Editorial Review

Is Humanity Getting More Violent?

Steven Pinker in his book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined” he stated that we’re actually living in the “most peaceful era in our species existence” For everyone who is well aware of the news and everything going on around the world, you may find this statement merely ridiculous. Due to the violence that has been present locally and internationally.

You may think why humans are the way they are, why they resort to violence as a mean to solve their problems? Well, a theory is that since society’s norms prevent us from engaging in ego-fuelling physical violence(remember the arena games, wrestling, and other combats fought for the pleasure of spectators), many people resort to violence of the modern age to vent off frustration, anger, rage, or sometimes just an accumulation of excess energy. It is widely believed that modern society, in spite of all its technological and scientific progress, is morally deficient, compared with past generations.

 Humans are becoming more and more impatient, intolerant and impertinent. There are many examples, the Christchurch mosque shootings which consisted of a gunman live-streaming the attack on Facebook, on the day of March 15, 2019, in New Zealand. Which took the lives of 50 peoples and injured 50 others. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas School shooting, the massacre left around 17 students including staff member’s death and started the debate over gun control, the attacker was 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who had formerly been a student at the school. At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two teenagers went on a taking pictures spree on April 20, 1999, killing thirteen human beings and wounding more than 20 others earlier than turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. The Columbine shooting was, at the time, the worst excessive school shooting in U.S. records and triggered a national debate on gun control and college safety, as well as a most important investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17.

And the most recent one, on Easter Sunday, suicide bombers killed at least 359 human beings and injured greater than 500 at churches and top-end motels across Sri Lanka. Most victims had been Sri Lankans, but at least 38 foreigners are among the dead, inclusive of British, Indian and US citizens. Evidence is mounting that nearby jihadist linked to the Islamic State (IS) group carried out the attack, and police have made a range of arrests. Three have been at churches - in the Kochchikade district of the capital, Colombo; in Negombo, to the north; and in the eastern town of Batticaloa. The other three blasts rocked the Shangri-La, Kingsbury and Cinnamon Grand inns in Colombo.

Two similarly explosions have been reported later as police searched for suspects - one in Dehiwala in southern Colombo, and any other one close to the Colombo district of Dematagoda, for the duration of a police raid.

This and many more examples can be known throughout the history of our human existence, the worst is that many of these cases are being passed down to our children and teenagers, as you can see in more school shootings happening everyday especially in the US, we had countless of violent incidents, more suicide bombings, and daily robberies, kidnappings and murders. Statistics show that violent crime in the U.S. has declined precipitously in recent years, from 757.7 violent crimes per 100,000 persons in 1992 to 386.3 per 100,000 persons in 2011. Crime rates even declined during two recent severe recessions, from 2001 to 2003 and from 2008 to 2012, confounding predictions by sociologists and law enforcement officials that these downturns would send crime rates soaring.

In conclusion, people around the world can see that violence has been increasing the last few years, even though there maybe people who may think the contrary as Steven Pinker said earlier, but what we know is that we keep seeing on the news tragic events that mark a before and after in our daily lives.