EDITORIAL
Setbacks and improvements in 2013
By: Jon Brunberg | posted: 12/28/2013 7:47:36 PM
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature the American scientist Steven Pinker argues that violence between humans has declined over the last millennia and that we probably live in the most peaceful era in the history of mankind. I won´t dive into the debate about Pinker’s findings here – only point out that many parts of the world of today are less than peaceful.
The scale of the brutal violence in the civil war in Syria in itself broke the trend of declining war fatalities in the last decade. A surge of bomb attacks killed thousands of people in Iraq. The conflicts in the Kivu provinces of DRC and on the Horn of Africa continued unabated. New, bloody armed conflicts in CAR and South Sudan flared up in the last months of the year and tensions continued around contested islands in the China Sea and on the Korean Peninsula raising fears of a large scale war in East Asia. Violence related to the lucrative drug trade continued to kill thousands of people and destroy communities in Central America.
During these days when so many celebrates the end of the old year and the promises of the new my thoughts go out to all those affected by wars in the world.
The work with the Polynational War Memorial intensified during the later part of 2013. In August I recreated the list of wars since 1900 using the latest available academic data and for the first time properly referenced all fatality figures which is a great improvement to one of the core elements of this project. The design process also had somewhat of a restart. In September I created the most comprehensive and detailed master plan for the proposed architecture so far. I will continue to work with this plan in 2014 and intend to present it in more detail in the latter part of next year. Stay updated by following the project on this website, and on Facebook and Twitter.
I wish you all a Happy and Peaceful New Year!
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