Well, why has violence declined? No one really knows, but I have read four explanations, all of which, I think, have some grain of plausibility. The first is, maybe Thomas Hobbes got it right. He was the one who said that life in a state of nature was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Not because, he argued, humans have some primordial thirst for blood or aggressive instinct or territorial imperative,
那么，为什么暴力下降了呢？没有人能真正回答这个问题， 但是，我读到过四种解释，我认为， 还是比较可信的。第一种解释是：或许 托马斯霍布斯是正确的。他说过 自然状态下的生命是“孤独，贫穷，肮脏，野蛮 和短暂的。”不是因为，他申辩到， 人们对血腥行为，进攻本能或领土保护 的原始本能，