Argumentitive Essay

Design Response

Our Fascination With Violence

ASPECT 01:

Real-world violence has significantly decreased in the past two centuries compared to the entire human history, causing moral shifts of violence.

The morality of violence has reshaped several times over the past centuries. Many argue that real-life violence is significantly declining. We are possibly witnessing one of the most peaceful periods of time compared to the lengthy history of human existence. Historians coined the term

“long peace”

to describe this era in which we see less inter-state conflicts reconciled by wars starting in 1945. Since then, the

great powers

of the world and the developed nations have not fought a single war against one another. We might take this new reality for granted, however it is worth noting that it is a rare phenomenon within human history. Once the Cold War ended in 1991, the concept of a “new peace” appears to have been cemented in western imagination. It is not, of course, an absolute peace as we can point to wars in the middle east and other acts of imperialism that have led to a large number of deaths; however, there are signs of an overall

decline

of organized conflicts in many ways. Incidents like civil wars, genocides and repression have significantly dwindled.

We can find traces of this historically unprecedented phenomenon from various aspects. Some significant “zeros” on the record support this thesis. The world’s greatest powers, especially in the west, might have engaged in conflicts during this period; however, it did not spark hot weapon combat in any form. The United States and USSR did not choose to fight against each other through war. Zero nuclear weapons have been used since the

Nagasaki bombing

in 1945. Zero wars have started by the great powers since the end of the Korean War in 1953. There have been zero wars between western European countries. Some might find this stat, in particular, to be as it should. However,

before 1945

, documented records show western European countries would start a war between one another every two years, which continued for a little over 600 years. Therefore, the decline of mass-scale organized violence is a trend that no one quite expected to happen.

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