I was surprised at how they scoffed when I said the world was getting less violent. These are hard-thinking, highly educated men. I asked why they thought otherwise and was told to look around me. I looked around me and reported that I couldn't see any violent act. In fact, my own observations over my entire lifetime have included virtually zero violence. I have never seen a murder or attack. Of course, my own individual experience is hardly indicative. I was asked where I got the idea that violence was decreasing. I cited the book by Steven Pinker called "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined".
As often is the case with me, I know of the book but I haven't read it. I do know that Bill Gates recently reported Pinker's book as one of the best he has ever read. Naturally, I mentioned Fox News and other media that cater to negativity, which gives many of us negative impressions. It is not easy to grasp trends nation-wide or world-wide so I looked at the question "Is there less violence these days?" but it was too vague and I am interested in too long a time frame, say over the last 1000 years. Google Trends doesn't seem to be built to cover such a time.
However, I will point out that Google Search and other searchers such as Bing and Duckduckgo and Google Trends enable us to quickly get information about both dangers and improvements in human life.
I did read "Sapiens" by Harari and it was an uplifting book about our past and our likely future. The future is always iffy ground since charlatans and fanatics can easily take refuge there. If you don't believe the world is going to end when I say it is, maybe I can at least scare you some by extending the time we supposedly have left. I remember reading that when Western tableware was becoming fashionable, objections and fears were expressed that men would lose their temper at the table and use knives and forks on each other. These days, artificial intelligence and more educated and thoughtful people who can and do communicate with a wide variety of others around the globe may well manage to head us in better directions that we have taken in the past.
We do seem to still be in the grip of ape and animal psychology which can bring to mind the idea of fulfilling our desires by force as well as the idea that others might do us harm. The steady news of individual shootings and threats by other nations can easily color our impressions of what is happening. It has now been 100 years since the First World War and we might be getting a better picture of politics, communication, technology both civilian and military and our own history and that of others. Americans have their own pictures of manliness and important battles for advantage and honor as do many other groups on the planet.
