What is the ethical power of literature? Can it diminish acts of injuring, and if it can, what aspects of literature deserve the credit?
All these questions, at first, hinge on another: can anything diminish injury? In his recent book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker argues that, over 50 centuries, many forms of violence have subsided.1 Among the epochs he singles out for special scrutiny is a hundred-year period bridging the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during which an array of brutal acts—executing accused witches, imprisoning debtors, torturing animals, torturing humans, inflicting the death penalty, enslaving fellow human beings—suddenly abated, even if they did not disappear.
Attempting to account for “the sweeping change in everyday sensibilities” toward “the suffering in other living things” and for the protective laws that emerged during the Humanitarian Revolution, Pinker argues that the legal reforms were in some degree a product of increasing literacy. Reforms were immediately preceded by a startling increase in book production (e.g., in England, the number of publications rose from fewer than 500 per decade in 1600 to 2,000 per decade by 1700, and to 7,000 per decade by 1800) and by an equally startling surge in literacy, with the majority of Englishmen literate by the end of the seventeenth century, French by the end of the eighteenth, and Danish, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Scottish, Swedish, and Swiss by the end of the nineteenth century.
Excerpt from an article written by Elaine Scarry, Boston Review. Continue HERE
WANDERLUST 
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This is fascinating! Thanks for sharing:-)
Those are extraordinary statistics. Thankyou very much for sharing them. We are currently living in a country (Ghana) where education is significantly on the increase, which is wonderful, and the Ghanaians pride themselves on being a peaceful African nation. I believe their next step will be greater acceptance of other cultures, certainly as a result of increased education. Kind regards, Chrissie
Thank YOU for sharing.
Thank you for sharing this also. :-)
Thank you also for liking my poetry ‘Hooked’. :-)