Steven Pinker is a smart guy.

Pinker’s book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature showed how smart people—specifically scientists, anthropologists and academics—have often been guilty of bias on the topic of human nature. Many smart people have knowingly or unknowingly used their academic clout and expertise to forward a view of humanity that was harmonious with their own left-leaning ideologies. In the process, they created a series of pleasant fictions for their friends and allies to point to as they taught people lies about themselves.

In The Blank Slate, Pinker effectively “pantsed” the left.

He did this in the name of SCIENCE, naturally.

Last night I showed up at The Bagdad to hear Steven Pinker talk about his new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Pinker stuck to his guns on human nature. Hobbes was right; Rousseau was wrong. He showed evidence that humans have always been violent, and that early humans were actually far more likely to die violent deaths than modern humans. A picture of a mummy with a rope around its neck got lots of laughs. And I think I can say the Pinker lecture was the first time I’ve been in a room with  a thousand liberals who thought genocide was laugh out loud funny. Pinker asserted that throughout human history, genocide has been a norm. He joked that most humans have believed that “genocide is an excellent thing if it doesn’t happen to you.”

Being of ze Tribe, it must have taken some great big matzo balls for Pinker to imply to ze Jews that their Twentieth Century rough spot was neither the most important nor the most impressive example of attempted genocide in human history. He talked around it a little, but he made the point.

Pinker’s  new book is about the decline of human violence, and while he attempts to be controversial by pooh-poohing modern media hysteria about violence, his presentation was essentially an apologia for modernity. Pinker says we have become less violent not due to changes in human nature, but due to a “civilizing process.” We are not becoming less violent simply because we are more “enlightened”—though he said that was part of it, too. He acknowledged that tribalism and violent behavior are disruptive and inconvenient for people with established financial interests. Global commerce has helped to reduce violence, because your trading partner is usually worth more to you alive than dead. Violence is high in pre-state societies, and declines as the state expands and exerts more influence to protect its interests. Progress away from violence means giving the state a monopoly on violence.

These “Occupy Wall Street” folks should think about that for a minute. We live without threat of major war from our biggest competitor because, as Pinker said, “China needs us as a consumer base and we owe them too much money.”

First World nations will happily use violence to bring upstarts into the fold (or replace them) when their collective financial interests are disrupted.  Ask Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi.

We live in a less violent world because global corporations find violence disruptive and inconvenient. They help to expand state control of violence and “educate” us in the direction of non-violence. They “spread democracy” to secure their interests, because warlords are a pain in the ass.

My problems with our less violent world shake out to questions about what is best in life. Does “better” mean safer, fatter, weaker and more dependent? Does “better” mean ever-pettier dramas and the loss of life-and-death conflict narrative? Is the loss of identity “better” simply because it makes us safer—and better consumers?

Pinker seems to suffer from the prejudices of his fellow academics who believe that the world must be made safer for those who research, write and invent, and that the little people should shut up, eat their bread, watch their circuses and learn to love their world of peace and plenty.

Pinker’s liberal biases were evident in his cheerleading for the “rights revolution.”  Listening to him, it was as though reduced hate crimes against blacks and homosexuals were the ultimate yardsticks of civilization. Rates of black on white crime were never mentioned. The idea that homosexuals are some kind of stable but vulnerable minority population that should be protected—like retards or the blind—was a starting assumption.

Toward the end of his talk, he said that acknowledging the decline of violence should cause us to reassess modernity. He seemed to say that nostalgia for traditional families, as well as patriotism and other sincere faiths, was counterproductive, and that the way forward was more state influence on our lives, more globalism, more democracy and better education.

Is Steve Pinker running for president?

Despite a wealth of great source material, by the time he stepped back from the microphone, I felt like I was listening to another Harvard monkey selling hope and change.

Pinker said that the decline in violence was not inevitable or guaranteed to last. I wondered if I was the only guy in the room who hoped he was right about that. I wondered if I was the only guy waiting for his trend line to bounce.

After the lecture, they went to questions. As I left the balcony I heard some nervous voice ask the man something about “growing tribalism.” As something of a tribalist, I might have been interested in Pinker’s response.

Too bad.

I fucking hate callers.