10 ms·

Why We Hurt Each Other: Tolstoy’s Letters to Gandhi

129 points by atmosx 11y ago

happyscrappy 11y ago
>His words bear extraordinary prescience today, as we face a swelling tide of political unrest, ethnic violence, and global conflict. Doom sells but that doesn't make it true. Someone should send him a copy of Pinker's book.
- DanDanDanDan 11y ago
  I assume you're referring to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, which has faced a number of criticisms, including his analysis of the data and what - in his mind - constitutes "violence".
  - zenogais 11y ago
    If we avoided reading books simply because they have criticisms, we'd never read anything.
  - afarrell 11y ago
    If you could summarize or link to those critiques, I would be interested.
    - ChrisGranger 11y ago
      Wikipedia has some here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... Not the OP, but I enjoyed it, and think people should read or listen to it even though it contains some inaccuracies.
    - DanDanDanDan 11y ago
      That wikipedia page is good. I also think expanded notions of violence are appropriate, though excluded from Pinker's analysis. For example, if a rich country COULD provide equal, high-quality health care to all its citizens, but doesn't because the health care industry (hospitals, insurers, physician groups, pharma) lobbies against such outcomes, and excess morbidity and mortality result, that is a kind of violence, though one that Pinker is not interested in. Or North Korea (or to a lesser extent China), which maintains relatively low levels of violence, but is simultaneously committing abuses against its population. The idea that fewer people (or a smaller proportion of people) are smashing their neighbor's head in with a rock doesn't necessarily constitute absolute "progress" to me (though it would be a nice development... provided it was true... which it might not be).
      - stinkytaco 11y ago
        I don't disagree with those very insightful criticisms. I also recognize that Pinker is making a very sweeping argument in his book, one that he likely can't fully back up. But it feels like we're expecting a lot from Pinker. Basically a full analysis of all types of coercion that can possibly occur. That seems a basically impossible task to undertake. Drawing the line somewhere does not seem unfair.
        DanDanDanDan 11y ago
        Pinker takes a strong normative position on what constitutes violence and what does not. I think if he had said, 'this is how I'm defining violence, and here's why, but if you were to define it another way, you might reach different conclusions', I'd feel less critical of his claims. To me, his argument is too unambiguous and he ultimately overreaches. (And - further - what does and does not constitute coercion or violence in the 21st century is the truly interesting question.) If his conclusion had been, maybe we're seeing a drop in a particular form of violence and we're not entirely sure why but here are my thoughts (ahem, development of the atom bomb perhaps?), I would have agreed with him, but he wouldn't have sold all those books...
- justinator 11y ago
  There is def. some truth to this. The idea of, "End of Days" is one that continues to be recycled. There's always some sort of catastrophe around every corner. And this is true. But, I also need to wake up, and water the plants. (If you wanna be all Zen about it!)
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Read it, not very convincing. Pinker overestimates hunter-gatherer violence and underestimates non-direct violence in present times (such as US covert violence). A lot of these criticisms are available online.
- codeshaman 11y ago
  I haven't read Pinker's book, but I've read Tolstoy recently. Tolstoy doesn't present any data or historical evidence, just shares his deep intuitive wisdom. He predicted the rise of communism and the world wars, but also inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King and many others... . And at times it's really scary how much similarity there exists between the popular ideas back then (which he discusses) and the ideas of today. The almost fanatic belief in human superiority over nature, the power of Reason, the scientific method, the powerful religious groups, the armies, the police, the banks.. One would think that after 2 world wars and countless experimentation with social order and extreme technological advancement, we would have evolved to a higher level of thinking. But no, there are some principles which stay the same. We still eat, we still drink, we still hate, we still love.
  - kleer001 11y ago
    >deep intuitive wisdom. aka he pulled it out of thin air. The sooner we base long term plans on verified data instead of intuition the sooner we'll reduce needless suffering.
    - verbin217 11y ago
      "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
      - kleer001 11y ago
        "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince. All woo-woo aside, ooshy gooshy feelings won't get us to the moon, cure cancer, decrease childhood diseases, or feed a billion people with the land usually used to only feed 10,000.
        verbin217 11y ago
        Sure I pretty much entirely agree with you but the caution I stated earlier is the notable one for that mindset. There's always a step where you have to decide what the data means.
codeshaman 11y ago
Almost by accident I started reading 'The kingdom of God is within you' by Tolstoy a couple of months ago. I haven't read anything by Tolstoy before. And boy, was I in for a surprise. It was a very powerful and inspiring book. Being very fond of the counterculture, the hippy movement, free society, open source, tech anarchy, etc - I was very surprised to see him talking about these concepts with such clarity back then. And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion. Tolstoy argues that in order to truly renounce violence, one must not support it in any way, including through proxies - the State (which is backed by the military), the Government and Legal System (which has the police, the judges and the prisons), the corporations (which support the state and use violence to aquire resources), stay away from the Church and religion, Patriotism (which is a brain washing methodology) and so on. From the perspective of the state, the church, etc, those ideas are very dangerous. But from the standpoint of humanism, respect for life, the right way to live, these ideas are the truth. Unfortunately, some people inspired by Tolstoy, like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Lennon have been murdered, but only after fundamentally changing our society for the better. Tolstoy himself was excomunicated from the Orthodox Church and burried on a hill. There is inherent danger in telling people to just love one another. This generates fear and hatred in some. I hope we'll slowly come to accept the idea more and more. Anyway, if you haven't read him, please do yourself a favor, the books are available for free.
- loblollyboy 11y ago
  I also read Tolstoy 'almost by accident' about 1 month ago and now see references to him everywhere. I'm in my late 20s, and the entirety of it has been a big disillusionment. There are so many wrongs on societal/ organizational levels that nag at me whenever I have idle time - as they probably do any adult with half a heart or brain - and I was having trouble comprehending them. All I could do was see and be bothered by the 'what,' but I couldn't wrap my head around the 'why?' And unlike some code or problem set, I couldn't fathom an answer, leaving me feeling hopeless. Tolstoy reinterprets the New Testament and what he finds is as relevant to our times as they were to his. Just as one who studies physics might start to see patterns in nature, I now see societal problems as manifestations of patterns in human nature. He offers a very bold solution that makes sense logically, but doesn't seem possible. But it has been proven to a certain extent (Ghandi, MLK, etc.) This left me feeling less hopeless and I would also highly recommend.
lisper 11y ago
> a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. All living things are the products of evolution, and hence competition and the drawing of boundaries between "us" and "them" (i.e. between the phenotype of the reproducing genome and the environment that is used to provide the resources to reproduce) is an inherent part of all life. To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species. Peaceful coexistence is hard precisely because it is NOT our most natural, basic state. This is not to say that peaceful coexistence is not desirable or achievable; it is both. But pretending that it is a "natural state" is the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denialism. We will not solve the problem of global warming by denying the laws of physics, and we won't solve the problem of inter-human conflict that way either.
- dwiel 11y ago
  Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive as pretending that cooperation/love is. You mention the phenotype and us/them, but don't explain how violence is an obviously beneficial trait. It is easy to contrive cases where violence is beneficial, but that is a far cry from saying that it is life's most natural and basic state. Also, I know you didn't actually say this, but I wanted to make the point anyway, since it wouldn't be hard to come to that conclusion from your post.
  - lisper 11y ago
    > Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive That depends on what you mean. It is certainly true that our natural state is not to be psychopaths, indiscriminately killing everything in sight. But the evidence (and the theoretical foundations) indicate that a certain amount of violence is an inherent part of our basic nature, and so achieving peace requires work. I do want to emphasize, though, that it can certainly be done. The internet, airplanes, McDonalds -- none of these are part of our basic nature either, and yet we've managed to achieve them. Peace is not out of reach, and indeed, the historical trend is towards an ever more peaceful world [1]. --- [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1491518243 http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/149151...
noname123 11y ago
Tangential, I'm reading "War and Peace" right now for my book club, very difficult to slog through; just curious for peeps who've read either "War and Peace" or "Anna Karenina," what is so special about Tolstoy's novels, that makes it different than say their Western counterparts like say "Les Miserables" or "Pride and Prejudice"?
- stinkytaco 11y ago
  Well, you stated the obvious difference: one set of novels is Western and Tolstoy is not. His sensibility and his viewpoint are Russian. Embedded in his works, especially Anna Kerenina in my opinion, is a prescient understanding of history and if you are the type to infer this sort of thing, human nature. It's rather interesting that you include Pride and Prejuidice in your examples because that's a novel that a non-westerner would not understand fully. It relies too much on our embedded understanding of a very specific social structure, culture, class dynamic, etc. to the point where even an American who hasn't watched a fair amount of PBS might not fully appreciate it. It's probably worth picking up a lecture series on the novels and another on Russian history. And I'm not going into all the deeper, more philosophical content many see in the works.
- atmosx 11y ago
  What sets Tolstoy apart is the unmatched description of the human psyche. The characters in Tolstoy's novels are excruciatingly complex. The only author IMHO who has described the human psyche at the same level of depth, adding more drama though, is Dostojevski.
hownottowrite 11y ago
I have seen the future, brother; it is murder. —Leonard Cohen, "The Future"
known 11y ago
Fasting/roaming half-naked in streets are cheap tools/tricks used by Gandhi to INSULT (not defeat) British; British generosity? Otherwise in Independent India protesters are thrashed/thrown in jail;

129 points by atmosx 11y ago

>His words bear extraordinary prescience today, as we face a swelling tide of political unrest, ethnic violence, and global conflict. Doom sells but that doesn't make it true. Someone should send him a copy of Pinker's book.

DanDanDanDan 11y ago
I assume you're referring to Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, which has faced a number of criticisms, including his analysis of the data and what - in his mind - constitutes "violence".
- zenogais 11y ago
  If we avoided reading books simply because they have criticisms, we'd never read anything.
- afarrell 11y ago
  If you could summarize or link to those critiques, I would be interested.
  - ChrisGranger 11y ago
    Wikipedia has some here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... Not the OP, but I enjoyed it, and think people should read or listen to it even though it contains some inaccuracies.
  - DanDanDanDan 11y ago
    That wikipedia page is good. I also think expanded notions of violence are appropriate, though excluded from Pinker's analysis. For example, if a rich country COULD provide equal, high-quality health care to all its citizens, but doesn't because the health care industry (hospitals, insurers, physician groups, pharma) lobbies against such outcomes, and excess morbidity and mortality result, that is a kind of violence, though one that Pinker is not interested in. Or North Korea (or to a lesser extent China), which maintains relatively low levels of violence, but is simultaneously committing abuses against its population. The idea that fewer people (or a smaller proportion of people) are smashing their neighbor's head in with a rock doesn't necessarily constitute absolute "progress" to me (though it would be a nice development... provided it was true... which it might not be).
    - stinkytaco 11y ago
      I don't disagree with those very insightful criticisms. I also recognize that Pinker is making a very sweeping argument in his book, one that he likely can't fully back up. But it feels like we're expecting a lot from Pinker. Basically a full analysis of all types of coercion that can possibly occur. That seems a basically impossible task to undertake. Drawing the line somewhere does not seem unfair.
      - DanDanDanDan 11y ago
        Pinker takes a strong normative position on what constitutes violence and what does not. I think if he had said, 'this is how I'm defining violence, and here's why, but if you were to define it another way, you might reach different conclusions', I'd feel less critical of his claims. To me, his argument is too unambiguous and he ultimately overreaches. (And - further - what does and does not constitute coercion or violence in the 21st century is the truly interesting question.) If his conclusion had been, maybe we're seeing a drop in a particular form of violence and we're not entirely sure why but here are my thoughts (ahem, development of the atom bomb perhaps?), I would have agreed with him, but he wouldn't have sold all those books...
justinator 11y ago
There is def. some truth to this. The idea of, "End of Days" is one that continues to be recycled. There's always some sort of catastrophe around every corner. And this is true. But, I also need to wake up, and water the plants. (If you wanna be all Zen about it!)
littletimmy 11y ago
Read it, not very convincing. Pinker overestimates hunter-gatherer violence and underestimates non-direct violence in present times (such as US covert violence). A lot of these criticisms are available online.
codeshaman 11y ago
I haven't read Pinker's book, but I've read Tolstoy recently. Tolstoy doesn't present any data or historical evidence, just shares his deep intuitive wisdom. He predicted the rise of communism and the world wars, but also inspired Ghandi and Martin Luther King and many others... . And at times it's really scary how much similarity there exists between the popular ideas back then (which he discusses) and the ideas of today. The almost fanatic belief in human superiority over nature, the power of Reason, the scientific method, the powerful religious groups, the armies, the police, the banks.. One would think that after 2 world wars and countless experimentation with social order and extreme technological advancement, we would have evolved to a higher level of thinking. But no, there are some principles which stay the same. We still eat, we still drink, we still hate, we still love.
- kleer001 11y ago
  >deep intuitive wisdom. aka he pulled it out of thin air. The sooner we base long term plans on verified data instead of intuition the sooner we'll reduce needless suffering.
  - verbin217 11y ago
    "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
    - kleer001 11y ago
      "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." The Little Prince. All woo-woo aside, ooshy gooshy feelings won't get us to the moon, cure cancer, decrease childhood diseases, or feed a billion people with the land usually used to only feed 10,000.
      - verbin217 11y ago
        Sure I pretty much entirely agree with you but the caution I stated earlier is the notable one for that mindset. There's always a step where you have to decide what the data means.

codeshaman 11y ago

Almost by accident I started reading 'The kingdom of God is within you' by Tolstoy a couple of months ago. I haven't read anything by Tolstoy before. And boy, was I in for a surprise. It was a very powerful and inspiring book. Being very fond of the counterculture, the hippy movement, free society, open source, tech anarchy, etc - I was very surprised to see him talking about these concepts with such clarity back then. And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion. Tolstoy argues that in order to truly renounce violence, one must not support it in any way, including through proxies - the State (which is backed by the military), the Government and Legal System (which has the police, the judges and the prisons), the corporations (which support the state and use violence to aquire resources), stay away from the Church and religion, Patriotism (which is a brain washing methodology) and so on. From the perspective of the state, the church, etc, those ideas are very dangerous. But from the standpoint of humanism, respect for life, the right way to live, these ideas are the truth. Unfortunately, some people inspired by Tolstoy, like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Lennon have been murdered, but only after fundamentally changing our society for the better. Tolstoy himself was excomunicated from the Orthodox Church and burried on a hill. There is inherent danger in telling people to just love one another. This generates fear and hatred in some. I hope we'll slowly come to accept the idea more and more. Anyway, if you haven't read him, please do yourself a favor, the books are available for free.

loblollyboy 11y ago
I also read Tolstoy 'almost by accident' about 1 month ago and now see references to him everywhere. I'm in my late 20s, and the entirety of it has been a big disillusionment. There are so many wrongs on societal/ organizational levels that nag at me whenever I have idle time - as they probably do any adult with half a heart or brain - and I was having trouble comprehending them. All I could do was see and be bothered by the 'what,' but I couldn't wrap my head around the 'why?' And unlike some code or problem set, I couldn't fathom an answer, leaving me feeling hopeless. Tolstoy reinterprets the New Testament and what he finds is as relevant to our times as they were to his. Just as one who studies physics might start to see patterns in nature, I now see societal problems as manifestations of patterns in human nature. He offers a very bold solution that makes sense logically, but doesn't seem possible. But it has been proven to a certain extent (Ghandi, MLK, etc.) This left me feeling less hopeless and I would also highly recommend.

lisper 11y ago

> a return to our most natural, basic state, which is the law of love I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly naive. All living things are the products of evolution, and hence competition and the drawing of boundaries between "us" and "them" (i.e. between the phenotype of the reproducing genome and the environment that is used to provide the resources to reproduce) is an inherent part of all life. To be sure, cooperation can be beneficial to survival, but there is nothing in the laws of physics that insures that the cooperative boundary should be the entirety of one's own species. Peaceful coexistence is hard precisely because it is NOT our most natural, basic state. This is not to say that peaceful coexistence is not desirable or achievable; it is both. But pretending that it is a "natural state" is the left-wing equivalent of climate-change denialism. We will not solve the problem of global warming by denying the laws of physics, and we won't solve the problem of inter-human conflict that way either.

dwiel 11y ago
Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive as pretending that cooperation/love is. You mention the phenotype and us/them, but don't explain how violence is an obviously beneficial trait. It is easy to contrive cases where violence is beneficial, but that is a far cry from saying that it is life's most natural and basic state. Also, I know you didn't actually say this, but I wanted to make the point anyway, since it wouldn't be hard to come to that conclusion from your post.
- lisper 11y ago
  > Pretending that the opposite it true, that violence is our most natural and basic state, is equally naive That depends on what you mean. It is certainly true that our natural state is not to be psychopaths, indiscriminately killing everything in sight. But the evidence (and the theoretical foundations) indicate that a certain amount of violence is an inherent part of our basic nature, and so achieving peace requires work. I do want to emphasize, though, that it can certainly be done. The internet, airplanes, McDonalds -- none of these are part of our basic nature either, and yet we've managed to achieve them. Peace is not out of reach, and indeed, the historical trend is towards an ever more peaceful world [1]. --- [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/1491518243 http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/149151...

noname123 11y ago

Tangential, I'm reading "War and Peace" right now for my book club, very difficult to slog through; just curious for peeps who've read either "War and Peace" or "Anna Karenina," what is so special about Tolstoy's novels, that makes it different than say their Western counterparts like say "Les Miserables" or "Pride and Prejudice"?

stinkytaco 11y ago
Well, you stated the obvious difference: one set of novels is Western and Tolstoy is not. His sensibility and his viewpoint are Russian. Embedded in his works, especially Anna Kerenina in my opinion, is a prescient understanding of history and if you are the type to infer this sort of thing, human nature. It's rather interesting that you include Pride and Prejuidice in your examples because that's a novel that a non-westerner would not understand fully. It relies too much on our embedded understanding of a very specific social structure, culture, class dynamic, etc. to the point where even an American who hasn't watched a fair amount of PBS might not fully appreciate it. It's probably worth picking up a lecture series on the novels and another on Russian history. And I'm not going into all the deeper, more philosophical content many see in the works.
atmosx 11y ago
What sets Tolstoy apart is the unmatched description of the human psyche. The characters in Tolstoy's novels are excruciatingly complex. The only author IMHO who has described the human psyche at the same level of depth, adding more drama though, is Dostojevski.

hownottowrite 11y ago

I have seen the future, brother; it is murder. —Leonard Cohen, "The Future"

known 11y ago

Fasting/roaming half-naked in streets are cheap tools/tricks used by Gandhi to INSULT (not defeat) British; British generosity? Otherwise in Independent India protesters are thrashed/thrown in jail;