Ideas

Steven Pinker claims we are living in the most peaceable era of human existence. In a review of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Timothy Snyder challenges Pinker’s thesis. The central psychological virtue of modern civilization, Pinker claims, is “self-control.” Over the centuries, after people are pacified by the state, they [...]

What have we learned, if anything? By Tony Judt, New York Review of Books, May 1, 2008 It is war, not racism or ethnic antagonism or religious fervor, that leads to atrocity. War—total war—has been the crucial antecedent condition for mass criminality in the modern era. The first primitive concentration camps were set up by [...]

Technology’s center of gravity is shifting By Jeremy Kahn, Boston Globe, January 20, 2008 Bapi Das, seated next to an open sewer in a teeming slum on the outskirts of this Indian city, combs his hand through his hair, smooths his moustache, and prepares to enter the global financial system. more stories like this Das, [...]

Don’t just stand there, think By Drake Bennett, Boston Globe, January 13, 2008 When you read something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? [...]