Abridged from numerous sources.
In 'The Better Angels Of Our Nature' author and Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker predicts that meat-eating may be the final frontier in what he calls the "rights revolution" ... the extraordinary decline in human violence and cruelty seen in the past 300 years.
According to Pinker, human nature, while somewhat flexible, is, for the most part, fixed but rather than claiming that some violence and aggression is hard-wired into our minds, he proves that humanity has grown less bloodthirsty over the course of recorded history and how through historical shortsightedness, we have forgotten just how pervasive violence was in previous eras.
Pinker's evidence comes from anthropologists, historians, criminologists, and experts of many other kinds. It suggests that the percentage of the population killed in warfare or everyday mayhem has declined, from century to century. The number of executions has gone down, and routine public displays of viciousness, such as torture and lynching, have grown less socially acceptable.
He shows we also have the capacities of self-control and empathy which are reinforced when societies undergo what is called "the civilizing process" of establishing a central, rational authority.
This civilisation came not from religion but over the course of what is called "The Enlightenment" in Western history. Logic, science, rationalism. Slowly, painfully, but ultimately successfully torture was outlawed, slavery was abolished, democracy became established and people discovered that they could rely on the state to protect them.
As a real scientist, Pinker thinks that most of what we believe about violence is wrong. Contrary to what the BKs claim, the present day is less violent than it ever has been. Murder, genocide, war, torture, cruelty to animals: all are at the lowest level ever.
Pinker also argues that the violence of the 20th century is best understood as a series of random spasms rather than part of a trend. The two world wars were essentially freak events, driven by contingency and in some cases madness. They do not reflect the default condition of mankind. The evidence for this is the third part of Pinker's case: look at what has happened since 1945, as the world has become immeasurably more peaceful on almost every count.
Terrorism is down, not up. All sorts of disadvantaged groups; women, children, ethnic minorities, even animals are much less likely to be victims of violence across many parts of the world, and the trend is spreading.