I’ve just finished reading Douglas P Fry’s “The Human Potential for Peace”, which I reviewed the first few chapters of back in March. I think my previous review was unnecessarily critical, and it was a little unfair to compare it to Stephen Pinker’s “The Better Angels of our Nature”. The books really deal with different (though similar) topics and address them in different ways.
As I mentioned earlier, ‘Peace’ addresses war specifically, rather than trying to cover all forms of interpersonal violence. When other violence is mentioned it is dismissed in a way which can at times be infuriating… surely endemic rape deserves more than a passing mention! (chapter 3) But focusing one specific form of violence makes it easier for this book to look at root causes and possible solutions.
The main argument is in two parts: First, that peaceful societies exist, and second, that war was invented when nomadic hunter-gatherers began settling. Both are demonstrated thoroughly and convincingly… to the extent that it seems like attacking a straw man until you realize that there really are people who believe the opposite.
Fry doesn’t claim that all hunter-gatherers are peaceful. He does claim that peace is more common than not, and presents some statistics supporting that, but his argument doesn’t require peace to be the norm. The existence of any peaceful societies, however rare, provides an opportunity to study them and learn how they manage it.
The claim that warfare is new to the human species is also convincing, though as I mentioned in the first review it depends on the somewhat arbitrary distinction between war and other violence. The causes are addressed only briefly, but the uselessness of war to hunter-gatherers is a key part of it. It does no good to raid your neighbour’s food stores if all they have is that evening’s dinner, and you can’t very well keep slaves if nothing prevents them from simply walking away… or from simply sitting still when you have to walk away you find your own next meal.
Little of the evidence presented in this book addresses overall rates of violence. One of the very peaceful societies discussed had only two murders in living memory… still a terribly high murder rate in a band of only 50-100 people. But all the peaceful societies had clever ways to prevent that violence and the reactionary violence from spreading beyond the victims and their immediate kin.
In the modern world, where nations start wars that kill millions to avenge single deaths, that is a lesson we desperately need to learn.
Chapters Link
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