There are many interesting defects in the reasoning of this kind of people but one of the most interesting for me is the ability to blame all, most or at least a lot of the bad things (or things they at least think is bad) that humanity has done on just one group of people. It is as if the rest us are incapable of doing the really bad things.

One could see it as influenced by and an extension of the dualism in the Abrahamic religions like Christianity. But I think this extreme dualism is quite rare even among the most fanatic religious people.

This is exactly one of the things I was afraid of.

The view that things have been getting worse and worse lately is very popular among those Christians that are awaiting the end times. Like most people with a certain belief, ideology, etc they are much better at absorbing facts and assumptions that are supporting their case than those that don't.

Lou: Hear me out. There are two major reasons for the increase. One. Our historical knowledge is better and better the closer to the present we get. The information on whole continents are missing! Second. Our global population have increased tremendously, this gives the wars a higher and higher death toll.

I'm not sure, but I don't think the explosions are adjusted for percentage of the population killed or at war. Some of those early wars were devastating to those populations. This video is also missing a lot of wars and conflicts especially early on (to be fair not a lot of good data for some of them).

Ninja'd.

I'm sorry but you shouldn't rely on this video for historical accuracy of any kind.
As I and others have commented before, it's not that there were fewer wars in the past, it's just that we don't have records of them and therefore we can't represent the many minor battles I'm sure took place in, say, Southern America in the 1200s. All records of those were unfortunately destroyed by Cortez and other Europeans when they conquered the place.
The same kind of thing is true for most periods/places where there doesn't seem to be many wars. The only decent records we have are for Europe, the Middle East and Japan.
Other places still had wars because unfortunately mankind is a warlike and destructive specie.

Edit: Double Ninja'd :(

I was thinking the same thing J.F. :-) Those lizardmen are some sneaky bastards.
Well it could have been made into a good movie at least, but I hope it won't since it would just make more people believe in the crazy idea.

To put it bluntly. If you take the historical information in a random youtube video as truth you are very easy to deceive, by anyone, for any purpose.


An australian metal band called "Destroyer 666" wrote this on the backside of the cover of their first album:
"When a people no Longer believe in a God, They won't believe in nothing, They'll believe in anything. AWARE! BEWARE! WAR!"
(On the same page is a woodcut with a wolf in clothing.)

It's a catchy slogan and an interesting idea, but I think the truth is in fact the opposite. Those that believe in a god are easier to mislead than those that don't. Agree? Disagree?

It depends. I don't think faith in God is a good indicator of how gullible people are.

First, people who have strong faith are unlikely to believe in anything that contradicts their faith, though they will usually be eager to believe in something that correlates with it.
Second, there are people who believe in God and base that belief in a strong rationale. They're likely to think just as hard about other things as their faith.

Personally, I think the most gullible people are the ones who want to believe in something but don't want to make the effort to find it out for themselves. Those are the people who end up taken advantage of by sects.

I didn't really mean things are that much worse now either. Just that it's not right to think it's a lot better - we're still starting about just as many armed conflicts as ever. The only difference seems to be that we haven't had a major major one for 40-50 years now, but that is as I said not a whole lot of time in the context of human history. I'm not so much interested in the death toll or the consequences for civilians etc. Heck, more than 10 million germans died in the years following the second world war too, in various unnatural ways.

When it comes to our historical knowledge, yeah, there probably were a few conflicts in America / Africa etc. before our records of those places really begin. But still far less than in Europe, the population density alone will take care of that.

And from the 12-1300s onwards we have pretty good records of everything going on in Europe, and later the new world as well. The video, based on a slew of wikipedia articles, isn't all that inaccurate by my judgement. Sure, you have to give it a little slack, but it's the big picture that counts.

War. War never changes. Right?

I for one am not so sure the constructs of the modern political society is going to prove that good of a defense against a new major conflict at all.

Political constructs, no. Fear, yes.
People do live a lot better than ever before. Most of them know how bad a major conflict would prove to be with modern weapons.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think our future is all peaceful and that we'll somehow evolve toward an enlightened specie who abhors war. In fact I'm pretty sure there will be a major nuclear war at some point in the future.
It's just that people have a lot more to lose, on average, by going to war as they did in the past. Therefore, it will much higher pressure before Western countries go to war.
Hence why I don't see it happening for a while.

Any Christian who believes the end is near is not really a christian.


Jesus himself. aka GOD! said he does not know when the end will come or whether it will at all.

Therefore we humans cannot even begin guessing when the end will come.

You really should know what you are talking about before you make such statements. Jesus only said "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."

And this was right in the middle of his discourse answering his disciples questions of "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"

He gives some very specific point to know the general time but not the day or the hour.

Only God knows when the end happens.
not even Jesus knew as he was a man

Therefore it is against Christianity to even attempt prediction when the end of the world will happen as this knowledge is only for God.

Instead it is pretty clearly said you should be living your life without worrying about that stuff.

My guess is that you are far less likely to die as a soldier or a civilian in an armed conflict today than in civilized societies in the past. Probably also compared to many tribal societies, though our knowledge of how much organized violence they endured is minimal.

There is of course the ever present threat of thermonuclear warfare which I have ignored, and what a realistic death toll of such a war could be today we fortunately don't know. Since there aren't two major powers armed to the teeth against each other, a possible nuclear war does not look as dire as it used to but it remains as the greatest threat to our existence.

Even if the chance of dying as a result of a war is as high as it was or even higher there are other important things that should be thought about when judging how good it is to live now compared to in the past.

Though not as important as all the technological progression, the way that our morals, values, ideas, have progressed are really important too.
From the Greek philosophers to Jesus to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to Socialism to Feminism, the sixties\seventies and beyond? The way we value other human beings have changed a lot and what we call humanism today is something totally different from what it was in the Renaissance.

A few conflicts is an odd way of putting it. In America the Incas, Aztecs and other made vast empires. You usually do that by spilling a lot of blood. Africa is different, with tribal societies on most of the continent. While we don't know how many of them that were warlike and peaceful the things I've read about tribal societies in general seem to suggest that tribal warfare have been quite common in our past.
I'd recommend this article: http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2006/mars/1142257919.89
(sorry it is in Norwegian)
While the battles between groups of people from tribes may have been unspectacular and small compared to battles between armies they must have been significant for the people in the tribes.

When graphical representations of statistics are used the big picture is easily manipulated, done on purpose or not. Note how Lou comments how the frequency of the explosions\battles are supporting her view on the end times. She doesn't know or doesn't think about the fact that the further back we go, the less things we know. And it is not just Lou or end-time Christians either, most people are like this. This is why historical knowledge should be taught with care and Youtube is making people dumber rather than brighter.

Actually it does. While I think that the intro to the original Fallout was the greatest cinematic moment in videogame history, I hope they stop repeating that in future Fallout games. When you understand it as "We will always have to live with war." I think it is true, as long as we stay the same species as we are now and are free to rule ourselves.
But if you take it at least somewhat literally it is false. War has changed a lot. Bombardment from airplanes and the atomic bomb are really radical changes. Just think how drone warfare will change the nature of war. (This is one thing I'm quite concerned about.)

Surely there will be a major conflict sooner or later unless we are wiped out by an asteroid or something else. The defense against it is better than it was before WW1 or WW2 but I can't say it is good.
My guess is that we won't experience a World War 3 in our lifetime but we will see some really horrible regional conflicts. I could be wrong though.