There is a book sweeping the popular media at the moment. It’s called Factfulness . It purports to argue that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the world is becoming a better place. Poverty is falling, life expectancy is rising; health levels are improving; people have more things and better services. Even violence and wars are in decline. This is a hoary old message... Rising world inequality
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51