Atheistically Speaking Book Club discussion

This is the discussion thread for the fifth part of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Chapter 6: The New Peace

In this chapter Pinker scetches some recent trends in interstate violence, civil wars, genocides, terrorism. These trends are illustrated to have a decline in violence.

Although I hope and think Pinker has a good point, I couldn't suppress the feeling that this Chapter perhaps suffers from a little confirmation bias. Since it deals with the very recent history I think it is very difficult to decern trends.

An interesting quote that stuck with me was regarding the Georgia - Russia conflict in 2008 regarding the Abkhazia region. Georgia's president at the time Saakashvili explaines his choice for not escalating the conflict: ''we could have turned this country into Chechnya: go to the mountains and grow beards, or, do nothing stay a modern European country.''