Our Better Angels

Last week I listened to Doris Kearns Goodwin speak about the results of the election and she quoted Lincoln with the hope that “our better angels” would lead the American people into a better mindset than the one they are currently exposed to. The quote inspired me to search further into it and I came upon an article respecting Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Had Declined” which was published in 2011. Somehow I think since its publication things have changed, but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

I have not read the book but I read quite a summary of the book on Wikipedia and I found some elements of the book intriguing and worth mentioning today.

Pinker examines four motives that "can orient humans away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism." He identifies:

1. Empathy: which "prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own."

2. Self-Control: which "allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses and to inhibit them accordingly."

3. The Moral Sense: which "sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture." These sometimes decrease violence but can also increase it "when the norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical."

4. Reason: which "allows us to extract ourselves from our parochial vantage points."

In today’s divisive world these 4 elements seem to be lost on many people as they simply try to enforce their beliefs on others and refuse to listen to an opinion that differs from theirs. First of all one ought to at least give the other person a chance to say their piece and when the listener then says “well, that is interesting but I don’t believe it” then the first person ought to let the issue rest there and move on to asking about the weather (a sage piece of advice from Sense and Sensibility). There is no use in arguing with someone about your beliefs with they have already made up their mind. It behooves a civilized person to accept them for who they are and socialize on indifferent matters.

I write this in the context of political matters and not on values or principles which I believe can still be discussed without anyone getting hysterical. At least so far that has been my experience.

In the past one could speak on politics without anyone’s panties getting in a twist but today, thanks to the man who shall not be named, only insanity can reign if one is not on the same side of the discussion. It is rather alarming to think that one idiot on the planet can make people doubt “mainstream media” simply because he cannot abide anyone crossing him!