I think it comes from the innumeracy of our journalistic and intellectual culture

Why the gloom [about the modern world]? Partly it's the result of market forces in the punditry business, which favours the Cassandras over the Pollyannas. Partly it arises from human temperament: as David Hume observed: 'The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endowed with the profoundest judgement and most extensive learning.' But mainly, I think it comes from the innumeracy of our journalistic and intellectual culture.

S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 356

Democracy came too early to America

The historian Peter Spierenburg has provocatively suggested that 'democracy came too early' to America. In Europe, first the state disarmed the people and claimed a monopoly on violence, then the people took over the apparatus of the state, in America, the people took over the state before it had forced them to lay down their arms.

S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 118

Elsewhere, in support of this thesis (which I suspect is true) Pinker highlights the differential rates of violent crime by regions of the US, where the North East looks a lot like Europe and the West and South, less so.

With the battle-ax, sir, with the battle-ax!

The journalist Steven Sailer recounts a exchange from early-20th-century England: 'A hereditary member of the British House of Lords complained that Prime Minister Lloyd George had created new Lords solely because they were self-made millionaire who had only recently acquired large acreages. When asked, "How dd your ancestor become a Lord?" he replied sternly, "With the battle-ax, sir, with the battle-ax!"

S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 99

I note, perhaps hearteningly, that this is entirely, unsupported by proper references, as Sailer acknowledges here.

A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple if inches of height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared.

[C]ompared to hunter-gatherers, the first city dwellers were anemic, infected, tooth-decayed, and almost two and a half inches shorter. Some biblical scholars believe the story of the fall from the Garden of Eden was a cultural memory of the transition from foraging to agriculture: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'

So why did our foraging ancestors leave Eden? For many it was never an explicit choice: they had multiplied themselves into a Malthusian trap in which the fat of the land could no longer support them, and they had to grow their food themselves. The states emerged only later, and the foragers who lived at their frontiers could either be absorbed into them or hold out in their own way of life. For those who had the choice, Eden may have been just too dangerous. A few cavities, the odd abscess, and a couple if inches of height were a small price to pay for a fivefold better chance of not getting speared.

S. Pinker, The better angels of our nature (2011), 68-9