
The world is not falling apart: The trend lines - crgt
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.single.html
======
diafygi
Great! We're better overall than we were! No reason to rest on our laurels,
though. How can we be better than we are now?

Here's some areas that aren't doing too well:

1\. Climate Change - We're in store for a lot of trouble over the next few
decades[1]. How will we manage?

2\. Wealth Inequality - The gap is widening[2]. How do we reverse the trend?

3\. Gerrymandering/voter suppression - The ones in power are the ones who draw
the district boundaries[3]. How do we stop the feedback loop?

[1]: [http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/](http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/)

[2]: [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-
wealt...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-
great-recession/)

[3]: [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-
pern...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/the-pernicious-
effects-of-gerrymandering/383418/)

~~~
austerity
Why should I care about the relative wealth of the rich instead of absolute
wealth of the poor?

~~~
JanezStupar
This is the key question for me too.

Nowadays a blue collar worker (at least here in EU) has better living
conditions than the wealthiest and more powerful mere hundred years ago.

Nowadays nobody has to die because of bad teeth and everybody has access to
cheap and effective education and through that to other means of production.

~~~
felixgallo
The poor generally have none of:

* dental insurance * effective inexpensive dental care * effective education * access to effective education * a pathway to 'other means of production' * better living conditions than the wealthiest of a mere 100 years ago (the second industrial revolution and the gilded age, where the rich were incredibly rich, and the poor were utterly wretched)

------
hentrep
This 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.

~~~
StefanKarpinski
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?

------
xahrepap
I 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.

~~~
jotux
>I wish this kind of data was frequently mentioned throughout the year in
mainstream media.

Except bad news is what people want to see and it's what makes money. If you
try to shift your news reporting away from crime and gore it kills
viewer/readership.

example: [http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
elsewhere-30318261](http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-
elsewhere-30318261)

------
Animats
_Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey informed the Senate Armed
Service Committee (in 2013), "I will personally attest to the fact that [the
world is] more dangerous than it has ever been."_ Now that's surprising from
the head of the JCS, and from a former commander of an armored division in
combat. He's a trade-school guy (West Point), so he knows his military
history.

Things have been much, much worse for the US. Early in WWII, it didn't look
good. When the USSR got ICBMs and H-bombs, it really didn't look good.
Worldwide, nobody is having a really big war right now. The USSR lost 20
million people in WWII. Nothing that bad has happened since.

There are some big worries ahead, mainly regarding proliferation of nuclear
weapons and troubles involving existing nuclear powers - Russia, China,
Pakistan, and North Korea. Those are the things that can kill us.

Domestically, the biggest threat is the Mississippi River, with major floods
both at New Orleans and further upstream.

~~~
learc83
>Now that's surprising from the head of the JCS, and from a former commander
of an armored division in combat. He's a trade-school guy (West Point), so he
knows his military history.

Of course he says that, the budget for the department of defense is in part
dictated by how dangerous the public and congress perceive the world to be.

Military leaders have been saying this exact same thing for centuries.

~~~
jessaustin
_Of course he says that, the budget for the department of defense..._

Yet who does Congress consult when they're considering how much to spend? It's
almost as if they _want_ to spend more money on the military...

------
kristiandupont
I am increasingly worried about the state of the world each year.

However, I was discussing this with a friend recently and we were talking
about how much of it was simple the result of more reports about the trouble
in the world. I realized something: if there was, say, ten reports of really
bad, violent crime in Denmark (where I am from -- population: 5 million
people) per year, that would be very little. But even so, if I heard about
each of them, it would be practically something really bad happening every
month which would lead me to feel that things were going down the drain.

In other words, an unchanging constant violence rate would _seem_ like a
deterioration. And furthermore, if the type of violence was different every
time, I would start to feel that all the different types of violence were on
the rise.

So maybe my fear is not completely justified. But I still don't feel
completely convinced.

~~~
tim333
It's easy to get the impression that things are going to hell from the news
because that's what gets viewers. If you want evidence for the opposite I
recommend Pinker's very good book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence-
eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence-
ebook/dp/B0052REUW0)

Or to save the cost and hassle of getting his book, watch Pinker talking about
it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5X2-i_poNU&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5X2-i_poNU&feature=youtu.be&t=3m40s)

------
chasing
"The World is Falling Apart!" gets _way_ more clicks than "The World is Not
Falling Apart," though.

~~~
rimantas
Exactly. It is journalism what is falling apart, not the world.

------
retrogradeorbit
The 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.

~~~
parasubvert
Steven Pinker has done a fairly deep study of the long run decline in
violence: it is real, it is over centuries, and it is dramatic. But it is not
guaranteed to last. I highly recommend his book as it provides a lot of data
on the topic (and is quite a good read too).

"The decline in violence, he argues, is enormous in magnitude, visible on both
long and short time scales, and found in many domains, including military
conflict, homicide, genocide, torture, criminal justice, treatment of
children, homosexuals, animals and racial and ethnic minorities."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

~~~
fixedd
> Pinker uses the phrase as a metaphor for four human motivations that, he
> writes, can "orient us away from violence and towards cooperation and
> altruism,"[2] namely: empathy, self-control, the "moral sense," and reason.

All of which are contrary to religious fundamentalism... which worries me as a
US citizen.

~~~
maxerickson
Why? Fundamentalists are noisy, but they aren't a majority. Catholics are the
largest group, probably followed by the various types of non practitioners
(I'm including atheists and people that "aren't sure" together there, I think
it's fair to say that "not sure" is a ways away from fundamentalist). It's
harder to sort out the protestants, but the more moderate "mainline" groups
certainly have more influence than the fundamentalist groups, even if they
don't quite outnumber them (but they are at least similar in number).

The type of news that fundamentalists end up making also isn't all that
discouraging, they are usually losing court cases where they tried to inject
their beliefs into public life.

~~~
fixedd
I guess it depends on where you draw the line on fundamentalism. I live in the
Bible Belt and I'd argue that, at least, the Southern Baptists should be seen
as a Fundamentalist organization. That locks down the majority of the people
in the SE-quadrant of the continental US.

Also depending on how you draw your lines, the Catholics aren't even remotely
close to #1 status. About 24% of Americans are Catholic while about 51% are
Protestants. I'll agree that it's a little iffy, but I'm willing to count the
Protestants as a singular group.

Perhaps I'm just jaded because I live in the land of "lets turn the US into a
Christian theocracy".

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah, the first step of the discussion is drawing some lines.

When I said the Catholics were the largest group, I was treating the
protestants as separate groups. Mostly because if you are treating
"fundamentalist" as an axis, the protestants don't really group together. They
even tend to be somewhat polarized across that axis.

------
YesThatTom2
THIS IS TERRIBLE.

How can news agencies make any money if they can't scare people into hysterics
that keep them glued to the TV screen?

How can gun companies and home security firms sell product if people aren't
afraid of everything around them?

THIS KIND OF RESEARCH HARMS THE ECONOMY AND MUST BE STOPPED.

Sincerely, Tom being cynical

------
UVB-76
I think a lot of this has to do with perception.

The violence and suffering in the world, particularly overseas, feels more
inescapable in the digital, high definition, always connected age.

This age has gifted us perception, but not perspective.

~~~
kpennell
Saved that last line in Evernote to ponder later.

------
RoboTamer
It's simple, yes we might have less violence and your stats seem to make
sense. However, the reason you are right is because we are being more
controlled by, I don't know world bank, countries, laws. Today in Turkey they
want to give the president the power to turn off the internet at will for 24
hours. There is news like this every day, ways to get more control and power
over people. There are 1 million camels in Australia, the government thinks
that that is to much and they pay people to shoot them. So, one milion camels
is too much for a whole continent but there is nothing wrong with having 8
billion people on earth, destroying just about everything, that is ok? We have
no choice in what is happening around us, most people I know would want their
country to stop importing oil and find a greener alternative. This day an age
that wouldn't be too hard. So why aren't we? That is not in your equation! We
are destroying our oceans, atmosphere, finally the republicans are willing to
talk about climate change, but all is still weight around money and cost. The
monetary system is broken and it is global. One little change effects one way
or the other the entire globe. If you ask me it all is hanging in a balance
that is controlled by a few wealthy. And it is hanging on very thin strings
these days.

------
guard-of-terra
By the way, homicide rates chart should account for age distribution. As
population ages, the 18-40 age group dwindles. And, statistically, that is who
dominates homicide deaths.

If you account for that, your chart may switch polarity.

Same for rapes.

As for "Democracy and Autocracy" \- this chart comes from people who still
call Uzbekistan a "young democracy". Actually, many supposedly democratic
countries actually aren't.

------
Zigurd
A better title would have been "Progress isn't uniform, and measuring it is
hard." Each war brings progress in trauma medicine, which contributes to
making war (and driving) less deadly. That's good, right? Right?

Higher education requirements and increasing relative status as policing
becomes a relatively more desirable job for people with lower (and capped)
aptitude means policing gets better by many metrics. Nonetheless,
militarization is a bad thing, solution rates are shockingly low, the Drug War
is a distraction, and cop culture is rotten:
[http://www.salon.com/2014/12/23/deader_than_a_roadkill_dog_d...](http://www.salon.com/2014/12/23/deader_than_a_roadkill_dog_disgusting_racist_song_about_michael_brown_performed_at_lapd_officers_charity_event/)

Some things are clear, however: Terrorism is a negligible threat. Nuclear
weapons are still the #1 threat to civilization. But there is a lack of
intentionality in both these areas.

------
RodericDay
Steven Pinker has built a writing career out of telling people who are doing
really well that everything is fine and that they should keep on enjoying.

~~~
gjm11
He has built a writing career out of writing books about cognitive science and
language, and then more recently diversified into history and writing style.

Exactly one of his books, so far as I can tell, has anything to do with
telling anyone "that everything is fine". But it doesn't claim that
_everything_ is fine (only that violence is on a long downward trajectory).

I'm guessing that your real objection is to _The Blank Slate_ , which you see
as justifying entrenched discrimination. I'm not at all convinced that it does
any such thing, but in any case it's a long way from "Pinker wrote one book
that some wealthy right-wingers might find comforting" to "Pinker's writing
career is built on comforting wealthy right-wingers".

------
stealthfound3r
It`s the end of the world as we know it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzqiPvGrkTo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzqiPvGrkTo)

------
tim333
The world is not falling apart. Personally though things are wearing out. They
should fix that!

------
agentultra
This article is pure link bait. Both ends of the extreme are far removed from
the truth. There is hardly anything in this article that isn't sensationalist
fluff.

------
esaym
I've always heard that more people died in the 20th century than any other...
Not sure if that is true or not. Never did the research.

~~~
sanxiyn
More people were born in the 20th century than any other. Comparing the
absolute number instead of ratio is misleading.

------
desireco42
This is a proof that there are lies, damn lies and statistics :).

World is in terrible shape, from climate, to new conflicts emerging, richest
people detachment from reality are some that come to mind.

~~~
girvo
Solid evidence you've given there. I'm even sympathetic to being convinced
that things aren't as good as the datasets I've looked at personally seem to
show, but I've not had much that shows me otherwise. Instant world-wide wide-
band communication and mass media's adoption of it has had an interesting
effect on society's perception of how "terrible" the shape the world is.

------
aryehof
> England, Canada, and most other industrialized countries...

England isn't a country. Constantly referring to it as one, was a distraction
from the contents for me.

~~~
0x5f3759df-i
Wrong:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom)

~~~
tempodox
“Wrong” is wrong. The linked article cites England as a country in the UK.

------
seivan
Tell that to the 7000 Yezidian women in ISIS captivity marked with a price
tag, paraded through Raqqa then gang-raped, tortured and starved. Forced to
strangle themselves to death using scarves to get out.

Or the Female PKK/YPG soldiers defending their families being captured alive
by Swedish Arabs and Somalians islamic rapists.

For them the world is falling apart.

I guess since we can't blame Israel for this it's not front-page news. But
lets worry about about the lack of feminine characters in a Donald Duck video
from the 70s or the apparent sexism in games.

~~~
marknutter
talk about missing the point. You can acknowledge that violence is on the
decline while also wanting it to continue to decline. The danger in ignoring
the decline is that resources will be disproportionately redirected to solving
problems that aren't of any real concern (terrorism, war on drugs, etc)
instead of the problems that are actually in need of solving.

~~~
seivan
I never acknowledged anything you mentioned, so I am not sure what you've been
reading or smoking.

Please, tell me what resources have we spent on saving these 7000 women
(probably more) used as sex-slaves by these islamists?

I guess they are not a real concern because they're not as bad as "sexism" in
video games or the "racism" in using native American outfits for Halloween.

~~~
ps4fanboy
Short of supporting a full scale invasion and colonization of the countries in
question how do you propose to change the situations that allowed this to
happen?

