“I hope to persuade you,” began Steven Pinker, “that there is a persistent decline in violence throughout history.” Speaking Monday night at Seattle’s Town Hall on his latest book, Better Angels of Our Nature, author and Harvard professor Stephen Pinker sought to convince the audience that humans everywhere are moving toward peace.

Pinker’s thesis emerges at a remarkable moment in our history: With the growing abundance of around-the-clock information-sharing, new eruptions of violence seem to occur daily. Increased news coverage of terrorism, crime, and war create the impression that our human family will never live in peace. For contemplatives worldwide, however, Pinker’s argument for peace couldn’t have come at a better time: Today marks twenty-five years since spiritual leaders from around the world gathered to pray for peace in Assisi, Italy. It was the first time in human history that such a gathering took place.

The decline in violence, outlined Pinker, may also be accompanied by an increase in our human ability to empathize. This rise in compassion towards others could be the result of a phenomenon he called the “widening-circle” of empathy. First theorized by philosopher Peter Singer, the idea recognizes that we have grown to empathize with more people and beings. Pinker remarked: “Over the millennia, people’s moral circles have expanded to encompass larger and larger polities: the clan, the tribe, the nation, both sexes, other races, and even animals.” The circle is ever-widening.

If we take this idea and integrate it with our lives, we realize that our capacity for compassion is continually growing, perhaps even beyond that of our ancestors. Together, we are closer to peace than ever before.

On this historic day celebrating twenty-five years since the first Assisi World Day of Prayer for Peace, imagine yourself as a “widening-circle” of empathy, a growing well of compassion. Where do you notice peace spilling over into new places of your life? In what direction is your circle of compassion expanding?