From Richard Mortimer
I hope Steven Pinker is right that the world is becoming a less violent place (15 October, p 30). That said, surely such an assessment must depend on what counts as violence. Adherents of some religions consider abortion to be violence, by which reckoning our society must be one of the more violent in history.
Similarly, the destruction of habitats and the extinction of species must also mark our time as distinctly violent.
Dartford, Kent, UK
