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Comment by godzillabrennus | Hacker News Reader

Here is what goes on in a day:

1.) Bad things 2.) Good things 3.) Things that might be both bad and good

Thankfully we live in the safest period of human history. Thankfully many smart people want to focus their time on doing good things.

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> Thankfully we live in the safest period of human history. Thankfully many smart people want to focus their time on doing good things.

The obvious counter is "but you learned this from headlines" (assuming you're not like Hitchens with a bunch of intercontinental friends to be your eyes and ears.

No the headlines state the opposite. You learn this by reading history and looking at recent events through reasonable sources.

And yes this is the safest period in human history, and it continues to get safer by the day.

My personal favorite example to get some perspective is from the book Days of Rage. During the 1970s domestic bombings were a daily occurrence, and at the peak there were over 2000 a year. Even the massive amount of violence in modern day Chicago is nothing in comparison to what was happening as recently as the 90s.

It's an interesting thing how crime rates in the US peaked right after the fall of the Soviet Union and then went into deep decline: It's as if having the visible external enemy was the factor that allowed it to increase, and the post-Cold War paralysis deescalated this process. The Soviet bogeyman was replaced in turn with terrorists, but this too is increasingly seen as a domestic issue of "right wing militia v. antifa", lacking in credible affiliations abroad as the Mid-Eastern interventions have wound down.

And that is perhaps the real source of the frantic polarization: Look anywhere, just not in the mirror.

Not the person you were responding to, but I learned it from this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg

(Not joking in the least. It's a very good presentation. Title is: How not to be ignorant about the world | Hans and Ola Rosling)

yeah well you’re not being persecuted. for many it may as well be the 12th century or whatever

Agreed. Probably aren't too many Yemenis on here. Part of reading the news is to see how bad it really is for some people, and drum up ideas for how you can help them in your own way (donating to a public interest group, volunteering, raising awareness, etc).

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