I'm sitting here watching the Agenda on TVO (a good show, BTW). Today's segment is called "the unrecognized peace": it's about how violence is much less - orders of magnitude less - today than it ever has been at any point in history.
The host asked one of the panelists, Magaret Wente from the Globe and Mail, why it is that people are surprised when they hear this. Her response was that a big part of the reason is that we've built up a "grief industry", and that some people and groups who influence public discourse "have a stake in things not getting better".
While she didn't specify which people and groups she meant, my mind immediately leapt to certain churches, since some (many?) denominations have a frequent theme that the world is in an ultimately fatal decline that will only be corrected by the Second Coming. Obviously, pointing out that things are better than they've ever been and getting better all the time speaks against the truth of what they're preaching.
So... what do you think? How much is the "grief industry" she referred to religious in nature?
The host asked one of the panelists, Magaret Wente from the Globe and Mail, why it is that people are surprised when they hear this. Her response was that a big part of the reason is that we've built up a "grief industry", and that some people and groups who influence public discourse "have a stake in things not getting better".
While she didn't specify which people and groups she meant, my mind immediately leapt to certain churches, since some (many?) denominations have a frequent theme that the world is in an ultimately fatal decline that will only be corrected by the Second Coming. Obviously, pointing out that things are better than they've ever been and getting better all the time speaks against the truth of what they're preaching.
So... what do you think? How much is the "grief industry" she referred to religious in nature?