Just How Bad IS The World Out There?

[HannibalBarca]

Turns out, not bad, getting better, and has been for some time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgXFxOoazJY

We are winning!  Spread brotherhood and tolerance <3

[Mantis Shrimp Prime]

More bad in the world than terrorism and wars.
Violence is down, but do people actually hate each other less? Do people love each other more?
I guess it depends on who you ask.

[Mathim]

Well, if the trend continues to be that the fastest-growing religious affiliation is 'none', I'd say yeah, things will get better.

[Lustful Bride]

Well, if the trend continues to be that the fastest-growing religious affiliation is 'none', I'd say yeah, things will get better.

......Not even sure how to respond to that but whatever :P

[Aethereal]

       Arranged marriages are less common. Divorces are somewhat easier to get. So I guess people *are* more likely to find and be together with someone they love...

[RedRose]

As a whole I do think things are getting better, but we are over informed.
According to the foreign medias, my country and Europe as a whole is this very dangerous place... and according to European medias, America is this very dangerous place... But if you go out and actually look around, daily life is so different. I do think there are some problems that used to be rarer (large scale terrorism), but urban crime used to be insanely high and it's getting much better.

[Oniya]

......Not even sure how to respond to that but whatever :P

I'd personally reply as 'none - of your business'.  I can believe how I want to, other people can believe how they want to (and as Geddy Lee says, 'If you choose not to decide / you still have made a choice'), and as long as they don't try to make their beliefs my business, we can all get along fine.

[Lustful Bride]

I'd personally reply as 'none - of your business'.  I can believe how I want to, other people can believe how they want to (and as Geddy Lee says, 'If you choose not to decide / you still have made a choice'), and as long as they don't try to make their beliefs my business, we can all get along fine.

EDIT: Removed my rant. It wasn't appropriate and this is not the time nor place for it.


But I don't want to derail this.

Yeah in some aspects the world is getting better. Not by much but it is.

It used to be a viable tactic to bomb cities with civilians, into submission, incurring high civilian deaths as a way to force governments to capitulate and to break the people's will to keep on fighting. Nowadays such a thing is heavily frowned upon and only viable targets are enemy government or military/command and control positions.

So if even our ways of fighting war have civilized more, then it says a good thing in my opinion.

[Beguile's Mistress]

The world is only as good as the people in it. 

[Oversight]

A proliferation of decentralised, democratic governments that allow greater freedoms to each individual? Good.

Groups of people abusing those freedoms to wield power over others, bolstering the already rampant bureaucracy and arguing for greater freedom from regulatory bodies to do so more effectively? Bad.

An increase in rational, critical thought, questioning of authority, and individualism? Good.

An increase in emotionally fuelled, confirmation bias-based paranoia, isolation due to the breakdown of traditional community structures coupled with a lack of new, encouraged structures to take their place and hyper-sensitive victimhood? Bad.

Tracking the world on a sliding scale of good and evil is an oversimplification, born from a deep-seated human bias for dualism. Rather, we as a species are gifted with a preternatural ability for pattern-recognition, an exponentially deepening vault of knowledge, and a whole bucket full of issues we need to work through-- and each time we solve one, more than likely two will take it's place. Intelligence breeds complexity.

[LostInTheMist]

Just one aspect: Crime rates are down because lead concentrations are down. Once unleaded gasoline became the law of the land and gasolines that used lead as an additive were banned, lead concentrations started decreasing in the atmosphere and the water supply. This had a huge impact on the crime rate. Even small amounts of lead can trigger psychotic rages, mental retardation (not necessarily just in terms of IQ, but emotional intelligence as well), and a variety of other health problems. But lead concentrations, it would seem, resulted in more violent crimes, and those rates have been steadily declining (despite any statements to the contrary) since the mid-1970s as tetraethyllead was phased out of gasoline. Now only Algeria, Yemen, and Iraq continue to use lead additives in their gasoline, compared to everyone in the early 1970s.

Do lower crime rates make the world a better place? Generally speaking, yes. If there's less violent crime, I am less likely to be murdered, and I consider that a good thing. Are there still problems? Of course. There always will be, and the world is not a perfect place. Is it better than it was say... fifty years ago? I can't speak as someone who was alive fifty years ago, but yes, generally speaking, I believe it is.

[Lustful Bride]

Just one aspect: Crime rates are down because lead concentrations are down. Once unleaded gasoline became the law of the land and gasolines that used lead as an additive were banned, lead concentrations started decreasing in the atmosphere and the water supply. This had a huge impact on the crime rate. Even small amounts of lead can trigger psychotic rages, mental retardation (not necessarily just in terms of IQ, but emotional intelligence as well), and a variety of other health problems. But lead concentrations, it would seem, resulted in more violent crimes, and those rates have been steadily declining (despite any statements to the contrary) since the mid-1970s as tetraethyllead was phased out of gasoline. Now only Algeria, Yemen, and Iraq continue to use lead additives in their gasoline, compared to everyone in the early 1970s.

Do lower crime rates make the world a better place? Generally speaking, yes. If there's less violent crime, I am less likely to be murdered, and I consider that a good thing. Are there still problems? Of course. There always will be, and the world is not a perfect place. Is it better than it was say... fifty years ago? I can't speak as someone who was alive fifty years ago, but yes, generally speaking, I believe it is.

Well...that's certainly a new one. Less Lead in gasoline leads to less violent crime.

Not sure if I 100% agree with you but I respect your opinion.

Though im curious about when you mentioned Emotional Retardation. Isn't that more caused by environment and not receiving the proper amount of emotional care from both the environment and caregivers?

I remember my sociology professor once bringing up an example of it. With orphan children not always developing right due to the people taking care of them either being unable or unwilling to give them all the right amount of emotional care. And how it starts even from birth that they need proper loving attention.

[Oniya]

It may be two things that correlate due to a third factor.  At present, the areas where lead is still present in unacceptable levels also happen to be generally poverty-stricken.  This in turn makes it more difficult for families to obtain the necessary resources (including time and stamina) to provide the physical and emotional support that their children need.  Throw in a child with lead-induced developmental disorders, and those resources get stretched even thinner.

[Renegade Vile]

It's extremely difficult I think to make a case for either stance; whether the world is better now or worse than it was any number of years ago. The easiest statement to make is that the world is just different. Different problems, different goals. I believe social, religious and educational issues have taken great strides in the right direction (though in some countries, the third in that list has been going back again...), but at the same time we have the radicalization of certain regions (such as the US and Europe) as a push-back to the current political climate - which has its own set of good and bad points. This radicalization can very easily escalate, which is a scary thought.
I'd prefer not to be a doomsayer, but I think violence is going to spike significantly in the years to come, on nearly all levels, though something on the scale of a World War I personally don't see happening anytime soon. For one, most of the super powers have their economies intrinsically linked. Bash something over the head of one for too long and you'll end up destroying yourself. Regardless, I digress. I think we overall live in a better time, if only because of technological and societal progress, but ever-increasing corruption and the growing 1% are extremely worrying.

[LostInTheMist]

Well...that's certainly a new one. Less Lead in gasoline leads to less violent crime.

Not sure if I 100% agree with you but I respect your opinion.

Though im curious about when you mentioned Emotional Retardation. Isn't that more caused by environment and not receiving the proper amount of emotional care from both the environment and caregivers?

I remember my sociology professor once bringing up an example of it. With orphan children not always developing right due to the people taking care of them either being unable or unwilling to give them all the right amount of emotional care. And how it starts even from birth that they need proper loving attention.

It's not really an opinion; the evidence strongly supports it, but I can't say it's an absolute fact. But if you've ever looked at (for example) the diaries of some of the men on the Franklin Expedition (last sighted 1845) to Antarctica, you see them confused at sudden outbursts of rage and violence that seemed to come from nowhere.

Continued exposure to even low amounts of lead can (if you're unlucky) cause significant brain damage. While this damage is usually reversible in adults, in 70 to 80% of cases affecting children, the damage is permanent. This brain damage can cause health, cognitive, and behavioral problems for the rest of their lives. If something causes brain damage, it can damage emotional centers in the brain, leading to all sorts of problems.

Perhaps "emotional retardation" wasn't the best way to put it, but it's the best way I could figure.

[gaggedLouise]

It's not really an opinion; the evidence strongly supports it, but I can't say it's an absolute fact. But if you've ever looked at (for example) the diaries of some of the men on the Franklin Expedition (last sighted 1845) to Antarctica, you see them confused at sudden outbursts of rage and violence that seemed to come from nowhere.

Just as an aside, Franklin's expedition went to northern Canada, not Antarctica - though one of his ships, HMS Terror, had been used, a few years before, on James Clark Ross' expedition to the Antarctic sea that was later named for him.

Both of Franklin's ships have been located in the last few years, a century and a half after they were abandoned off the coast of King William Island. The story of the expedition and those who came searching for its survivors (none were ever found alive) is a grim and fascinating one.