The publication last year of a carefully researched Human Security Report received little attention. Despite the fact that it had concluded that the numbers of armed conflicts in the world had fallen 40% in little over a decade. And that the number of fatalities per conflict had also fallen. Think about that. The entire news agenda for a decade, received as endless tales of wars, massacres and bombings, actually missed the key point. Things are getting better. If you believe Robert Wright and his NonZero hypothesis, this is part of a very long-term and admittedly volatile trend in which cooperation eventually trumps conflict. Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%. Trends for violent deaths so far in the 21st century? Falling. Sharply.
Chris Anderson, curator, TED Project Technology, Entertainment, Design), Quoted in The Edge, World Question Center
Full texthttp://edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/andersonc.html
Well, you can pull this apart!
1. How does he know that 30% of males died in violence as hunter-gatherers? Such figures are unknowable and wild guesswork, undermining the rest of the argument . Common sense would suggest that,
the population being sparse and the environment less degraded, violence should be relatively less, but I don’t know, and neither does he!
2. Note that he talks only of males. In modern times we have, with the huge influence of the military-industrial complexes in the Western world, learned how to indiscriminately kill babies, their mothers and wholly innocent civilians from 10,000 feet in the air and barely mention it, so anaethetized are we to violence. Think of Coventry and Dresden alone. Think of the thousands killed by terrorists and the military in Iraq (the American public is seldom treated to those figures – it might make the war even more unpopular).
These figures thet author quotes are crude,even basically unverifiable. QED: the author must work for the Heritage Foundation or the American Competitive Enterprise Foundation, or some similar bunch, who can be persuaded to say anything for the right subvention.
if there is a sharply declining rate of killing it is beacuse of cooperation, however imperfect, through international organizations like the UN. these are the very organs of international cooperation the American government seeks to sideline or incapacitate. Shame!