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Zenofex
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posted October 06, 2016 07:42 AM |
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How much people are dying from conflicts today compared to before.
To which "before"? The Punic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars? World War I? World War II? The Cold War? Reagan's presidency? And for which area? Europe? Africa? The Middle East? New Zealand? It will be good to have a justification for the choice as well.
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As far as that is true, nowadays meens to solve political problems usually differ from what they were.
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Middle East problems were created
Quite an innovation.
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Many european countries experienced political unstability without falling in a pit of unsafety and conflitcs. This alone shows how the world is indeed safer that what it was, even if it appears simplist to you.
Yes, it does. Because big problems don't appear in a few days, nor their results manifest themselves in an arbitrarily chosen statistically convenient time window. WW I's roots can be traced back as far as the German unification and if you are strict enough, to the formation of the collonial empires after XV century. WW II was basically spawned 20 years before it started. Putting aside the usual propaganda about worldwide spread of democracy and human rights which prevents wars (just right after the last country which opposes the bombocracy lies in ruins), the thinking of the people who make the global politics what they are has not changed since the times of Richelieu (or even the Romans in some regards). Examples are all around. 25 years ago the mainstream saying was that after the fall of the USSR, only democracy and peace would follow everywhere. 15 years ago the EU seemed solid as a rock, with very good chances to finally unite Europe. This year the UK left the EU. Greece is a financial black hole, as potentially are Italy, Ireland and Spain. Several countries from Eastern Europe openly oppose the decisions coming from Brussels. Merkel will lose the next elections in Germany and has already lost her standing (and the support for her policies) across most of the other members. If the Balkans get flooded with emmigrants, with a fairly good number of smouldering conflicts already in place, you can expect chaos. And then there is Russia, against which the US plays a very dangerous game. There were certain periods in the near past when issues and dangers like these seemed like a thing of a bygone era.
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 08:18 AM |
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Edited by artu at 08:25, 06 Oct 2016.
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Zenofex said:
To which "before"? The Punic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars? World War I? World War II? The Cold War? Reagan's presidency? And for which area? Europe? Africa? The Middle East? New Zealand? It will be good to have a justification for the choice as well.
If you go into such specifics, my guess would be, you would end up with a zigzag which is slowly going down in the long run. (I'm talking about the ratio that takes into account the rise in population, not sheer numbers.) The thing is, prior to 20th century (or mid-20th century depending on where you live), maybe with the exception of U.S., since they had a rather isolationist policy up until WW 2, or very remote parts of the world which remained tribal etc., it was quite a regular situation that almost every family lost a few sons in the battlefield through two or three generations. And I'm not even talking about epidemics, famine etc, since it's off topic. For example, we have this anecdote, during the Independence War, Mustafa Kemal sees an old farmer with his son while driving by. He orders the driver to stop, gets off, asks the farmer why isn't his son conscripted, that they are fighting for their survival and the motherland. The farmer replies by saying that he had four sons, the oldest died fighting the Russians, another in the Balkan Wars, another in WW 1 and for them to take the last one away, they had to put a gun to his head. And this was not some extreme "Ryan Brothers" incident, it was common. I know for a fact one of my ancestors died in Egypt fighting the armies of Napoleon and another one got his head chopped off on the battlefield, but nobody is sure where. However, I have no relatives, distant or close, who died in the battlefield in this century that I know of, and most people are like me. Do you have a relative who died in a war during this century? Most probably not and if you do, you would be the exception, not the rule.
The frequency of intensive wars of massive scale dropped significantly after the world wars. We haven't stepped into a paradise of peace, far from it, but almost every family losing somebody is, as of now, a thing of the past.
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Zenofex
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posted October 06, 2016 10:26 AM |
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The frequency dropped in some parts of the world, particularly in Europe (for a good reason but Europe today is clearly less safe than Europe 10 or 20 years ago). In the Middle East it intensified compared to what was before WW II. During the Cold War itself you have the Iran-Iraq war with estimated more than a million casualties, apart from the other regional conflicts around Israel, Yemen, Egypt, etc. After it, you know very well. In Africa multiple local wars never ceased, in XXI century alone you have around 20 of them on top of all the other humanitarian problems there. With the increasingly scarcer food and water there, combined with uncontrolled reproduction and diseases, things are hardly going for the better there and will hit Europe at some point for sure - mainly because they are almost completely neglected. Most of the Middle East itself is expected to turn into a desert in alarmingly short terms, i.e. even more refugees. Cherry-picked statistics which you read in a comfy chair in front of the PC are not addressing any of these so frankly I don't understand where this optimism comes from. The world =/= your immediate surroundings, it's always good to keep that in mind.
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AlHazin
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النور
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posted October 06, 2016 10:52 AM |
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Zenofex said:
so frankly I don't understand where this optimism comes from.
Just like I fail to understand where your pessimism comes from with all what we said.
Zenofex said:
The world =/= your immediate surroundings, it's always good to keep that in mind.
Haha my surroundings are safe like hell is dude, I'm not living in a chic american suburb. The fact is I take in count all the regions in the world, and not only my surroundings like you said.
What I say, is that when people keep imaging the worst cataclystic possibility, they lose sense of the reality and don't deal with the current real problems which are solvable without entering any kind of conflict. When you the RDC in Africa, remember the Rwanda, Zimbabwe, even South Africa crisis, that today no longer exists and if it still does, it's not as big as it was.
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 02:24 PM |
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Zenofex said:
The frequency dropped in some parts of the world, particularly in Europe (for a good reason but Europe today is clearly less safe than Europe 10 or 20 years ago). In the Middle East it intensified compared to what was before WW II. During the Cold War itself you have the Iran-Iraq war with estimated more than a million casualties, apart from the other regional conflicts around Israel, Yemen, Egypt, etc. After it, you know very well. In Africa multiple local wars never ceased, in XXI century alone you have around 20 of them on top of all the other humanitarian problems there. With the increasingly scarcer food and water there, combined with uncontrolled reproduction and diseases, things are hardly going for the better there and will hit Europe at some point for sure - mainly because they are almost completely neglected. Most of the Middle East itself is expected to turn into a desert in alarmingly short terms, i.e. even more refugees. Cherry-picked statistics which you read in a comfy chair in front of the PC are not addressing any of these so frankly I don't understand where this optimism comes from. The world =/= your immediate surroundings, it's always good to keep that in mind.
Middle East has quite a long history of blood baths actually, Persians and Ottomans fight a lot, which also results in some internal uprisings that were handled quite brutally. India is a beehive and a conflict zone among many empires, The tribal wars between Arabs are literally endless, Mongols mostly level the ground by default wherever and whenever they invade... Yes, some parts that are in constant trouble in 20th Century due to artificial borders drawn after WW 1 and oil reserves, were relatively peacful before, since without industry and need for oil, nobody cared as much for them desert zones. But that is the exception in this case, not the rule. Most countries in the Middle East today are backwards in economy, science, regime, education, yet, they are home to enormous amount of resources which "attracts" any major power and that is a recipe for disaster. Middle East alone wont be some black hole for the future of all humanity, though and at some point things will have to resolve, just like they did in Europe with the world wars. We can see a lot of ugly stuff ahead but I dont think it will be anything near the scale of WW 2.
Also keep in mind that in the past, internal disputes between rival princes, monarchs also resulted in armies of thousands clashing into one another perpetually, where as today, the equivalent of such political rivalry usually doesnt get crowds killed.
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OhforfSake
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posted October 06, 2016 02:42 PM |
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In stead of listing various examples of conflict, I suggest looking at how long a person is expected to live today compared to the past to determine how safe he is. Here's a quick search wiki image showing a general increase since 1965 and an expected increase in the future as well:
Here it goes further back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Variation_over_time
Also perhaps weight it by countries in stead of individuals, because ~1/3 of all people alive today are from India or China. From the first graph Asia is about at equal level with the world, so I'm not sure if it'd make any difference.
A better display from the same page of regional differences:
We see that only African countries and the Middle East are equal or below the life expectancy of past times that are mentioned. India and China are both higher (which surprised me).
I guess there are no way to say for sure, but it certainly is my feeling that with inventions such as modern medicine, people do generally live longer and hence are more safe, if such definition of being safe will be allowed.
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 03:01 PM |
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Edited by artu at 15:02, 06 Oct 2016.
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Ohfor said:
We see that only African countries and the Middle East are equal or below the life expectancy of past times that are mentioned.
Actually, most of Middle East is green which is still like dying at 105 even if we go by end of 19th century standards:
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OhforfSake
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posted October 06, 2016 03:36 PM |
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Thank you for the correction. What do you think about the premise that how safe you are can be interpreted as ones life expectancy?
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 03:57 PM |
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I think it's not directly about what this discussion is about but it's not exactly irrelevant either. I mean, advances in medicine is the real game changer in general life expectancy, not wars. But of course, in a world where people die at 35, the whole norms about death will be different.
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fred79
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posted October 06, 2016 04:24 PM |
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2030, lol. that ol' life expectancy just keeps going up, doesn't it? i'm sure that 50 years from now, everyone will be living to be 200. 
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 04:40 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:41, 06 Oct 2016.
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Well, the last one is an estimate, of course. But the past ones are not. And if you look carefully at the estimate, there's not much difference in countries that are already high, it's just projected that developing economies such as India and Brazil will catch up with the already developed ones, advancing in healthcare and nutrition
They probably don't take in Doom as a factor in the equation. 
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fred79
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posted October 06, 2016 04:59 PM |
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artu said:
They probably don't take in Doom as a factor in the equation.
i understand, it's not logical to attempt to put a date on the collapse of civilization(even if i get the feeling and then post what i believe every now and then). but these graphs and stats never fail to leave me wondering, if in fact, anyone who takes anything into account, is actually thinking about the inevitable end. i wonder, if anyone has a graph on the possibilities of when? i'm sure it's out there somewhere. and i'm sure the actuality will come as a surprise, too. not much of a surprise, but a surprise nonetheless.
seriously, that civilization doesn't collapse every day(and hasn't collapsed yet), is... astounding, to me. that nukes haven't been launched yet, that something incredibly lethal hasn't come along and threatened our existence... i'm just confounded. the state of things leaves me thinking it's right around the corner, and yet, years of humanity doing what it does to each other and everything else have gone by, and civilization's still relatively normal. it's very confusing to me. you'd think with the sheer number of things that are wrong with our race, and that we make wrong in the world, that we would have been wiped out(or wiped each other out) like the dinosaurs by now.
surely, we shouldn't be the pinnacle of evolution anymore. something should have replaced us by now. that we still exist, is a mystery to me. maybe we only care enough to hold on by a thread?
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markkur
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posted October 06, 2016 05:13 PM |
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artu said:
...advancing in healthcare and nutrition
Artu, Artu. In the U.S. that's not the reason - it is the Preservatives added to our foodstuffs. Fyi, I read an official classified top-secret, eyes-only, document that instantly-disintegrated once I broke my gaze and it read "All foodstuffs will have mass quantities of Preservatives to Preserve our Tax-base."
artu said:
...They probably don't take in Doom as a factor in the equation.
Er, I think that "Game" is very relative.
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Zenofex
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posted October 06, 2016 05:16 PM |
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Just like I fail to understand where your pessimism comes from with all what we said.
Perhaps because only you think that you've said something substantial.
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Haha my surroundings are safe like hell is dude, I'm not living in a chic american suburb. The fact is I take in count all the regions in the world, and not only my surroundings like you said.
What I say, is that when people keep imaging the worst cataclystic possibility, they lose sense of the reality and don't deal with the current real problems which are solvable without entering any kind of conflict. When you the RDC in Africa, remember the Rwanda, Zimbabwe, even South Africa crisis, that today no longer exists and if it still does, it's not as big as it was.
See, that is what I call cherry-picking. With such attitude I shouldn't even bother. The Palestine conflict did not exist 100 years ago but exists now. See? It's easy. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember reading anywhere that you have monopolized the concept of "reality" to claim that someone has lost sense of it without actually providing arguments that can hold water. Quote:
Middle East has quite a long history of blood baths actually, Persians and Ottomans fight a lot, which also results in some internal uprisings that were handled quite brutally. India is a beehive and a conflict zone among many empires, The tribal wars between Arabs are literally endless, Mongols mostly level the ground by default wherever and whenever they invade... Yes, some parts that are in constant trouble in 20th Century due to artificial borders drawn after WW 1 and oil reserves, were relatively peacful before, since without industry and need for oil, nobody cared as much for them desert zones. But that is the exception in this case, not the rule. Most countries in the Middle East today are backwards in economy, science, regime, education, yet, they are home to enormous amount of resources which "attracts" any major power and that is a recipe for disaster. Middle East alone wont be some black hole for the future of all humanity, though and at some point things will have to resolve, just like they did in Europe with the world wars. We can see a lot of ugly stuff ahead but I dont think it will be anything near the scale of WW 2.
I am aware of all this, the fact that that region is lagging behind what is normally called "civilized world" and that its supply of strategic resources makes it attractive for brute-forcing corporate interests through all sorts of pseudo-humanitarian interventions hardly makes the prospects for peace in the near future very good. But I'm not the one who claims that things there are developing for the better. The Middle Eastern countries are not sealed within some force barrier which prevents the leaks of violence to other areas, as the recent experience proves, nor are the conflicts there locked between the Muslim states. For quite some time there is a very real proxy war between the US and Russia/Iran in Syria where Russia even participates quite directly.
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Also keep in mind that in the past, internal disputes between rival princes, monarchs also resulted in armies of thousands clashing into one another perpetually, where as today, the equivalent of such political rivalry usually doesnt get crowds killed.
The methods and scope of mainstream wars have changed, I am not denying that, however crowds are getting killed all the same. There is no direct clash between countries which can nuke each other and/or their allies for obvious reasons, everybody else fights the old-fashioned way. The nuclear countries keep their direct involvement in conflicts limited but orchestrate or at least manage them from the background when their interests are at stake. Military casualties for modern armies have dropped but civilian casualties from their actions have not.
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AlHazin
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posted October 06, 2016 05:42 PM |
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Zenofex said:
Perhaps because only you think that you've said something substantial.
Here we are. http://heroescommunity.com/images/icons/icon14.gif
Zenofex said:
See, that is what I call cherry-picking. With such attitude I shouldn't even bother. The Palestine conflict did not exist 100 years ago but exists now. See? It's easy. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't remember reading anywhere that you have monopolized the concept of "reality" to claim that someone has lost sense of it without actually providing arguments that can hold water.
Then bring proofs and analysis argumenting what you're saying, because I'm only seeing thrown thoughts and fears. And oh yeah, I did monopylze nothing, you're free to believe the reality that you want, that won't change facts, I gave you some sources if you remember well, just don't throw them because they don't fit what you're conviced of.
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Zenofex
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posted October 06, 2016 08:13 PM |
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Exhibit 1
Exhibit 2
Now apply Math for primary school. Baseline - 1945. Or pick whatever you want and try to prove that these regions are becoming more peaceful. While at it, you might also want to bring something to the table, the numbers and documents you want so badly yourself.
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artu
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posted October 06, 2016 08:36 PM |
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Your link actually supports what he said in the first place, even in the Middle East, the total death toll of the whole 20th century, is less than the Middle-Eastern theatre death toll of WW 1 alone. Nobody said things are perfect, only less violent compared to pre-world war times.
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AlHazin
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posted October 06, 2016 08:47 PM |
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Edited by AlHazin at 20:53, 06 Oct 2016.
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Well :
Your first link links to the modern conflicts in middle east, those that have occured since 1900. But today (and by today I mean 2010-now) you have the syrian war (englobing Irak too, cause basically it's relatively the same historical region), some instabilities in Israel/Gaza and the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. There are less conflicts again.
Your second link is about conflicts in some of Africa in all of history periods, what's the point of it? You may read "on going" under every country but on the terrain the situation is different. Most of these countries have attained security degrees that are not stated.
In the first link below, you'll see the contradition between what wikipedia says for the Insurgence in Maghreb for example, and how much people died by murder in every maghreb country.
If you compare the algerian civil war (which is basically "islamic" terrorism, nothing more nothing less) to what Al Qaida claims to do actually under that Insurgence in Maghreb, you'll catch the difference.
Again, the sand war has the status ongoing, it's misleading. On the terrain, the real situation is, 20% of Occidental Sahara is controlled by the Polisario front, 80% by Morroco, there's even a wall between them, but there is no "war". Algeria and Morroco are at peace, just because any suitable outcome wasn't found for every side doesn't mean the conflict is going on, it means the dissagreement is going on. That's a problem of definition.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-10-23/world-actually-safer-ever-and-heres-data-prove
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html
Edit : Not sand war, my bad, but Western Sahara conflict.
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Zenofex
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posted October 06, 2016 08:55 PM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 21:02, 06 Oct 2016.
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You really have to pick one point and stick to it if you want to maintain solid position about something. It was World War II initially, now it's World War I, next maybe we can go back to the Crimean War and then to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. If the body count is that important for you, disregarding the fact that during WW I about half of the Middle East was the Ottoman Empire, then OK, I agree, your generals fought just as incompetently as many of the other commanders in that war and managed to lose millions from all over the empire and achieved a record which is not yet surpassed. How does that translate to "the Middle East (and the world in general) is becoming more peaceful" however?
@AlHazin, dude, really, I'm getting tired of this. If your point is that one randomly picked country has not had a "serious war" (whatever that means) in the past 10 years of whatever and that proves that the world is becoming safer, I see no point in arguing any further.
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Sumsum
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 06, 2016 09:10 PM |
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fred79 said:
i'm sure that 50 years from now, everyone will be living to be 200.
A recorded case of a man living up to 130 years, his wife living to 180 years, in Korea. So if the woman lived up to 180 years, that means that we can all get to 200, if we live extremely careful. That will be hard tho, considering climate change, stress etc. Only medicine might increase the chance of getting at a such high age.
*Note, the recorded case was in 300 A.D so, yeah.*
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