Reasons to be Impossible

1 Comments:

 Anonymous said...

Very interesting indeed. There's another explanation for moral progress and declining levels of violence which is that they are the achievements of class and popular struggles. This is Chomsky's view, and as Pinker is an old student of Chomsky's, I wonder whether he doesn't leave it out for ideological reasons. (So many of his other points are obviously yet tacitly aimed at bolstering a liberal view against those of anarchists and socialists.)

I'd like to look into Pinker's arguments more at some point. I wonder what social anthropologists would have to say, for example? I wonder whether it is fair to compare the violence inflicted by one free people upon another, using their own bodies and courage, and to settle their own scores, with the violence inflicted by one class upon another, or one nation upon another, using advanced technology that incinerates whole cities at the push of a button.

It also doesn't seem to take into account that violence can be a morally good thing, for example, when it is used to defend the gains of popular/class struggles.

Perhaps you should look into it Bill and write it up for the Standard?!

2:51 PM  

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