re: #43 b_sharp

He’s talking about more recent times than you are. Culture has changed, global violence now is less than it was mid 20th, even family violence is less accepted than it was in the ’60s.

A couple of decades (in a small subsection of the entire world population)over 5000 years of recorded human history?

Not buying it. It’s like claiming 2mm of silt at the top of a 2000 ft deep sedimentary sequence really means something super important…just because.

I would have to see what his documentation is, but I have seen nothing anywhere to lead me to believe in an innate better nature that is improving.

What I see, time and time again, is the State of Nature and War as described by Hobbes whenever the veneer of civilization is stripped away:

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”