Obama: "The World is Less Violent Than It Has Ever Been"

Unreal.

You guys are fed a lot of cynicism every single day about how nothing works and big institutions stink and government is broken. And so you channel a lot of your passion and energy into various private endeavors. But this country has always been built both through an individual initiative, but also a sense of some common purpose. And if there’s one message I want to deliver to young people like a Tumblr audience is, don’t get cynical. Guard against cynicism. I mean, the truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be -- if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.

Well it's true. In the past people were lynching blacks, mutilating gays, and beating women. There is still violence but I can't think of a single time better than today.

He's basically right on all of those statements.

Do you think maybe the people of Iraq, Christians throughout the Middle East, soccer fans in Brazil, people who live on the Russian/Ukrainian border, school girls in Nigeria, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, and that Marine currently in a Mexican jail for taking a wrong turn might disagree just a little bit?

...well it is true. So, what's your complaint?

Wars happen all the time. Especially civil ones.

World War II was the most violent, costly and bloody war ever. More people died during that conflict than ever before or since.

60 million people were killed from 1939 to 1945. 2.5% of the total population of the planet at the time. The Soviet Union alone lost between 11 and 14% of it's entire population.These little bickerings between state and rebels, or insurgents and military's will never reach the level they were during WWII. Hell, the War in Afghanistan has seen the military deaths of 14,816 people. In twice as much time as WWII lasted.

Obama's point is that being bathed in bad news all the time distorts our perception of reality, and makes people ignorant of the fact that our era is more liberal, richer, less violent, more educated and more tolerant than in any previous era ever. I like how your response of "but some bad things are happening in some places!" might as well be a gigantic fucking sign with the words "The president's point just flew over my thick-skulled head" scrawled on it.

@toast_burner: Yeah but back then they did not hang millions. Now they do kill millions like it was nothing. Because of American World Banking Cartel owned government that is ordered to sponsor both sides of conflict and then intervene to "save the day".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyyDEFbDdzM

Conflict has existed throughout the entirety of human history.

General cynicism has only become a thing in developed nations because we have things too easy (which in itself isn't a bad thing, but it does make people rather complacent).

War isn't anything new.

World Bank owns US government.

The Rothschild family is slowly but surely having their Central banks established in every country of this world, giving them incredible amount of wealth and power. And they are using US government.

Rothschild owned Central Bank:

Central banks are illegally created private banks that are owned by the Rothschild banking family. The family has been around for more than 230 years and has slithered its way into each country on this planet, threatened every world leader and their governments and cabinets with physical and economic death and destruction, and then emplaced their own people in these central banks to control and manage each country’s pocketbook. Worse, the Rothschilds also control the machinations of each government at the macro level, not concerning themselves with the daily vicissitudes of our individual personal lives. Except when we get too far out of line.

In 2000 there were seven countries without a Rothschild owned Central Bank: Afghanistan,Iraq,Sudan,Libya,North Korea,Iran, Cuba

The Attacks of September 11th were an inside job to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to then establish a Central Bank in those countries.

The only countries left in 2011 without a Central Bank owned by the Rothschild Family are: Cuba, North Korea, Iran. And now they are being pocked at and dragged into conflict or accused of having nuclear weapon to gove US and their masters reason destroy and establish Rothschild bank

lol

He's partly right. The 21st century is definitely a lot less violent than the 20th century... but he's also partly wrong, because the 21st century has been more violent than the centuries before that.

More people were killed in the wars of the 20th century than all the wars in the nineteen centuries before that combined. Just because we've improved on the 20th century, the bloodiest century in human history, that doesn't mean we've improved on the centuries before that. All it means is that we've just reverted back to late 19th century levels of violence.

You do have to take into consideration that there was much less people back then.

That's one reason, but a much bigger reason is the increasing deadliness of modern military technology. Up until the 19th century, most wars consisted of 90% military deaths and 10% civilian deaths, because battles were usually fought away from heavily-populated civilian areas. Nowadays, most wars consist of 10% military deaths and 90% civilian deaths, because battles are usually fought within heavily-populated civilian areas.

Well, it is true.

No, there have been several wars in previous centuries with casualties measured in the millions and that was when the population was significantly under 1 billion people. By violent deaths per capita we're basically at the lowest point in history ever. The most violent wars that began in our century top out at 300, 000 deaths, which is less than half the casualty count of the American Civil War.

There is NOTHING right about his statement. The world is more in upheaval than ever. Sure if you want to compare it to 15th century barbarians, you got a point there. But I'm in my mid 30s and I know his statement is upright BS.

How so? Crime is down and life expectancy is up.

In your perspective. Life expectancy may be up, but that's because of advancements in medical technology and comfort of living. People are a lot better off today. This discussion is about world affairs.

So how is what he said BS?

The world progresses regardless of who is the US President. They don't have the power to really change anything.

I expect nothing less from him. He is a complete moron after all.

@SaintLeonidas: Well for starters Obama said it.

Ha, no. Wars before the 20th century mainly consisted of two armies running around pillaging for food from the civilian population until they started killing each other for a bit, then returning to how it was before. Civilian casualties were also very high compared to military casualties. Plenty of civilians suffered enormously.

You also have to remember that the pillaging for food caused massive famines, armies spread disease like crazy, and the death penalty was pretty much universal and very often (rather indiscriminately) used.

In the Napoleonic Wars, which was a damn civilized series of conflicts, the civilian to military casualties still ranged at about 50/50. The only time where you can reasonably say that civilians weren't really heavily hit by wars were the American Civil War and World War 1. I'd say a large part of the low civilian casualties for the Civil War could be attributed to the fact that both sides actively avoided killing civilians to appease public opinion, as well as improved logistics such as trains. World War 1 has pretty obvious reasons, mainly the war being largely static on the West.

He's right, imo. He's also ripping off content from Francis' speeches.

Not really. The numbers I've seen for the Napoleonic Wars put the civilian casualties at around 1 million deaths and the military casualties at around 2-3 million deaths, giving us a civilian:military casualty ratio less than 33:67. And that was the deadliest conflict of the 19th century.

The 1 million figure is nowhere near accurate considering how lethal disease was at the time. In the Franco-Prussian War, which was more than half a century later, you had about 180 thousand French military deaths and 30 thousand German military deaths compared to 300-500 thousand French civilians killed and 100-200 Germans killed.

i got in a discussion like this with some churchy joes who rang my doorbell at 8 fucking am last memorial day. he was trying to convince me that the world was going to hell and it's because we've all abandoned god and how jesus was going to come back and murde-- i mean "judge" the wicked. my argument was that the humans are better off as a species overall than they have ever been and we have the collective effort of mankind, not god, to thank for it.

Well that's one way to handle a Jehovah's Witness I suppose.

I think that's debatable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll

I'm not sure about this either. In fact I suspect the opposite might be more true.

1 million civilian deaths is the most commonly accepted figure among historians of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Franco-Prussian War involved a smallpox epidemic, so its civilian:military casualty ratio was unusually high for its time.

Look at.

The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.

You can't look me in the face and tell me these statements are correct.

So which one is incorrect?

Precisely, almost all wars at the time involved massive disease epidemics. Napoleons Russian campaign was brought down by typhoid epidemics, and it would almost certainly spread where-ever the army marched.

In any case, your 90/10 figure is nowhere near where it was even in the Napoleonic Wars. In the 17th and 18th century these figures would have been even more skewed towards civilian deaths.

Before the 21st century all over the world there used to be a large scale war almost on a yearly basiss, and I mean as in two nations smashing each-other or some horrific civil war with outside intervention. Massive epidemics slaughtered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. You would be persecuted and executed on the base of your race, religion, beliefs etc., nationalistic sentiments, closed borders, education many times amounted to little more than national indoctrination etc.

Not only has the number of war-related deaths increased exponentially, but even the percentage of war-related deaths relative to the world population has increased significantly.

This whole notion that wars were bloodier in pre-modern times is a complete myth. When it came to warfare, pre-modern societies were generally more "civilized" than we are today.

There's a war breaking out every year after the 21st century. There's a huge civil war that broke out in the country I was born in Syria. People are still persecuted on the basis of race, religion, and beliefs.

All of them?

I love all the idiots here saying the Pres is wrong with literally nothing to try and prove their statements...

Obama is very correct in his statement. People just let their perceptions of the world get overly skewed by the huge focus on negativity in the news.

It is just like the people who are afraid to fly and will demand to drive to a destination. They are actively choosing the more dangerous mode of transit because they let the news coverage of airplane disasters get to them, not realizing that any plane crash that does happen is going to get massive amounts of coverage BECAUSE of how rare they are. Meanwhile if the news covered every single car crash they wouldn't have time for anything else as car accidents happen constantly.

Hate to break it to you people, but all the statistics out there prove that humanity as a whole has gradually gotten less violent. Not just war wise either. Crime has also been dropping in a lot of places as well.

people forget that we still live in the shadow of ww2. in the grand scheme of human history, it may as well have happened yesterday. you cant divorce your society from the death tolls there.

Cynicism is good.

So you think there is more racism, homophobia and sexism than there was in the 50's? Like I said life expectancy is up and crime is down, so yes we are healthier, that is an undeniable fact. World illiteracy has been halved since the 70's so education is clearly much better.

Now you're just putting words in my mouth.

Then how can you say the world is less tolerant, healthy or educated?

OP demonstrates lack of history knowledge

care to provide evidence to the contrary? or just gut feelings?

Look at. The middle east is all in shatters. Nobody tolerates nobody else. Saudis Hate Syrians, everybody is divided along sectarian lines. Shiites hate Sunnis. Kurds have problems with Turkey. Iran has a problem with Israel. List goes on and on. Libya has a civil war.

Same in Africa, look at what's happening in the in the central part, lost of bad things last I heard. Ukraine is fighting Insurgents. Japan and Chinese governments don't tolerate each other.

BTW, I said people are living longer than ever. I never said they were unhealthy. Education also means you know enough so that you make the world a much better place.