Violence

Believe it or not, we are in a time of great peace. This is not to say the world is perfect and that no violence occurs, but there is a clear trend of decline in violence.

Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist from Harvard who lectures about this decline.

Here is one of his articles on the topic in the WSJ: online.wsj.com...

Here is one of his lectures:

One of the most interesting facts that I came across- after adjusting for the total population (real population) WWI and WWII are not unprecedented tragedies when looking throughout mankind's history. In absolute terms, WWII ranks as the most deaths in a war ever. But when adjusting to real population, it only ranks as the 9th worst tragedy and WWI is well out of the top 10. The great world wars are massive outliers in the 20th century, but even with their inclusion, violence continues to trend downward.

I know this site is full of fear-mongering and impending doom, but the statistics show that we have made progress. In fact, this is actually the safest time in mankind's history. Steven Pinker has many more statistics in the lecture, so I suggest you watch.

That is because we are learning about the other guy more than before if left alone we would eventually unify on our own. There are people diligently working against us all,it is up to us to keep on keeping on.
That way I won't have to pull a trigger in aggression again,which is a good thing.

reply to post by cavtrooper7


I think knowing about "the other guy" brings about empathy that wasn't possible before. For example the west's disdain for oppressed workers in China/Vietnam etc.

reply to post by bgold1212

Or China's respect for "Yankee Running Dogs"when we SHOW them our hand.