made me reflect on my first analytical essay where I discussed the meaning of security and how it has changed over time.  In my analysis, I discussed how developments in warfare, such as the nuclear bomb, threaten our safety, as well as the dangers which the possibilities of biological warfare bring.  Even if Pinker is right in that enlightenment values have created the most peaceful society to date, the outliers have the potential to create as much violence and disruption as an entire world in times where enlightenment values did not exist.


Comments

  1. Annabelle VeithOctober 16, 2021 at 5:28 PM

    I agree with your statement of slavery still persisting today just in different forms. I think this is a very important thing to realise as we all play into it with mindless activities such as shopping and eating. An issue with the definition of peace is that it glosses over different groups of people. Peace is gendered, raced, classist, etc. How do you think we should approach and define this idea of peace? Or do you think we should another/new term?

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