Maggie's Farm

It begins:

 THE IDEA THAT VIOLENCE in human society has decreased over time invites scepticism, incredulity and sometimes anger. It hasn’t been a smooth decline – and it isn’t guaranteed to continue – but it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children.
The human mind predisposes us to believe that we live in violent times – especially when stoked by news media that follows the watchwords: “If it bleeds, it leads.” We tend to estimate the probability of an event based on the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age.

No matter how small the percentage of violent deaths may be, in absolute numbers there will always be enough to fill the evening news. This disconnects our impressions of violence from actual proportions. Also, distorting our sense of danger is part of our moral psychology: no one has ever recruited activists to a cause by announcing that the world’s becoming a better place.