How Bad of a World Are We Really Living In Right Now?

New submitter Y.A.A.P. writes: Slate has a surprisingly relevant article of the state of the world today. A reasonable number of graphs and statistical comparisons show that our world is more peaceful than it has been for a long time. The article tells us that, despite what most news outlets (and political candidates) tell us, The World Is Not Falling Apart. Well, not from violence, at least.

Comments

It just seems bad because of the news cycle.

[davester666]

The news started with
"these are the 5 worst things that happened in our city"
then it became
"these are the 5 worst things that happened in our state"
then
"these are the 5 worst things that happened in our country"
and now it's
"these are the 5 worst things that happened on the planet"

And every day, somewhere, something really bad happened.

And people have trouble determining how likely that event is going to happen to them anytime soon [normally, a lottery ticket is more likely to hit].

Re:It just seems bad because of the news cycle.

[AthanasiusKircher]

And every day, somewhere, something really bad happened.

And people have trouble determining how likely that event is going to happen to them anytime soon [normally, a lottery ticket is more likely to hit].

Yes, or evaluating the chances of dying a plane crash vs. a car. (Driving your car is a LOT more dangerous.) Or the probability of a terrorist event. Etc.

People are really bad about evaluating probability, and our fears are shaped by whatever the news media can dig up about the scariest things going on.

I agree with a lot of TFA, though what's missing is the LONG-term perspective. There's a lot of graphs from the late 20th-century on showing how things (particularly violence) are trending downward, but I still remember the first time I saw a graph of the estimated murder rate over the past few centuries. Hint -- it has basically dropped pretty precipitously since the days of medieval Europe.

Granted, the numbers are more speculative, but I think most people just have no freakin' clue how dangerous and terrible life was in the past. Everybody wants to pretend to be the "lord and lady" at the Renaissance fair, but the reality for most common folk was that you struggled to grow enough food to survive the winter. Every year. You were lucky if even half of your children survived to adulthood.

And in those sorts of life-and-death situations, life was -- frankly -- "cheaper" than today. You could get a finger or hand cut off in a random bar fight or a street brawl. If you committing anything resembling a crime, the authorities would likely do it for you. If you tried to leave town, you were very likely to be robbed, stripped, raped, or killed by random "highwaymen."

The trend toward improvement has continued through most of the 20th century and into our current one. Trust me -- you do NOT want to live in a poor urban center of the early 1900s compared to one today. A lot of violence is down compared to a generation or two ago, and it's certainly a heck of a lot better than it was several generations ago. Yes, kids used to roam the street without care late at night or whatever "back in the day," but they were much, much more likely to abducted or suffer a violent attack or whatever back then than they are today. The "golden age" which people are nostalgic for never existed.

What has changed is that we are more fearful of certain things, NOT that such things (in most cases) have actually gotten worse.

Re:It just seems bad because of the news cycle.

[AthanasiusKircher]

I don't blame the news cycle. Do we really needs news headlines like: "People all over the world go about regular business, all goes fine"?

No, we don't need articles like that, which would be pointless.

What we do need (and what I think TFA is arguing for) is perspective. Whether you're talking about overall violent crime rate, child abductions, campus rape, whatever -- the general trend over the past couple decades has been DOWN.

Yes, there are still terrible things happening. And we should work to try to make things better. But there's a difference between focusing on the bad things to make the world better and just being an irrational pessimist with no perspective of history.

I say this as someone who used to be an irrational pessimist. I was the sort of person back in my early 20s who thought, "I can't imagine ever having children -- I mean, who would bring a child into a world that's so terrible?"

I look back at that perspective and realize that my viewpoint was shaped by the news. It was shaped by the continuous clamor of politicians trying to make things sound worse and worse because it was to their advantage in making a case that they were the answer to improvement.

There's more and easier access to information now, and more important stuff is being reported, and that's a good thing. Keep the bad news coming.

Agreed. But maybe -- just maybe -- it might be good to have the news in perspective once in a while. Not "People go about their daily business, and all's fine," but at least an acknowledgement of "Terrible thing X is happening. We still need to improve a lot, but let's just note things have been moving in the right direction on issue X for the past 30 years" or whatever.

Re:It just seems bad because of the news cycle.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reply that you'll get is one based on zero-tolerance: "even one [murder, rape, war, etc] is too much" and "never, never again." That things are getting better is irrelevant if you can push the emotional buttons for the counter-argument: "with our technology and our historical perspective, we should be advanced enough to ensure that [X] never happens again."

It's words like "never" and "ensure" and "guarantee" that keep progress from gaining acceptance: until we meet unreasonable expectations [which we never will meet] based on sentiment rather than reason, we must continue to give up our liberties, our wealth, our convenience, our whatever in order to maintain our nation's struggle to ensure that [insert injustice] never happens again. To do less would be unworthy of our exceptional nation and of us as human beings.

Things are looking up

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is we are living during the safest, most prosperous times in human history.
The media gives us a (false) perception that the world is collapsing under war, civil unrest and terrorism. The reality is that now, more than ever before, people are more likely to die form old age than from a violent death.
Crime is down worldwide. So is hunger, war, rape and genocide.
The world is far from perfect and the Syrian crisis is very real and should not be minimized. But as tragic as things are in the Middle East, what is happening there is the exception, not the rule.

Re:Yeah, but that just means...

[ArmoredDragon]

No, it just means that as education prevails, people are less prone to fall for insane cults. The people who disagree tend to be fundamentalists, communists, and Luddites.

It depends where you live in the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, right now "this world is more peaceful" it depends where you live: Go to south america like Venezuela, Brasil, Colombia, Salvador, Mexico see the world there or go to Middle East, specially Siria and around there and see there. Go to africa and visit some countries there and see too. It isn't a "World Peaceful" there too.

Re:Percentages vs raw numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a single serial killer and your population doubles you are doing better, because statistically society should have produced a second serial killer. Each person's odds of being killed by a serial killer have dropped by 50%. I'm not sure in what way you think that's a bad thing.

Weak arguments

[prefec2]

Many charts cover only 30 years which is not really a long period in human history. Therefore, the deductions made on that charts are weak or only valid for that short time period. Beside this overall impression, I want to point out in detail the argument about democracy. There are more democracies now than in 1945 or even in 1988. However, this only looks on the name these states give themselves on paper. Many democracies suffer today from lobbying, like the US, the UK, and Germany, which has a negative impact on participation and limits real democratic processes. Furthermore, most Western democracies have an imbalance in media communication, with the all time low of FoxNews.

And it is even worse when you look at the democracies in east Europe. Especially at Hungary, where the prime minister Orban changed the constitution to limit the power of the supreme court. He also favours a illiberal democracy, which is a democracy with no minority rights. That results at the end in no democracy at all. He is also racist beyond comprehension. And Poland just elected a very very very right wing party and president. The latter already stated that judges which are critical of his doings will face disciplinary actions. So there goes the separation of powers.

Or you could look at Greece. It does not matter which government they elect, the EU commission, the ECB, and the IMF define what happens in Greece. And it looks similar for Portugal, Spain, and Italy.

Therefore, democracy is presently in the West not in a good shape. And I do not know if they counted Russia as democratic country. And the situation in India is also not that positive. So I conclude that their assessment on democracy is not correct at all.

If you're American

[rsilvergun]

it seems a lot worse. Not just because of our news cycle either. Our economy crashed in 2008. It recovered, but virtually all of those gains were gobbled up by the investor class. Education has skyrocketed in cost (again, our investment class, who noticed that there was tons of money to be made on loans and lobbied hard to cut federal subsidies) and food prices are way, way up (there's that investment class again, with deregulation in our commodities market allowing them to skim 10-20% off our food supply).

Contrast that with the 70s, 80s and 90s where apart from an oil scare and a dip when manufacturing moved overseas things were mostly on the up and up.

Re:If you're American

[CrimsonAvenger]

Does the phrase "Great Depression" mean anything to you? That one took WW2 to work its way out of the economy.

Interestingly, WW2 brought us the GI Bill and the notion that pretty much anyone could go to college. Before that, it was the upper class and the very best of the commoners.

As to "food prices are way up", there are about as many indications that "real" (adjusted for inflation) food prices are down as up. Just depends on what you're buying...

Re:Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence

[khallow]

What you seem to be missing is that War is a macro-aggressive, acute failure of society. Microaggression is a stealthy, sinister, chronic failure of society that is far more widespread and far more damaging to the long-term health of humanity than is an acute War that has a beginning and an end.

What you seem to be missing is that macroaggression is a real thing which kills people. Microaggression is in your head.

Re:Why, You!

[ArmoredDragon]

The SJWs are the reason that things are getting better, actually. Did you think the rise of concern over social justice and the decrease of violence in the world at large were just coincidental?

I don't really think so. Of course, this depends on how you define an SJW, but it seems to me that the most ardent social justice supporters tend to themselves become bullies, and when they do they're worse bullies than the classic schoolyard bully. Take for example mass shaming over a single tweet, or getting people fired just because they made a mildly sexist joke. And unlike a typical bully, there's nothing you can do about it. The SJW doesn't care though, just so long as they feel better about themselves for having done it.

There is already somewhat of a precedent that public shaming runs afoul of the 8th amendment. In fact, here's a quote from Benjamin Rush, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence:

“Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death ... It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.”

Re: Why, You!

[Zontar The Mindless]

Are you referring to the *innovation* known as the US Constitution?

There are certainly any number of things wrong with the US--but having a founding document that clearly spells out rights and freedoms for its citizenry is not among them.