see, that's not evidence of anything increasing. I say again, sure, there's plenty of bad stuff happening, but there's ALWAYS been bad stuff happening. What makes you think any of the bad stuff happening now is any more significant than anything previously?
That's because we've been
living with it, and it's been a gradual rate. But people's attitudes and actions
have been getting progressively worse, since 1914. Here is proof:
“Everything would get better and better. This was the world I was born in. . . .
Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end.”—British statesman Harold Macmillan, The New York Times, November 23, 1980.
“Increasingly, the 75-year period from 1914 to 1989, covering two world wars and the cold war, is being seen by historians as
a single, discrete epoch, a time apart in which much of the world was fighting war, recovering from war or preparing for war.”—The New York Times, May 7, 1995.
“The whole world really blew up about World War I and we still don’t know why. Before then, men thought that utopia was in sight. There was peace and prosperity.
Then everything blew up. We’ve been in a state of
suspended animation ever since . . . More people have been killed in this century than in all of history.”—Dr. Walker Percy, American Medical News, November 21, 1977.
“It is indeed the year
1914 rather than that of Hiroshima which
marks the turning point in our time, for by now we can see that . . . it was the first world war that ushered in
the era of confused transition in the midst of which
we are floundering.”—Dr. René Albrecht-Carrié, Barnard College, The Scientific Monthly, July 1951.
“In 1914 the world lost a coherence which it has not managed to recapture since. . . . This has been
a time of extraordinary disorder and violence, both across national frontiers and within them.”—The Economist, London, August 4, 1979.
“World War I and its aftermath led to the greatest economic depression in history during the early 1930’s. The consequences of the war and the problems of adjustment to peace led to unrest in almost every nation.”–The World Book Encyclopedia (1966, Vol. 20) on page 379 under its heading “World War I”
Author Maurice Genevoix, who was a military officer during that war, said of it: “Everyone agrees in recognizing that in the whole history of mankind, few dates have had the importance of August 2, 1914. First Europe and soon after almost all humanity found themselves plunged into a dreadful event.
Conventions, agreements, moral laws, all the foundations shook; from one day to the next, everything was called into question. The event was to exceed both instinctive forebodings and reasonable anticipations.
Enormous, chaotic, monstrous, it still drags us in its wake.”—Maurice Genevoix, member of the Académie Française, quoted in the book Promise of Greatness (1968).
“The modern era . . . began in 1914, and no one knows when or how it will end. . . . It could end in mass annihilation.”—The Seattle Times, January 1, 1959.
“In its scope, its violence, and above all, in its totality,
it established a precedent. World War I ushered in the century of Total War, of—in the first full sense of the term—global war. . . .Never before 1914-1918 had a war absorbed so much of the total resources of so many combatants and covered so large a part of the earth. Never had so many nations been involved.
Never had the slaughter been so comprehensive and indiscriminate.”–World War I, by H.W. Baldwin, pages 1,2
The World Book Encyclopedia noted that the number of soldiers killed and wounded was over 37,000,000, and added:
“The number of civilian deaths in areas of actual war totaled about 5,000,000. Starvation, disease, and exposure accounted for about 80 of every 100 of these civilian deaths. Spanish influenza, which some persons blamed on the war, caused tens of millions of other deaths.”—1966 edition, Vol. 20, p. 377.
More than 50 years after 1914, German statesman Konrad Adenauer wrote: “
Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914.”—The West Parker, Cleveland, Ohio, January 20, 1966.
“Some historians believe that the 20th century will be seen as a time of
unparalleled savagery,” notes The New York Times.
An article in The Washington Post concurs: “Our 20th-century wars have been ‘total wars’ against combatants and civilians alike,” it says. “The casualties, including the genocide of the Jews, are measured in the tens of millions. The barbarian wars of centuries past were alley fights in comparison.” Civil insurrections have added to the carnage. How many have died? “The ‘megadeaths’ since 1914, by an estimate of Zbigniew Brzezinski, have totaled 197 million, ‘the equivalent of more than one in ten of the total world population in 1900,’” says the Post. It adds that it is an “indisputable fact that terrorism and wanton killing are embedded deeply in
the culture of this century” and that “
no political or economic system has so far in this century pacified or satisfied the restless millions.”
As regards economic consequences, Ashby Bladen, a senior vice president of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, writes: “Before 1914 the monetary and the financial systems were compatible. . . . If one takes August 1914 as marking the dividing line between them,
the contrasts between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are striking. In many aspects of human affairs there has been a complete reversal of trend. . . . One major reason was the severance of the linkage between the
financial system and money with intrinsic value that began in 1914. . . . The breaking of the linkage was a momentous event. . . .
1914 marked a radical, and in the end catastrophic, transformation of that system.”
“The 19th century—defined as a set of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and morals—did not end on Jan. 1, 1901,” wrote columnist Charley Reese. “It ended in 1914. That’s also when the 20th century, defined the same way, began.”
Reese explained: “Virtually all of the conflicts that we have been concerned with all of our lives stemmed from
that [first world] war. . . . It destroyed 19th century optimism and created the 20th century versions of hedonism, cynicism, anxiety, angst and nihilism.”
It isn't that we are set up to believe any potential solution to global problems will fail...all we have to do is look at man's track record in this regard. Failure is written all over everything. If humans could solve the problems, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Its because of their abject failures that mankind continues to suffer....man's inhumanity to man has dominated his thinking since time immemorial. Man cannot solve the problem because man IS the problem. We have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that we cannot rule ourselves successfully, independent of God.
His stamp is on everything.
