This is a book I read during the December holidays, written by Steven Pinker. It is a fabulous book and its subtitle really explains what the book is about and that subtitle is – why violence has declined. We live in a world where the media continually make a huge noise about the latest crime story, or continued crime stories have in South Africa, and that stops us from seeing the bigger, overall picture.

The overall trend is that our society has, over the last few hundred years, got safer and safer and we now live in more peaceful times than any other human beings have ever been privileged to live in. In certain times in history up to 60% of all people could expect to meet their death either in a war or in violence and dying of old age or ill health or something very rarely even had the opportunity to do. Human rights and the concern for others have taken great strides and the book goes into the various reasons for this and how our society has developed. Those of course are much more complex than one would imagine, which is probably why the book runs to hundreds of pages, but it is always good to understand, in an age of sensationalism, that all is not as bad as we read. People have a much smaller chance now of dying either in a war or uprising or in a violent crime than ever before in history, no matter how dangerous our particular society may seem or how it is reported. Of course, there are farm more safe societies than South Africa, and we have a considerable way to go in terms of reducing violence. Ultimately the solution for us lies in education and reducing unemployment.