Thursday, January 29, 2015

Will our historically low violence rates hurt our future as a species?

World violence levels are at an all time low in human history, but is that necessarily a good thing? David Attenborough, an English naturalist takes a bit of a negative outlook on humanity's colonization of the earth claiming "Humans are a plague on Earth" though this statement is a bit extreme it holds a bit of truth. Humans are certainly getting to the point where they are overpopulating the Earth and natural resources are not becoming more abundant. In the past violence between humans, in addition to weak defense against nature's natural selection, has acted as a counterweight balancing out the cancerous like growth of our species across this planet. Change needs to be made, according to Attenborough humans have proved that they cannot control climate change so the next step should be to limit population growth by implementing sex education which encourages smaller families. While I agree with him that sex education and smaller families is a model we should be gin to move towards I still think the real objective should be controlling global warming. Specifically in finding clean supplements for oil power and efficient ways to purify water. humanity as a species is at a low point when it comes to violence and crime world wide however the irony is if Attenborough is correct this historic golden age may lead to our inevitable doom. In my mind it is up to powerful countries such as ours The United States and others to blaze the trail to a healthier existence. 

Michael Johnson 
The Visual History of the Rise of Political Freedom and the Decrease in Violence-  http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Violence.html#/title-slide  

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