With the many sad events reported in the News, and coming up to the Christmas season, it's good to be reminded of the value of peace, and to take heart.
A book on my Christmas list is Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The publication was released in 2011, but is likely to have a long shelf-life. In this book Pinker traces the the history of humans and apparently brings considerable evidence to bear on his main thesis that we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. It appears that, overall, the trend for violence is down, down, down! Things are not perfect, but we are heading in the right direction.
The implication is that now, more than ever before, we should be able to cooperate and use our collective wisdom to address the challenges ahead.
Lisa Appignanesi provides a short, but good, review of the book on the link provided.
No comments:
Post a Comment