RE: Is The World Becoming More Violent?
Here some statistics about causes of death in Germany (year 2015):
- Overall: 925200
- Cancer: 226337
- Heart attack (without any other cardiovascular diseases: 50948
- Falls (for example from a ladder): 12867
- Car accidents: 3688
- Suicides: 10078
- Terrorism: ? < 0.1 %
That means to become a victim of a terror attack is statistically extremely unlikely. Ladders, stairs, cars, my own psyche are all much more dangerous (which still doesn't mean I refuse to sit in a car ... :-) )
I wonder why newspapers aren't full of cover stories about dangerous ladders, how to forbid them, fight against them and punish everybody who dares to buy one ...
It is true that if a terror attack happens, it is really terrible for all affected persons and I really feel with them and their relatives and friends, but that doesn't change my opinion that we react completely irrational. We do exactly what the terrorists want: fear them a lot and talk and read about them all the time ... As a consequence the terrorists are winning even if they are less dangerous than ordinary traffic jam: we change our behavior and restrict voluntarily our own freedom (in the seek of vain safety).
yes it's true, as soon as you introduce an element of human intention, our reaction to violence completely changes
we've had relatively few terrorist acts in Australia (3 deaths in the last few years) but a lot of laws have been changed in response to it, whereas floods and forest fires can cause far more deaths and we don't react anywhere near as strongly