World events have always been pretty messed up. The media provides us with no perspective and the inequality and self interest of the media is completely skewed.
There were approximately 10 days in 2016 that did not had some sort of terrorist incident- many of the other days had multiple incidents... how many did you hear about?
The collective deaths in 2015 in the 17 worst countries was approx 169,652. 204,687 Syrians have died in the past 3 years. A person is murdered on average every hour in El Salvador.
But for comparisons sake in the year 2000 (best stats I can find) 520,00 died through homicide, 815,000 via Suicide and 310,000 war related. ONLY 149,000 of those lives were in high income countries. (Our suicide rate in the western pacific is 22/100,00 that's crazy!)
But while those 1.6 million people died in 2000 due to violent and self inflicted means 6,081,000, 000 people didn't die from some awful means. 6 BILLION and 81 MILLION!
Sure I'll give you that a very small proportion (probably less than 100,000) of that 6.81 BIL were inflicting those painful deaths- but that still leaves 6.8 BIL people not killing. And I'll give you that probably twice as many people as died got injured. And 1.6 million mothers alongside 1.6 million fathers buried their children- if they weren't, indeed, already dead from the ongoing conflicts. There were also siblings and extended family affected personally by these deaths- and business owners in the region as well. But even if we very generously put that number at the whole 81 million.... what about the 6 BILLION other people NOT affected- 6 billion people living their lives, loving the families and caring about others- not considered newsworthy, not to be feared. 6 BILLION and that was in 2000 now our population is 7.4 Billion now there is more like 7 BILLION unharmed people on this planet- going around not harming people.
Thinking of the 17 worst countries none of them are anywhere near Australia and with the exception of maybe Egypt (who doesn't want to see the Pyramids) none of them are you ever likely to want to visit- Iraq and Somalia have never been high on my list.
You have been fed a media diet of gloom, doom, disaster and fear. It is paralysing, and mind warping.
Imagine if all the fearful people instead of whinging to the media/government about not letting migrants in spent their time volunteering for Amnesty international and actively campaigned to their governments to work with WHO and the UN to end all the shit things not happening where we are. Or demanded our government put money in to mental health and education, and international aid.
YOU are as SAFE as you have ever been, safer according to violent crime stats in this country (Australia).
I'm not scared.
There are millions, billions of people all over the world who are doing well, doing good, doing ok. Who are loving their children, families, animals and nature. Who are caring for their friends and their community.
They are everywhere I look. They live on my street, they live in the bush, the desert, they live in the USA, Israel, Gabon, Tokyo. Every time I go out I see them all around- they help my kids cross the road, they make sure the trolleys get back to the supermarket, they grow my vegies, they manage my bank, some guard the jails, some are in the jails, some are in psychiatric treatment and others are not, they life guard where we swim, and work in a hardware store.
Some of them are rich, some are poor and most lay somewhere in between.
Some are less friendly than others, some more.
Some of them are so intelligent and by western standards many are not- most fall in-between.
Some of them think things that I don't agree with, but I don't care- it's their right to think what they want.
But there are literally billions of humans being everywhere all around the world. And they outnumber the terrorists, extremists, rapists, and killers- they outnumber all the messed up people doing truly awful stuff by probably a million to one.
It's awesome I love living in this world, it's full of remarkable things from lady birds, to Cherry Blossom, to the Amazon jungle and people- lots and lots of super amazing, interesting, colourful, surprising, lovely people. They don't make the news though- because it's not new- it's been that way all along- and it will continue for as long as there are people on the planet.
Here are a couple of great examples why it's better to love loud than to support fear....
A Human of New York
History Tells Us What May Happen Next
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