The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#2I wish this kind of data was frequently mentioned throughout the year in mainstream media. Continue to show the news the way they are but keep this kind of data around to jeep people "calibrated" I think would help people's perspective on the world more positive.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#3"The World is Falling Apart!" gets way more clicks than "The World is Not Falling Apart," though.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#4Yeah, your government isn't torturing innocent people, murdering others with drones and promoting riots and revolutions abroad as subversive acts of war. Your economy is doing great, and should inspire your confidence in purchasing. God Bless the US.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#5The world can "fall apart" without people dying. For example, the ongoing currency wars.
You can also have violence without death. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are examples. Because these people are only tortured, and not murdered, is that considered "peaceful"?
And it also would depend on how far back you draw the data from. Is the Stalin famine of the 30s modern, or ancient? If we cast the data back to the 1600s, it's new. If we cast the data back to the 1920s, its old.
Some data sets in this article go back to the 60s, some go back to the 30s, some only back to the 90s. Maybe we need more data. Lets cast all the data sets back a few hundred years and look again.
Consider me unconvinced.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#6The world can "fall apart" without people dying. For example, the ongoing currency wars. You can also have violence without death. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are examples. Because these people are only tortured, and not murdered, is that considered "peaceful"? And it also would depend on how far back you draw the data from. Is the Stalin famine of the 30s modern, or ancient? If we cast the data back to the 1600s, it's…
I think the global decline in viable arable land and fresh water are the most likely factors to cause the world to 'fall apart', which I take to mean; the collapse of many industrialised societies and countries, and the collapse of much of international trade.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#7This point of an increasingly peaceful world has come up repeatedly over the years, but I think there is an inherent problem in the way it is viewed. The rise of the internet and social media has facilitated glimpses into the terrible acts which humans are capable of perpetrating against one another. That combined with a biased media who thrives on shock and outrage, it's no wonder we find this data difficult to digest. Most of the modern world influenced by this biased media reside in very sterile, largely safe environments. In effect, we've become ultra-sensitized to gore and violence, and as a result our impression and response to any sort of mayhem is skewed accordingly.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#8The world can "fall apart" without people dying. For example, the ongoing currency wars. You can also have violence without death. Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are examples. Because these people are only tortured, and not murdered, is that considered "peaceful"? And it also would depend on how far back you draw the data from. Is the Stalin famine of the 30s modern, or ancient? If we cast the data back to the 1600s, it's…
Indeed.
Death by war has been on the decline since after World War II - the most violent war in our history? That's not exactly exciting news.
The first half of the twentieth century revealed the contradiction of modernity: the terrible brutality of the industrial processes (including mechanized war) which underlay a system that on the surface had brought forth so much prosperity. The period since has been an attempt to resolve this contradiction through new tactics (specifically information and communication technologies) which allow the 'necessary' application of power's blunt end to be as precise as possible.
"Wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidable power of death – and this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits – now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital." - Michel Foucault
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#9Yeah, your government isn't torturing innocent people, murdering others with drones and promoting riots and revolutions abroad as subversive acts of war. Your economy is doing great, and should inspire your confidence in purchasing. God Bless the US.
If you assume that most governments have been doing that to various degrees since forever, and the only thing that has changed is the degree to which the information can get out, and the ease of anonymous whistling-blowing (which still carries too much risk, however it's arguably better than it's ever been) - seen in that light, you might suppose that while things seem to be getting worse, in fact they are getting better precisely because we're more aware of these various atrocities than we ever have been. It's possible to be very optimistic for the future while also outraged at what these inhuman murdering savages are doing in our name.
For example, I'm sure now that the CIA tortured countless Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, Iraqis during the first Gulf War, and you can apply this to the Korean war, WW2, basically as far back as you want to go. We just didn't know about it then, because it was easier to silence journalists and neutralize (murder) whistle-blowers or suspected whistle-blowers without the general public knowing about it.
FWIW, I am in the pessimist camp as well, in spite of my reasoning here, but just barely. I think probably things are actually about the same as always, but perhaps with the broader awareness we're just starting to see, that is just beginning to change. It's comforting that at least I'll probably know one way or the other within my lifetime.
Re: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines
#10This point of an increasingly peaceful world has come up repeatedly over the years, but I think there is an inherent problem in the way it is viewed. The rise of the internet and social media has facilitated glimpses into the terrible acts which humans are capable of perpetrating against one another. That combined with a biased media who thrives on shock and outrage, it's no wonder we find this data difficult to dige…
Perhaps this combination is positive. Horrible things have always happened. While they are happening less today, we have much greater visibility of the horrors that do happen. And they still horrify us – as they should. This gives us motivation to strive harder to eliminate them altogether. The jarring thing about looking at those charts is the labels on the y axis – murder, war, genocide, rape, child abuse. It's certainly good that they are trending down, but how much genocide is ok? How much rape is acceptable? Perhaps our natural fixation with the dark side of life is a good thing. True, there is much cause for optimism, but should we really be complacent when these numbers aren't zero?