Salam

Hey, I don’t know if you know what I know, but you should know that overall, the world is a much less violent place than it has been in the past.

The trend towards a more peaceful world has really picked up steam since the 1950s, according to the chart above from OurWorldinData.org. Since then, armed conflicts still exist, but not as deadly as they once were. What hasn’t changed is the perception of war.

As you can see the trend lines on the chart are showing a sharp decrease in deaths due to war since the end of World War II.

Most of us depend on the media to keep us up to date on what’s going on in the world around us. Unfortunately a large number of these sources are in business for a profit. They make more money reporting on negative news — violence, war, corruption, crime — because of our inherent negativity bias, so we see mostly the bad things happening in the world.

If we don’t attempt to think critically about our sources of information, we’ll miss out on all the good news going on. Quite possibly the most impressive bit good news right now is how relatively peaceful the world is.

You may have learned that with the recent peace deal in Colombia, the Western Hemisphere is now free of war. Most of the world’s armed conflicts are now concentrated in Africa and the Middle East.

By the way, the Arabic word for peace is “Salām.” Hence the title. The greeting “As-salāmu ʿalaykum” means peace be upon you. But as I understand it is a Muslim greeting. It’s perfectly okay to shorten it to Salām if you wish to avoid the Islamic connotation.

There is still a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, even war. However, the point is that war is on the decline and has been 70 years. So cheer up. As long as Trump doesn’t screw up we’ll be alright.