Despite Buddhist Beliefs: The world is becoming more peaceful

Last updated on: October 12, 2012 at 8:44 pm by Justin Whitaker

Despite Buddhist Beliefs: The world is becoming more peaceful 2012-10-12T20:44:27-06:00 Justin Whitaker

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A graph of major wars over the last 500 years (percentage of years in 25-year chunks).

Buddhism has always held that all phenomena are transitory, including both the teaching of Buddhism as we know it and the world itself. While the Dharma -speaking of the Truth he came to understand – is universal, eternal, and uninfluenced by particular human circumstances, the sāsana, or lineage of teachings handed down for the last 2400+ years, will come to an end.

Likewise, Buddhism inherited the cosmology of Proto-Hinduism (Brahmanism), which held that humans today are living in an age of decline. Part of this sense of decline is the belief in growing immorality and warfare. Conversely, the level of emphasis this belief has taken on in Buddhist cultures often reflects a world around them engulfed in war or simply persecution. The belief exists in all schools of Buddhism, though it took on heightened urgency in China. There the idea that the decline would have a phase of “final dharma” (mofa), starting in 552 C.E. was established, and in Japan the same belief, termed mappō was transmitted with the updated start-date of 1052 C.E. *

However, as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker writes in his new book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined“, this hasn’t been the case. In fact, things are getting better. His work is largely a tour de force of collected statistics. Take the middle ages for instance. While good records weren’t kept everywhere, from what we do have, it is clear that a lot of people were murdered. Just looking at homicides, Pinker determined that you were 35 times more likely to be murdered in the middle ages than today. 35 times!

Stats for warfare follow as similar trajectory. While warfare, homicide, and other forms of violence obviously do continue, the fact is that, proportional to population, they are declining. It is that “proportional” part that might cause difficulty for many people. Millions of people died violently in the 20th century, more than in any before: doesn’t that make it the most violent century ever? In just raw numbers, yes. But in terms of any individual’s likelihood of dying violently, no.

As Colbert quips in the clip below: if you kill 1 million people in nation that has 2 million, that’s pretty bad, but if you kill 1 million people in a nation that has 40 million, that’s progress?

Yes.

Here’s an excellent recent discussion of the idea by Pinker and Robert D. Kaplan via the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs:

Video streaming by Ustream http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/25752052

Kaplan, author of The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, points to East Asia as a model of modernization, but notes that part of the result is a massive arms race and increasing nationalism – note the recent standoffs between Japanese and Chinese ships regarding two tiny islands.

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of continued antagonisms around the world, this doesn’t refute the statistics, which – as a bit of a math nerd – I feel are both incredibly important and widely overlooked by most people. One unfortunate, but common, side effect of citing anecdotes is the tit-for-tat kind of arguments that Kaplan has at one point with a gentleman who lived in Singapore in the 1960s and 70s. The power, and for me, beauty of these wide-scale statistical views is the fact that you can swallow up anecdotes: sure, there is war, but look at how much less there is now vs the past.

But people like stories, now as much as before. The interesting thing about stories is that they can compel people to do things in a way that statistics never could. The Buddhist stories of decline were probably meant as moral exhortations, saying: “look at yourselves. The world could be so much better and, in fact, it once was. Let me tell you about it…” When we look at these stories we cannot lose sight of this moral lesson. Today people just read the stories as if they were fanciful fairy-tales conceived in a pre-scientific age. As if people 2500 years ago (and this goes for Biblical stories as well) couldn’t count up to 100, so they believed some people could live to 200, 1000, or older. Of course this is often a reaction to meeting people (we tend to call them fundamentalists in the West and traditionalists in the East) who do actually believe the stories on face value. What we need is a middle ground. Something solid. Statistics. (And graphs.)

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

More about Pinker: http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/about/

Previous Post

October 8, 2012

"A Buddhist Perspective on Occupy Wall Street" by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Next Post

October 15, 2012 Dharma Dialogue: a new blog on Buddhism in America

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Academia Activism American Buddhism Art Book review Buddhism Buddhism Today Buddhist Ethics Burma/Myanmar China Christianity Commodification Environment Gender Happiness Health Humor India Interfaith Islam Japanese Buddhism Kant Media / News Meditation mindfulness Photography Poetry Politics quicktakes Running Teaching Technology Thailand Theism/Atheism Theravada Tibet Tibetan Buddhism Travels Uncategorized Unitarian Universalism video Western Philosophy Zen

Select a Month June 2021 January 2021 November 2020 August 2020 July 2020 March 2020 January 2020 October 2019 August 2019 June 2019 May 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 November 2004 September 2004 August 2004

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz