The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon. You can see it over millennia, over centuries, over decades and over years.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the reduction of violence can be observed across different time scales, from long-term trends to immediate events.
Steven Pinker's quote highlights the idea that the decline of violence is not a linear progression; rather, it exhibits a fractal nature, meaning that patterns of reduced violence can be recognized across various time frames—from millennia down to individual years. This perspective encourages us to understand that improvements in societal behavior regarding violence are not isolated but are interconnected across different periods of human history.
In practice
In a discussion on the progress of human civilization, you might quote Pinker to emphasize the positive trend toward peace.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Whether as victim, demon, or hero, the industrial worker of the past century filled the public imagination in books, movies, news stories, and even popular songs, putting a grimy human face on capitalism while dramatizing the social changes and conflicts it brought.
The poor are great! The poor are wonderful! The poor are very generous! They give us much more than what we give them.
Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others-misfortu ne is not a mortgage on achievement-fai lure is not a mortgage on success-sufferi ng is not a claim check, and its relief is not the goal of existence-man is not a sacrificial animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause-life is not one huge hospital.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.
And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?
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