A Good Time To Be Alive

The news, whether on the smartphone or on TV, seems full of violence and death. The constant talk of murders and Islamic terrorism could fuel a great deal of anxiety.

But we are now living in one of the safest times in world history.

If you lived in, e.g., the year 1018, the average person would have witnessed violent death in person. Now, the average person learns about it on news websites or on television - where it is usually not directly shown, but reported, along with images of what happened either immediately before or immediately afterward.

For a human being to stand 10 or 20 paces from soldiers who are battling with swords and clubs, to see heads and limbs cut off in a single blow, to see blood pouring out of a human body in a rush - this is a horrifying direct experience of human violence.

A thousand years ago, much of the human race personally witnessed such violence.

Now, millions of people will live their entire lives without seeing, firsthand, a knife or ax or gun being used in violence. Yet these same millions will see innumerable instances of such violence on video - whether fiction or news.

It is therefore difficult for some readers to grasp the truth that the current time is in fact one of the safest and most peaceful eras in human history. Surveying the years leading up to 2017, the historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote in that same year:

In most areas war became rarer than ever. Whereas in ancient agricultural societies human violence caused about 15 percent of all deaths, during the twentieth century violence caused only 5 percent of deaths, and in the early twenty-first century it is responsible for about 1 percent of global mortality. In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

By these numbers, 1% of deaths are due to violence. Yet internet news and broadcast news feature nonstop coverage for days if some skirmish in some war kills 10 or 20 people.

News media devote far less time and energy to covering diabetes and obesity, which are killing many times more people, and are sometimes avoidable.

Yuval Noah Harari continues:

Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries. For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda.

Given that human nature is what it is, it will not be possible to completely eliminate violence among human beings. But it has been reduced to record lows, making life on planet Earth better than it’s been in centuries.

But why is there widespread depression and anxiety if life is now so safe? Why such deep political division and passionate protest if violence has been virtually eliminated?

Because of social media use and recreational drug use; because of news media ginning up the public with skewed, bias, and otherwise distorted reporting, and beyond reporting, opining.

Given that the world is incorrigibly flawed and imperfect, certain phenomena will never be, and can never be, entirely eradicated: disease, death, and violence.

But human society can greatly reduce these things, and has in fact already done so. This world can never be perfect, but people can make it better than it is. They’ve already made it better than it was.

The Vatican, the Church, and Pius XII

Looking back at the Holocaust, many historians have investigated the resistance organized against the National Socialists (Nazis) by the Roman Catholic church. Although this effort saved the lives of many Jews, it has also been alleged that pope Pius XII did little to support the work.

The debate has filled many books. Some painted Pius XII as a hero who worked to undermine the Nazis and save Jews; other have depicted him as unmotivated and doing little to help the victims of the Holocaust. Which view is correct?

This brief blog post cannot hope to answer this question.

A complex situation can be disentangled by recalling that the Pope, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic church are three distinct, if closely intertwined, entities.

The Curia is the bureaucracy which operates the Vatican. The Vatican is the complex of buildings and organizations serving as the leadership of the Roman Catholic church. The pope can influence, but not control, the Vatican.

Regarding efforts to thwart the Holocaust and save the lives of Jews (and other victims like Slavs), there are three questions: Could more have been done? Could something different have been done? Could something better have been done?

These questions need to be posed separately regarding the pope, regarding the church, and regarding the Vatican.

These same questions also need to be posed regarding the English, the Soviets, and the United States.

In each case, it will be found that something a bit more, or a bit better, could have been done - but not significantly more or significantly better.

The question, it is to be noted, is about what was possible.

The best response was not possible.

In the case of the Soviets, however, unlike the English, the Americans, and the Vatican, there were actions clearly designed to maximize the number of Jews murdered, e.g., when the Soviet army stopped outside Warsaw so that the Nazis could continue murdering Jews before the Soviets occupied Warsaw.

While some isolated individuals, like FDR, were unmoved by the plight of the Jews, such inertness cannot be attributed to, e.g., the U.S. government as a whole.

What must be dismissed is the notion that there was some widespread conspiracy to allow the Nazis to murder many Jews. Allied responses, when they were suboptimal, were usually so because of physical limitations.

The Holocaust remains one of the most horrific genocides and one of the most shocking human rights violations in history. There is a natural psychological tendency to respond by blaming someone - the English, the Americans, the Vatican - who should have been able to stop it or prevent it.

While the efforts of the Western Allies and of the Vatican, of the pope, and of the Roman Catholic church were imperfect, they were sincere, significant, and represented a major effort.