Steven Pinker : « When the rate of violence decreases, that will be invisible to journalism »

He says it, he repeats it, and he quantifies it. For almost fifteen years, the Canadian Steven Pinker, renowned professor of psychology at Harvard University, has been showing how violence around the world is constantly setting new records… on the decline. Armed with a wealth of data, an understanding of long time scales, and a detailed knowledge of the human mind in all its evolutionary wrinkles, Pinker sheds light on the gap between perception and reality. And he makes us understand how the idea of « decivilization » is a symptom of its opposite : a threshold of tolerance for brutality that is steadily lowered as violence, the real thing, is removed from our daily lives thanks to the progress sought and brought by the Enlightenment.

Le Point : In France, following three high-profile events : the death of three police officers killed by a hit-and-run driver, the death of a nurse stabbed by a schizophrenic, and the beating of his great-nephew during a demonstration against pension reform, the President Macron recently spoke of a process of « decivilization » gripping our country What does this word evoke in you ? Do you think it's relevant to describe a real or perceived increase in crime ?

Steven Pinker : It's a fallacy to invoke a trend based on a few shocking examples that were recently in the news. Even completely random events can come in clusters – especially random events, because only a non-random process would space them out ! And the human mind is [...] Lire la suite