Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war: A new orthodoxy, led by Pinker, holds that war and violence in the developed world are declining. The stats are misleading and the idea of moral progress is wishful thinking and plain wrong.

But it would indicate that war and violence in the developed world is declining, and at least that is objective and provable rather than a counter-argument which is vague and anecdotal.

But you're missing the big point, the reason for the decline is improved forms social control and social engineering. The violence of the system is still there. People merely mask the violence with language and euphamism and internalization of exploitation. This is done via media, schools and universities (the modern form of the corporate church).

America in the Technetronic Age 1968](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://64.62.200.70/PERIODICAL/PDF/Encounter-1968jan/18-29/&chrome=true)

Page 21 "At the same time, the capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. As I have already noted, it will soon be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date, complete files, containing even most personal information about the health or personal behaviour of the citizen, in addition to more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."

Look at the following graphs:

IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And then...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Free trade?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju06F3Os64

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."

Important history:

http://williamblum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4#t=2551

/r/philosophy Thread Parent Link - theguardian.com