It happened again this evening in a conversation with five other people where it appeared that these people automatically disagreed with what I had to say. I spoke of specific things of historical importance as a counter-argument to something that had just been presented and, as usual, people argued vehemently against what I was saying.
The statement that I challenged was that the world was in a state of war and that people were being killed in vast numbers. To me this was utter nonsense, and I responded that we live in a time of astonishing peace. Haven’t you any sense of history?, I said. In World War Two, people were being killed at a rate of five thousand per day for years, and today if a single American soldier gets killed it makes the national news. Another annoying assertion I made was that Genghis Khan and his sons killed a third of the people in Asia and Europe. We live in an astonishingly peaceful 21st century, so far.
A history of major war deaths shown on a logarithmic chart.
I suppose my statement was a bit harsh, but my current point is that it was rejected, and the people present seemed to be miffed that I had said such unpleasant things. Even if my facts were accurate, at least generally accurate, they didn’t want to hear such things.
What I learned from the evening’s discussion was something that I should have learned on my first day in school. You must say things in a way that people will agree with or they will disagree, and if they argue they will become entrenched in whatever they said in their first statement. Perhaps I was partially aware of my problem from tonight’s discussion because I had purchased the Wooden publisher’s book Trivium, and had intended to get started studying it after finishing Quadrivium. Now it seems that I should face my more serious life problem and jump directly to Trivium book V, Rhetoric, and learn how to talk to people in a way that they will understand and accept.
About this time Debbie, realizing I was interested in rhetoric, brought some books over to me from our personal library: Modern Rhetoric, by Brooks & Warren, How to Argue and Win Every Time by Gerry Spence, How to talk with practically anybody about practically anything, by Barbara Walters, Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric by Ward Farnsworth, Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent by Wayne C. Booth, Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini, and The Rhetoric of Aristotle by Lane Cooper. Okay, there’s a year’s work just piled on my desk. Did I mention I have a helpmate?
In addition to reading and digesting all of this rhetoric stuff, I must change my behavior. Okay.
Probaway - Life Hacks 
Your logrithmic chart is misleading in that percentages are used to hide the fact that the number of those murdered have been increasing throughout history. Note: percentages are only used to hide actual numbers. Additionally most humans murdered in the twentieth century were killed not in wars but rather by their own totalitarian governments conducting democides. Will Durant in ‘The Lessons of History’ notes that in over 3500 years of recorded history there have only been 168 years of peace. Those of us who study history and learned the lessons of history remember; “si vis pacem, para bellum”. No matter what you were taught in history class, wars are the result of murder and/or slavery. Count the murdered and number the slaves to understand. The winning of the cold war without nuclear Armageddon was a miracle of history but did not end war – only delayed it. In the next world war billions will likely die. The world is arming and preparing for an Armageddon that is a certainty because very few weapons of war have been built and never used. Indeed a global world war is the single greatest threat to human survival as Russia, China and Islam build fascist war machines that have only one use – murdering billions. Count the murders and number to slaves to predict war. The lesson from the cold war victory was that only free men in strong nations ever have a choice. Si vis pacem, para bellum: if you desire peace, prepare for war.
Reference: Will Durant, ‘The Story of Civilization’ and R.J. Rummel, ‘Never Again: Ending War, Democide, and Famine Through Democratic Freedom’.
Thank you R. Lee Darby for your comments.
Please check out the click through “astonishingly peaceful” and scroll down a page for the 100 great homicides of history with their estimates of the total killed and links to Wikipedia for each of those events.
WW II comes in first but the population available was 2.5 billion. Gengis Khan had only the much smaller populations of Asia and Europe available and killed almost as many. The numbers killed are very loose because dead people don’t keep records.
Humanity came within minutes of WW III happening during the Cuba Missile Crisis. Note the 1960’s USAF style pilot’s helmet in my photo taken shortly before that event. Every combat country looses many of their own people in wars, in WW III everyone loses.
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