Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature, delivers a lecture entitled Thinking About Our Society: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker (Psychology – Harvard University) explores the essence of human nature and what lies behind the statistically unmistakable reduction in violence over the past few centuries.

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species’s existence.

For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, pogroms, gruesome punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life.

But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?