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Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

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Part of the bargain of being alive is that one takes a chance at dying a premature or painful death, be it from violence, accident, or disease.

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Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

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Technology, ideology, and social and cultural changes periodically throw out new forms of violence for humanity to contend with.

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We really are creatures of a violent world, biologically speaking - watching violence and learning about it is one of our cognitive drives.

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The decline of violence isn't a steady inclined plane from an original state of maximal and universal bloodshed. Technology, ideology, and social and ...more

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Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts and it misstates the the...more

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The main reason that violence correlates with low socioeconomic status today is that the elites and the middle class pursue justice with the legal sys...more

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So holding many factors constant, we find that living in a civilization reduces one’s chances of being a victim of violence fivefold.

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One of the tragic ironies of the second half of the 20th century is that when colonies in the developing world freed themselves from European rule, th...more

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The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used ...more

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The collapse of communism and a recognition of its economic and humanitarian catastrophes took the romance out of revolutionary violence and cast doub...more

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As an Auyana man living in New Guinea under the Pax Australiana put it, “Life was better since the government came” because “a man could now eat witho...more

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Some biblical scholars believe that the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture...more

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Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chro...more