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• Patrick Meier – March 22 2007

  Greetings,
  
  
  
  I'm a big fan of Pinker's work on language and found his piece on the "History of Violence" published in The New Republic particularly interesting.
  
  
  
  In The Third Side, William Ury also investigates pre-historical evidence of mass violence. He finds that australopithecines and two species of early humans — Homo erectus and Homo habilis — are known to have shared the same habitats in Africa from two and a half million years ago to a million and a half years ago, yet the fossil record reveals no evidence of violence having occurred between them. Drawing on the work of the world-renowned anthropologist Louis Leaky, Ury learns that, “in the old hunting days we were too busy making a living […] And you didn’t really have that much energy left at night for going out and quarreling with a neighbor. Maybe in a cave, with your close neighbor. But going fifteen miles away to get into battle –nonsense. You might lose someone you needed for getting then next day’s hunt.”
  
  
  
  Direct violence is on the decline, but how about structural violence and systemic risk or simply vulnerability and human security? Which is worse, direct or structural violence? In the Western/Christian tradition, conflict resolution is about alleviating immediate pain. In the Arab/Muslim tradition, the focus is on justice. In “Les Damnés de la Terre,” Frantz Fanon argued that the major weapon of the colonizers was the imposition of their image of the colonized on the subjugated people.
  
  
  
  I would suggest that the powerlessness of a citizen who has been rendered a dysfunctional spectator by the repressive polices crafted by an elite is not qualitatively different from vulnerability to physical violence during conflict. Peter Uvin’s recent field research in Burundi suggests that local communities tend to view peace in structural terms. “When the stomach is not full, there can be no peace” was a common refrain he heard. Poverty is increasing, not even stabilizing in the developing world. In other words, structural violence is on the rise.
  
  
  
  Also, the recent literature on Fourth Generation Warfare suggests that this type of warfare poses a greater threat to peace and security than previous forms of warfare. In any case, the reduction in direct violence may perhaps reflect an ‘evolution’ in warfare, ie, a change in tactics to pursue strategies more “efficiently.” One no longer has to eliminate large numbers of people to influence foreign policy. My suggestion is that part of the decline in war casualties is due to a shift in warfare tactics that reflect not higher morals but a question of more efficient tactics to meet one’s goal, eg, global insurgency, etc.
  
  
  
  Finally, the fact that the nuclear weapons used against Japan killed some 100,000 individuals in a matter of minutes makes me think we are no less peaceful in a qualitative sense. The temporal component, the fact that it may no longer take 30 years of war to kill 100,000’s of people but now just a matter of minutes is for me a higher scale and more indiscriminate form of violence. I don’t see our era as any less barbaric.

• Bruno Giussani – March 8 2007

  Good catch Paul: but Murray knows. My mistake. High-speed note-taking and post-writing. Corrected

• Paul Bailey – March 8 2007

  > Nobel prize of physics Murray Gell-Mann:
  
  > "In fundamental physics, beauty is a very successful criteria
  
  > for choosing the right theory".
  
  
  
  Murray Gell-Mann doesn't know that 'criteria' is plural? There's hope for us all.