Smile! Things aint so bad!

2 explosions at Brussels Airport, 1 at subway station; 26 killed

You were saying?

I coincidentally watched this fantastic TED talk last week while studying Buddhism.

More proof that violence is actually on the decline:

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence?language=en

Streen wrote: 2 explosions at Brussels Airport, 1 at subway station; 26 killed

You were saying?

Oh come on now. A single incident or even several does not change the statistics that more then one person has linked

Streen wrote: 2 explosions at Brussels Airport, 1 at subway station; 26 killed

You were saying?

I would take this to mean that there are still people who wish to fight against the progress we are making and want to continue to live in the stone age. It takes nothing away from the point that the world is safer now than it has ever been.

This tragic event only serves to remind us that in our pursuit of progress we must remain ever vigilant against those who seek to hold us back. My thoughts are with those effected in Brussels today.

Streen wrote: 2 explosions at Brussels Airport, 1 at subway station; 26 killed

You were saying?

Using a tragedy like this to make a point in an internet debate is morally reprehensible. It's also a fallacious argument, but I'm not going to get into that now. Using dead people to make a political point is absolutely shameful, indefensible behaviour. Do you not have a sense of humanity or human decency? This is simply heartless.

Adi wrote:

Streen wrote: 2 explosions at Brussels Airport, 1 at subway station; 26 killed

You were saying?

Using a tragedy like this to make a point in an internet debate is morally reprehensible. It's also a fallacious argument, but I'm not going to get into that now. Using dead people to make a political point is absolutely shameful, indefensible behaviour. Do you not have a sense of humanity or human decency? This is simply heartless.

A see alot of conclusion jumping and personal accusation without references here Adi. :dry:

Senan wrote:

Warning: Spoiler!

+ a bunch of other stats

This graphic shows American wars and doesn't include civilian casualties, but it illustrates a point about modern warfare. Nearly one out of every four soldiers in the Civil War never made it home. The World Wars were obviously pretty brutal as well. We need to do better, but we're clearly headed in the right direction.

Does this graph show just the American casualties? If so, then the Civil War part is a little skewed since both sides where American. Either way though, it's still a good graph and does illustrate the point well.

Regarding the attack in Brussels. First of all, it's tragic and my sympathy goes out to the people of Brussels. Secondly, as has been said you can't use one event to say "look the world sucks." There are billions of other people who didn't die today and some of those people who didn't die would have also died if not for the current state of the world.

Third, it goes to show you that the news makes the world look worse. Now we have instant access to information from around the world where as even a hundred years ago it would be much less likely that we'd all know about that. Similar to how we know less about what happens in less developed countries that have less access to the internet and that, honestly, Americans as a culture don't care as much about now. Like the whole of Africa. Terrible things happen there all the time but we don't hear about it because the news assumes that we won't care, but put a bomb in a developed nation and everyone with internet access is convinced that the whole world is going down the toilet.

And that's because they would have a hard time paying people from their own country, let alone from another country, to read happy news about building cool parks for kids or a new animal shelter. Blood sells, so that's all we see.

To quote Claire from the first season of Daredevil, "If all I saw was fire I'd want to punch people too."

Trisskar wrote: A see alot of conclusion jumping and personal accusation without references here Adi. :dry:

I couldn't care less what you think. There is only one "reference" here: someone propping up the corpses of murdered innocent people, people killed only hours ago, to make a point. That my lack of civility here is more important to you than Streen's disrespect for the dead says a lot about your priorities, Trisskar.

I think maybe we could all step back for a minute and just breathe.

There's no reason to make any of this personal. No reason to call anyone out. This thread was started to remind us of some of the good things in life, not to turn us against each other. Smiling is something we could all use right now. To help facilitate that smile here's a picture of penguins and a polar bear, though I suspect some photoshopping. :laugh:

My apologies. Nothing makes me angrier than people being hurt or killed, or other people using their suffering to advance a political or philosophical argument. Disrespect for human life makes my blood boil — hence my heated postings here. I'll move on.