Self Control

[author1356]

Pinker delivers his message in a splendidly rigorously analytic stream, most wonderfully written. The central point of his book is that we have a decline in violence not because we have suddenly shed all of our eons old evolutionary baggage. It is fairly clear that those who trusted others, had too much empathy, were overly forgiving or too generous did not pass on their genes any more than did those who did not like sex. It was the harnessing of self control, as we got smarter, that has dampened our more violent tendencies. The best routes to increased individual and collective growth in prosperity are, it was recently discovered, tit-for-tat strategies (as game theorists like to call them). To the extent that this entails suppressing the instinct to strike the first blow and taking the way of cooperation, it requires self control. So, it it is best not to imagine that we are not still genetically designed for the good life in circa 40,000 BCE.