War had this massive technological increase in violence from about 1850 to the lats 20th century. That explains pretty much it all to my satisfaction. The thin

War had this massive technological increase in violence from about 1850 to the lats 20th century. That explains pretty much it all to my satisfaction. The thing that is missed by these critiques of Pinker seem to be that Determinist genetic theories, which caused much of the "Hemoclysm" held sway for a long time, really until the advent of DNA.So once a better tool came on line, the justification for the violence faded. Of course, this has been uneven; so we have Rwanda. To me that's sort of the exception that proves the rule. It's tribal and unmodern violence. I think all that's required to see how far we've come it so read Kipling - especially "My Boy Jack". There's also a stage play and a "movie" of the stage play. The horror of the end implication of the Edwardian sense of manly military honor is brought into sharp relief.