The good news: your chance of a violent death has never been less in the whole course of human history
For all the tragedy in the world, we need to remind ourselves constantly that we live in the most peaceful period of human history in terms of the chance of facing a violent death. This was demonstrated by American psychologist Steven Pinker in his 2011 book “The Better Angels Of Our Nature” and he has continued to update the data each year.
In a short article this week, Pinker looks at the trends since the Second World War:
“From a high in the second world war of almost 300 battle deaths per 100,000 people per year, the rate rollercoasted downward, cresting at 22 during the Korean war, nine during Vietnam and five during the Iran-Iraq war before bobbing along the floor at fewer than 0.5 between 2001 and 2011.
In 2014 it crept up to 1.4; again, upsetting, but a fraction of the previous highs. Newsreaders might expect the Syrian carnage to have undone the historic progress, but they fail to notice the many recent civil wars that ended without fanfare (in Chad, Peru, Iran, India, Sri Lanka, India and Angola), and have forgotten earlier ones (Greece, Tibet, Algeria, Sudan, Indonesia, Uganda, Ethiopia and Mozambique) that had massive death tolls.”
You can read Steven Pinker’s article and see the relevant data here.