The Better Angels of Our Nature

Imagine stepping into a medieval European town square on execution day. The air fills with excited chatter as families gather with their children to watch a man being slowly torn apart on the wheel, his bones methodically shattered while he screams. Nearby, a woman accused of witchcraft burns at the stake, her agonized cries mixing with the crowd's cheers. This wasn't an aberration or the work of psychopaths—it was Tuesday afternoon entertainment, as normal as a baseball game today.

This shocking reality reveals one of history's most profound yet overlooked transformations: the dramatic decline of violence across human civilization. From the casual brutality that once defined daily life to our modern horror at such scenes, humanity has undergone a remarkable moral evolution. We've witnessed the abolition of torture as entertainment, the end of human sacrifice, the decline of slavery, and the gradual retreat of war between major powers. Yet this extraordinary progress remains largely invisible to us, hidden beneath our natural tendency to focus on contemporary troubles while forgetting the nightmares our ancestors considered normal. Understanding this hidden history of declining violence offers not just hope, but crucial insights into how societies can continue building a more peaceful world.

The earliest chapter in humanity's violent past unfolds in the archaeological record with startling clarity. When researchers examine ancient human remains, they find evidence of systematic brutality that would shock modern sensibilities. Studies of hunter-gatherer societies reveal homicide rates that dwarf anything we see today—often exceeding 500 deaths per 100,000 people annually, compared to less than 1 per 100,000 in modern Western Europe.

This violence wasn't random or pathological; it followed a brutal logic. In the absence of any higher authority, individuals and groups faced what philosophers call the Hobbesian trap. Without a sovereign power to keep them in awe, people lived in constant fear of attack, which paradoxically made them more likely to attack first. Raids for resources, women, and revenge created endless cycles of retaliation. Archaeological evidence from sites across the globe paints a consistent picture of life before the state.

The transformation began around 5,000 years ago with the emergence of the first governments and civilizations. These early states, however crude and tyrannical, introduced a revolutionary concept: the monopolization of violence by a central authority. When a Leviathan emerged with the power to punish aggressors and protect the innocent, it broke the cycle of private revenge that had trapped humanity in perpetual conflict. Archaeological evidence shows a dramatic five-fold reduction in violent death rates as societies transitioned from anarchy to state control.

This Pacification Process represents humanity's first great victory over violence. Though early states often ruled through fear and oppression, they created something unprecedented: zones of relative safety where people could pursue trade, agriculture, and the arts without constant fear of violent death. The foundation was laid for all subsequent progress in reducing violence, establishing the principle that organized authority, however imperfect, could triumph over the chaos of unrestrained human aggression.

Medieval Europe presents us with a paradox that illuminates the next great transformation in human violence. While these societies had governments and laws, they remained extraordinarily brutal by modern standards. Homicide rates in 14th-century Oxford reached 110 per 100,000 people annually—more than a hundred times higher than modern London. Public executions were elaborate festivals of cruelty, featuring torture devices with whimsical names like "Judas's Cradle" and "The Pear." Knights, celebrated in romantic literature, were essentially warlords who made their living through organized violence and extortion.

The medieval world was not just violent but openly celebrated cruelty as entertainment. Cat-burning was a popular spectacle in Paris, where crowds including royalty shrieked with laughter as animals were slowly roasted alive. Children's games involved beating cats to death, and public punishments were designed not just to deter crime but to provide visceral thrills for spectators. This wasn't the behavior of psychopaths or sadists—it was the normal recreational activity of ordinary people who had been raised in a culture that viewed suffering as amusing rather than appalling.

Beginning in the late Middle Ages, however, European societies began a remarkable transformation that sociologist Norbert Elias called the Civilizing Process. Two key developments drove this change: the consolidation of state power and the growth of commerce. As kings centralized authority and brought violent nobles under control, the warrior culture that had dominated medieval life gradually gave way to a court culture that valued self-control and refined manners. Simultaneously, the expansion of trade created positive-sum games where people became more valuable alive than dead, fostering empathy and cooperation over violence and domination.

This process manifested in countless small changes that collectively revolutionized human behavior. Table manners evolved to eliminate the menacing presence of knives at meals. Codes of conduct increasingly emphasized emotional self-control and consideration for others. Most dramatically, homicide rates plummeted across Europe, falling by factors of ten, fifty, or even a hundred between the Middle Ages and the modern era. What had once been a continent of casual brutality became the most peaceful region in human history, setting the stage for the humanitarian revolutions that would follow.

The 18th century witnessed an unprecedented assault on institutionalized cruelty that had persisted for millennia. Within a few decades, practices that had been unquestioned features of civilized life—judicial torture, public executions, slavery, and religious persecution—suddenly became objects of moral revulsion. This wasn't gradual evolution but revolutionary change, driven by new ideas about human nature, reason, and the proper organization of society.

The intellectual foundations of this Humanitarian Revolution emerged from Enlightenment thinkers who dared to question age-old assumptions about justice and governance. Cesare Beccaria's treatise "On Crimes and Punishments" demolished the rationale for torture and cruel executions, arguing that the purpose of justice should be deterrence and rehabilitation, not vengeance or entertainment. Voltaire exposed the absurdity of religious persecution, while philosophers like John Locke and Immanuel Kant developed theories of natural rights and human dignity that made slavery and despotism intellectually indefensible.

These ideas gained power through a revolutionary new technology: mass literacy and the printing press. As books became cheaper and more people learned to read, ideas could spread with unprecedented speed and reach. Novels like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Clarissa" allowed readers to experience the suffering of others through literature, expanding their circles of empathy beyond their immediate communities. The emergence of a "Republic of Letters"—an international community of writers, philosophers, and reformers—created a marketplace of ideas where bad practices could be exposed to critical scrutiny and moral condemnation.

The results were swift and dramatic. Country after country abolished judicial torture, ended public executions, and began dismantling the apparatus of religious persecution. The slave trade, defended for centuries as economically necessary and biblically sanctioned, came under sustained attack and was outlawed by major powers. Even warfare began to change, as leaders felt compelled to justify their conflicts in terms of defense rather than conquest. The Humanitarian Revolution established the principle that human suffering was not entertainment but tragedy, and that institutions should be judged by their effects on human welfare rather than their adherence to tradition or divine command.

The 20th century presents the greatest puzzle in the history of human violence: how could the most enlightened era in human history also produce the most devastating wars? The first half of the century seemed to mock every prediction of moral progress, delivering two world wars, genocides, and totalitarian regimes that killed over 100 million people. Yet the second half witnessed something equally unprecedented: the complete absence of war between major powers, a phenomenon historians call the Long Peace.

The early decades revealed how technological progress could amplify humanity's capacity for destruction without necessarily improving its moral restraints. Machine guns, poison gas, aerial bombing, and eventually nuclear weapons gave small groups of leaders the power to kill on scales previously unimaginable. Meanwhile, counter-Enlightenment ideologies—romantic nationalism, fascism, and totalitarian communism—provided justifications for unlimited violence in pursuit of utopian goals. The result was a deadly combination: medieval passions armed with modern weapons.

World War II marked both the climax and the turning point of this destructive trend. The sheer horror of the Holocaust, the atomic bombings, and the war's 55 million casualties shocked humanity into a new awareness of violence's potential consequences. The war's aftermath saw the creation of new international institutions—the United Nations, NATO, the European Union—explicitly designed to prevent future conflicts between major powers. More importantly, it witnessed the revival and expansion of Enlightenment humanist values, now backed by the sobering knowledge of what happens when they are abandoned.

The Long Peace that followed was not merely the absence of major war but the presence of new norms and institutions that made such wars increasingly unthinkable. Democratic governance spread to more countries, international trade created webs of mutual dependence, and nuclear weapons paradoxically made major war too dangerous to contemplate. By the century's end, the idea that France and Germany might fight each other, or that the United States and Russia might engage in direct military conflict, had become as obsolete as the medieval practice of trial by combat. The 20th century thus revealed both humanity's capacity for unprecedented evil and its ability to learn from catastrophe and build more peaceful institutions.

The 21st century has inherited both the promise and the challenges of humanity's long struggle against violence. While major powers have maintained their unprecedented peace, new forms of conflict have emerged to test our progress: civil wars in failed states, international terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and the persistent threat of nuclear proliferation. Yet even these challenges must be understood within the broader context of declining violence that characterizes our era.

Statistical analysis reveals that most forms of organized violence have continued their historical decline into the modern era. Civil wars, though still tragic, kill fewer people per conflict than in previous decades. Genocides, while not eliminated, occur less frequently and face more rapid international intervention. Even terrorism, despite its psychological impact, kills far fewer people annually than automobile accidents or common diseases. The institutions built in the 20th century's aftermath—international law, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian organizations—have proven remarkably effective at containing and reducing violence when given the chance to operate.

The spread of democracy, commerce, and communication continues to expand the zones of peace that began in medieval Europe. Countries with democratic governments almost never fight each other, while economic interdependence makes war increasingly costly and pointless. The revolution in information technology has created a global community where atrocities can no longer be hidden and where people can witness the suffering of others in real time, potentially expanding empathy across traditional boundaries of tribe and nation.

Perhaps most importantly, the ideas that drove the Humanitarian Revolution—human rights, individual dignity, the possibility of moral progress—have become the dominant global ideology, even if imperfectly implemented. Today's tyrants feel compelled to justify their actions in humanitarian terms, while yesterday's tyrants openly celebrated conquest and domination. This shift in moral discourse, combined with the practical constraints of modern technology and international institutions, suggests that the long-term trend toward reduced violence may continue, even as we face new challenges that test our commitment to peaceful coexistence.

The grand narrative of human violence reveals a paradoxical truth: we are living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence, yet we consistently fail to recognize this progress. From the brutal anarchy of prehistoric tribes through the casual cruelty of medieval societies to the industrialized slaughter of the early 20th century, humanity has gradually but decisively turned away from violence as a solution to its problems. This transformation occurred not through some mystical evolution of human nature, but through the development of institutions, ideas, and technologies that made peaceful cooperation more attractive than violent competition.

The key insight from this historical journey is that peace is not humanity's natural state—it is an achievement that must be constantly maintained and extended. The Leviathan's monopoly on violence, the civilizing effects of commerce and literacy, the spread of Enlightenment humanist values, and the construction of international institutions have all contributed to this progress. Yet each advance has been fragile and reversible, as the catastrophes of the 20th century demonstrated. Our task today is to strengthen these peace-building mechanisms while remaining vigilant against the forces—tribalism, authoritarianism, and ideological fanaticism—that can still unleash humanity's capacity for destruction. By understanding how far we have come, we can better appreciate what we stand to lose and what we must do to continue humanity's greatest moral achievement: the gradual conquest of violence by reason, empathy, and cooperation.