Is this the most dangerous period to be alive??????

Penn

"Two things have always been true about human beings; One, the world is always getting better. Two, the people living at that time think it's getting worse." - Penn Jillette

kneemos

60 million killed in WWII,still within living memory.

Galwayguy35

No.

Wouldn't have liked to have been around when the Mongols were killing everything that moved, I'd say their level of slaughter left ISIS in the ha'penny place.

Dying from the Black Death wouldn't have been great either.

Irishguy16

kneemos wrote: »

60 million killed in WWII,still within living memory.

I said in my origin message, not including both World Wars!!

galljga1

Irishguy16 wrote: »

Medicines works? clearly not, not with the large death toll throughout Africa on a daily basis, Ebola was first declared an epidemic back in the 1970's, although came out in a greater force last year, still no cure, leaving quarantined communities to suffer and die week in week out.Are you forgetting about AIDS?kills more than a million a year, what about Malaria, Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Meningitis,tentanus,measles, and so on...... Most of these diseases are relatively new!!!!

Women have rights? You are clearly looking at the world from a western perspective. In Saudi Arabia, women aren't even allowed to drive, must cover their faces all of the time, mistreated, beaten, so on and so forth, are you forgetting about Afghanistan? One in eleven women are sentences to death at birth. The Congo is also top of my list, giving women no rights to freedom of speech, and they have no one to address because no one defends their rights. Do you not know about the terrible story about the Fillipino maids in Hong Hong? I can go on and on, but I'd prefer that you educate yourself by doing some research!!!

Slavering has been pushed out? Are you kidding?

Do do a quick google search and you will see that slavery is as visible today as it has been back in America in the 1800's. Look at the Qatar 2022 World Cup construction workers, working for a euro a day in blistering heat, passports confiscated, working long and exhausting days,living in shacks with no running water, just look at some of the BBC documentaries, they report on some very clear issues. Look at the North Koreans, working in the forests of Russia for free, in return for praise from Kim Jong Un. Brainwashed!!!!

What about the slave camps in North Korea? Do you have any idea how many people are tortured on a daily basis.

The world is really fare and advanced today? Why are so many innocent black men being shot to death in America on a weekly basis, causing riots.

You are right war has been around for thousands ond thousands of years, but now we have more wars, more people and more diseases. This is a viscious cycle, people dying at an extreme level. I bet you have never left Ireland before in your life?

Open your eyes mate!!!!

Still the safest era ever in most parts of the world.

Irishguy16

DeadHand wrote: »

The entire death toll caused by armed conflicts throughout the world in 2014 would have been roughly the same as a particularly quiet week during World War Two.

Not looking for any World War comparisons, mentioned in my original posting!

galljga1

galljga1 wrote: »

Still the safest era ever in most parts of the world.

I will however add that we have the most sophisticated arsenal ever, capable of killing practically all life on this planet (some will survive regardless of what we as a race do). A bit scary but personally, I am not heading for the hills anytime soon.

Sam Kade

Tv3 just reported a shooting in a house in the US, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for news. Not so long ago it would never make irish news.

ScumLord

Irishguy16 wrote: »

Medicines works? clearly not, not with the large death toll throughout Africa on a daily basis, Ebola was first declared an epidemic back in the 1970's, although came out in a greater force last year, still no cure, leaving quarantined communities to suffer and die week in week out.Are you forgetting about AIDS?kills more than a million a year, what about Malaria, Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Meningitis,tentanus,measles, and so on...... Most of these diseases are relatively new!!!!

Ebola only affected Africa like that because they don't have good medical systems or the infrastructure (modern sewage) needed to combat the spread to stop these things. It was stopped in it's tracks by western countries. The fact poor countries were badly effected while western countries weren't shows medicine works when people have access to it. New diseases are obviously going to cause problems until we study them and find out how to combat them.

Women have rights? You are clearly looking at the world from a western perspective. In Saudi Arabia, women aren't even allowed to drive, must cover their faces all of the time, mistreated, beaten, so on and so forth, are you forgetting about Afghanistan? One in eleven women are sentences to death at birth. The Congo is also top of my list, giving women no rights to freedom of speech, and they have no one to address because no one defends their rights. Do you not know about the terrible story about the Fillipino maids in Hong Hong? I can go on and on, but I'd prefer that you educate yourself by doing some research!!!

While things are still bad in some parts of the world the western influence is overpowering. Even countries in Africa and the middle east are changing, their late to the change and have to go through all the same problems we did but it is happening.

Slavering has been pushed out? Are you kidding?

I never said pushed out, I said pushed to the edges of civilization. Slave traders hide in the fringes of western society or have to operate in corrupt countries that ignore their own laws on the subject. there is the fringe of borderline slave labour which we're all responsible for with our purchases. Over all though, even in places like China things are improving for workers, the goal for any industrializing nation is to turn the country into something more in line with the west and to have a large tax paying middle class.

What about the slave camps in North Korea? Do you have any idea how many people are tortured on a daily basis.

The most odd ball billy no mates country in the world. They're not a good example of how the world is today.

The world is really fare and advanced today? Why are so many innocent black men being shot to death in America on a weekly basis, causing riots.

How many innocent black men are being shot? The problem in America is police resorting to maximum force. And as bad as it is, it's a hell of a lot better for black men in America today than it was even 50 years ago.

You are right war has been around for thousands ond thousands of years, but now we have more wars, more people and more diseases. This is a viscious cycle, people dying at an extreme level. I bet you have never left Ireland before in your life?

Well you can add that to your list of extreme assumptions that are wrong about.

What makes you think there are more wars? There were more independent cultures in the past, annual wars were part and parcel of ancient greek diplomacy. France and Britain went through a 100 year war, Do you really think there was less wars during the age of empires??

What makes you think there are more diseases today? None of these living organisms just popped into existence, they've been around for a long time they've just been hidden in inaccessible jungles.

desertcircus

I don't remember the source, but I recall a statistical analysis that indicated that a randomly selected person's chance of dying violently, dying as an infant, dying in childbirth or dying from a preventable disease are lower in the modern world than at any point in history.

galljga1

Gran Hermano wrote: »

The Pleistocene was pretty miserable in comparison.
And cold, bloody damn cold.

Ah come on, we would not have had Morph, Wallace and Gromit, Shaun The Sheep... the list goes on.
You shouldn't let it go cold. Bang it in the microwave for 30 seconds: perfect.
Try working with marla, that is a pain in the ar$e.

super_furry

We live in mankind's most peaceful era.

eeguy

Hard to think only 100 years ago that 37 million died in WW1, then 50 million died in the years after from Spanish flu.

So no.

This is probably the best time to be alive.

VinLieger

Irishguy16 wrote: »

Not looking for any World War comparisons, mentioned in my original posting!

You arent looking for world war comparisons yet you quote active and recent conflicts in your OP as your reasons for making the suggestion its the most dangerous time to be alive?????

eeguy

VinLieger wrote: »

You arent looking for world war comparisons yet you quote active and recent conflicts in your OP as your reasons for making the suggestion its the most dangerous time to be alive?????

Pretty much this.

Here's a mental exercise:

Think of all your facebook friends. How many have died from unnatural causes in the past 5 years?
Most likely none, though you may have a car accident or suicide in there.

If that was 100 years ago, then maybe 5% or more of your facebook friends will have died, most likely from diseases, infections or violence.

BobMcBob

Remember a radio report suggesting that this is the safest time to be alive, you are less likely to die a violent death now than at any previous point in history

catallus

super_furry wrote: »

We live in mankind's most peaceful era.

Because the dinosaurs are extinct? It must have been tough surviving when they were around.

And yes, I know most of them were herbivores, before anyone tries to point that out.

Adamantium

Isla Nubar, circa 1993.

Bad times.

Read somewhere before that the murder rate in medieval times was over 30 times what it is now.

You had regular famines, Black Death, disease, very short life expectancy etc. etc.

TwoShedsJackson

TwoShedsJackson wrote: »

No it's not, it's just a lot easier to hear about all this stuff due to the internet. Try living before public sanitation systems were invented.

Exactly, just look at all the health & safety features (too many to mention) that are in existence today.

Jesus Wept

You couldn't be more wrong. You could try, but you would not succeed.

conorhal

BobMcBob wrote: »

Remember a radio report suggesting that this is the safest time to be alive, you are less likely to die a violent death now than at any previous point in history

If you live in a first world country that is. It's not a great time to be trying to scrape by if you live in South Sudan or Syria for example, and some parts of South America are beginning to make Johannesburg look positively safe. It also depends on who you are, Honduras has the unenviable title of female murder capital of the world right now.
Even in the West the outlook isn't great. Economists will tell you that economic equality is on the decline (it peaked in the mid 1970's) and the outlook is only for inequality to grow. I guess I'm feeling pretty pessimistic about the state of the world as it is today. We my 'never have had it so good' but that really only leaves one direction in which living standards are likely to travel. Just wait until the oil turns from a flow into a drip, global warming creates food instability, economic instability creates revolution and the last of our effective antibiotics run out.

eeguy

conorhal wrote: »

We my 'never have had it so good' but that really only leaves one direction in which living standards are likely to travel.

Why? Things have never been better, but they could get better still!

ScumLord

conorhal wrote: »

If you live in a first world country that is. It's not a great time to be trying to scrape by if you live in South Sudan or Syria for example, and some parts of South America are beginning to make Johannesburg look positively safe.

But when has it been better in the past. People that live in Syria and parts of the world like it had to be nomadic to survive. Even simple things like plastic containers are going to improve their quality of life compared to how things were even 50 years ago.

The problem is these countries are rapidly trying to adapt to a new world and external influences they didn't have before. New cheap technology like mobile phones are making inroads and corrupting the status quo.

We can't expect all these countries to change into westerners overnight. It took us decades and probably centuries to end up with the culture we have now, we're expecting these places to do the same thing over a few years.

Irishguy16

VinLieger wrote: »

You arent looking for world war comparisons yet you quote active and recent conflicts in your OP as your reasons for making the suggestion its the most dangerous time to be alive?????

I feel that it's important to avoid both World Wars, let me tell you my reasons......

Open up any history book at school or elsewhere, from any language, from any country, and you will see a chapter or two dedicated to both wars. Every child/teen in the world is, or should be educated about what went on, two of the most herendous periods of history!

Now rewind ten years, or go forward ten years, none of the recent atrocities, have or will appear in textbooks globally,you really think Joseph Kony's legacy around Uganda, displacing millions, is going to end up in a text book in Japan? You think the Tianaman square massacre will end up in a textbook in Ireland or China? You think Bush carelessly taking down a dictator in Iraq causing controversy throughout the Middle East, killing hundreds of thousands,is going to end up in a text book in Algeria?

My original posting was set up for a few different reasons,most notably how we are blind in the west, turning away some tragic stories, in exchange for reports about a young guy leaving One Direction, or focusing on a gay minister for health, why is someone's sexual preferences more important than hundreds of people massacred on the streets of Kabul?

Combine all of the conflict and wars over the past ten years. How many people have died and have been displaced? Nobody knows, instead we are all focusing and aware of what went in the World Wars, unable to even care, or cover, some of the brutal deaths in Africa and beyond!

It's 2015, but I can guarantee that more than half of today's youth are unaware about today's atrocoties. How viscious do these events have to be to make it into a school curriculum?

dandyelevan

Ireland, by comparison to many others is a safe place, and, thank God, at the moment free from war and civil strife.
We Irish, and really I hate to generalize, know little or nothing about real War, except through the Media.
Yet, amazingly, there are some among us who would 'cream their trousers' to see serious civil strife, if not all out War on our streets.

There are many, many, Irish (myself included) who've worked in war zones and witnessed close up man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
But let me say this...there's nowt romantic or honorable in any war.

War is a business, a dirty, filthy, bloody business.

'War is hell', as the old saying goes, and 'tis a fact.

Personally, I've lived and worked in two countries in the throes of Civil Wars, witnessing war crimes practically on a daily basis from age 18 to 45.
Civil Wars are the dirtiest of all Wars.
I've seen friends and comrades, Irishmen (and other nationalities) blown to pieces by booby-trap bombs, artillery fire and machine-gunned by all sides of these conflicts.

I still 'carry' a practically useless arm, thanks to an Israeli artillery round in 1995.

Too well I remember coming home (a five hour plane journey from Lebanon) to Ireland, and it would take a month or more for the nightmares to go away and normality to return to my brain.
With each trip this took longer until they decided to stay with me for good.
(I did 6 trips, with time in Syria and Gaza in between.)

Even after 20 years, I still have those nightmares.

And every time I came home to hear people singing songs in my local pub, and on the national airways, glamorizing war. (What a crazy, innocent, childish nation we can be)

In my opinion, and you'll agree I have some experience in these matters, while we are at the moment living in a quiet, peaceful land, there are some worrying trends afoot. Our police, politicians, clergy, legal and Health system, and armed forces are disrespected, their moral undermined, not by everybody...a few, but a few with an agenda is all it takes to spark serious trouble and let the 'genie' out of the bottle.
Seriously, I worry about Ireland in the coming years.

Apologies if I strayed off topic.