Listen to this, it might contradict one of your worldviews and is therefore important: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/12/175619007/is-the-world-a-less-violent-place
I’ve read a lot of reflections about violence lately, both narrow to broad:
The Boston Marathon bombing is yet another tragedy that shows how awful the world is; the events in Boston shouldn’t allow us, for example, to diminish the 11 children killed by NATO in Afghanistan last week; that even during such terrible events the good will ultimately overcome.
One perspective that I think is also valuable I haven’t seen represented: Humanity is more peaceful now than it has ever been during its entire existence.
Especially when we are viscerally aware of violence - when it happens to us, people we know, near us, or in places we’ve been - it seems pervasive and unavoidable. And media gives us access to violence of every kind, from every place, every day. But as the program I linked illustrates, despite appearances, we really are living in an increasingly less violent world.
My point is not to trivialize the grief and anger millions of people are burdened with due to violence. The opposite, in fact—there is so much reason to be hopeful that fewer and fewer will have to experience that kind of devastation. It is easier now to kill more people in a more detached manner than ever before, and we, in a long arc of history kind of way, are learning to choose not to.
