A brief history of violence: the world is currently at its most peaceful point in history.

I mention this fact quite a bit during discussions on forums online when I see someone wailing and gnashing teeth about the current state of the world, because on the whole the current state of the world is quite good and continues to improve. There's a video on this subject as well from 2007:



Along with this there is also a continued increase in literacy in the world:

Poverty continues to decrease everywhere but Sub-Saharan Africa:

and life expectancy continues to increase (once again Sub-Saharan Africa is the unfortunate exception):

I'm pretty sure I wrote pretty much the same post last summer but it deserves to be repeated again, because it's a pretty important point that helps us keep things in perspective. At the moment there are two major things to take care of that will change the world pretty substantially for the better: continuing development in China and India (because of their humongous populations) and finding a way to improve the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa (this is the hard part). Apparently kiva.org (a system whereby one can give out small loans to entrepreneurs in the poorest parts of the world) is a good way to help.