The world is more peaceful than ever 2010-May-30 at 17:43 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: globalization, peace, Thomas P.M. Barnett
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Chart of the day: Battle-deaths in state-based warfare since 1946, by Thomas P.M. Barnett, 28-May-2010
One of the many bases I cite for the argument that state-on-state war, when compared to the great expanse of human history, has pretty much gone away.
I try not to link to too much of Dr. Barnett’s stuff, mostly because you should all be reading his blog already, and also because I feel like I want to link to most of his blog entries, since I agree with almost all of them, so how do I choose? Here he links to the miniAtlas of Human Security, which has some amazing information.
For instance, the number of deaths in state-on-state warfare has dropped to a historically low level.
Deaths in non-state conflicts also showed a remarkable drop from 2002-2005.
Meanwhile, the number of democracies in the world has skyrocketed, while the number of autocracies has plummeted.
It all adds up to one overwhelming fact: the world is more at peace today than it’s ever been. With globalization clearly taking a dominant role in the lower-right structures of governments around the world, and therefore impacting the lower-left cultures of those nation-states, our planet continues to grow more peaceful as the years and decades roll on.
Much more good information is found in the miniAtlas.
The Dawn of the Integral Age 
Thank you for sharing this. Part of my current project attempts to relate a similar sentiment through global portraiture, suggesting that there’s plenty to celebrate and embrace right now. So frequently we’re presented with data to suggest that bar none, the world is going to hell in a handbasket (thank you green, among others). I suspect there will always be some degree of suffering/marginalization, and while it absolutely garners our attention, need not limit our capacity to appreciate the things that are functioning and altogether thriving today!
I’d love to see what you’re doing in terms of pictures around this. I think that having cultural artifacts that demonstrate this from a developmental point-of-view (beyond Thomas Barnett’s books, of course) would be an amazing gift.
I just linked to this blog post on facebook; and I’ll be taking further looks at Barnett’s work. Great timing as I am soon in a series of “Measures” calls in which we’ll inquire into how we know that our humanity is developing.