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The New Peace — Better Angels Stories

Steven Pinker

⬅️ Story index · Book note: The Better Angels of Our Nature · Source: Attachment (file not included in this release)

Collection scope

5 selected stories and vignettes from Chapter 6, “The New Peace.” Each item preserves the decisive scene, Pinker’s argumentative use, an evidence-type label, and PDF++ viewer-page navigation.

Evidence boundary

These are concise paraphrases of accounts in The Better Angels of Our Nature, not independent authentication of every historical, biographical, experimental, literary, or reported episode. The book was published in 2011; later scholarship and replication debates are outside this extraction unless explicitly noted.

Christian Wirth and the Jewish Boy

Chapter 6: The New Peace · Pinker’s retelling of Jonathan Glover · Canonical theme: Justice, Mercy & Moral Courage

At a forced-labor compound in occupied Poland, Christian Wirth commanded Jewish prisoners who were worked to death sorting the clothing of murdered Jews; their children had been sent to death camps. Pinker reproduces Jonathan Glover’s account of one exception: a boy of about ten was given sweets, dressed as a miniature SS man, and placed on a pony beside Wirth on a white horse. The account says that Wirth and the boy rode among the prisoners firing machine guns at close range, killing prisoners including the boy’s mother. Pinker places the scene beside a Red Guard episode because its cold-blooded contempt leads into his analysis of killing by category.

Source boundary

Pinker identifies his source as Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 342, in endnote 92. This records the chain Pinker → Glover; it is not an independent archival verification. The passage does not establish the child’s coercion, understanding, state of mind, or later fate, so none is inferred here.

What it argues

Dehumanization can turn domination into theater when a condemned category replaces individual personhood as the object of punishment.

Use it for: dehumanization, categorization, moral disengagement, Nazi persecution.

Afonso Dhlakama Is “Wooed” into Peace

Chapter 6: The New Peace · Mission member’s account quoted by Pinker · Canonical theme: Conflict, Anger & Reconciliation

A peacekeeper explained that the RENAMO leader valued being treated seriously, attending diplomatic receptions, and no longer being dismissed as an “armed bandit.” Pinker uses the anecdote to show that peacekeeping can change reputational payoffs and give an armed leader a face-saving path into negotiation, not merely threaten him with force.

What it argues

Recognition and status can make peace more rewarding than the outlaw identity an armed leader would otherwise defend.

Use it for: peacekeeping, negotiation, face-saving.

The Old Couple and the French Glass

Chapter 6: The New Peace · Pinker’s retelling of Glover, cited in endnote 91 · Canonical theme: Justice, Mercy & Moral Courage

In Jonathan Glover’s Cultural Revolution account, Red Guards ransacked an elderly couple’s home; when the man begged them to spare boxes of precious French glass, they beat him, smashed the glass, and left the couple crying. Pinker pairs this with the Wirth story as an image of domination intensified by deliberate mockery.

What it argues

Domination becomes especially cruel when attackers mock and destroy what their victims visibly value.

Use it for: humiliation, ideological violence, cruelty.

Bread beside a Dead Man in Auschwitz

Chapter 6: The New Peace · Pinker’s personal recollection · Canonical theme: Judgment, Perception & Self-Knowledge

Pinker recalls meeting a relative by marriage who had survived Auschwitz. The survivor immediately described men taking bread from the hand of a prisoner who had just died and then fighting because one portion seemed microscopically smaller. Pinker’s point is not to condemn the prisoners but to honor the courage required to disclose degradation produced by extreme conditions and trust that a listener will judge the circumstances rather than their character.

What it argues

Extreme conditions can deform behavior; judging the circumstances before the person is moral accuracy, not sentimental excuse-making.

Use it for: survival, scarcity, contextual judgment, compassion.

Terrorist Violence That Destroys Its Own Cause

Chapter 6: The New Peace · Historical examples synthesized from terrorism research · Canonical theme: Conflict, Anger & Reconciliation

Pinker groups the Red Brigades’ murder of Aldo Moro, the FLQ’s murder of Pierre Laporte, and Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing as escalation that repelled sympathizers and strengthened opposition. These are compact narratives for his claim that spectacular cruelty often defeats terrorism’s strategic aims even while inflicting irreversible harm.

What it argues

Spectacular cruelty can repel sympathizers, strengthen opposition, and defeat the political cause invoked to justify it.

Use it for: terrorism, backlash, strategic overreach.