Around the world, humans are exhibiting a great capacity for compassion and social progress, as well as an equally grand tendency for cruelty. With advancements in material culture, our struggles for survival have become exceedingly more complex and unified and violent. According to the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development (Geneva Declaration Secretariat 2011), a Switzerland-based diplomatic initiative that identifies interrelations between global violence and development, more than 526,000 people die violently each year, of which 396,000 are the result of intentional homicides. One-quarter of those deaths occurred in only 14 countries, where average annual violent death rates exceed 30 per 100,000. Armed violence in non-conflict countries is sometimes more dangerous than combat zones. According to the Geneva Declaration (2011), while U.S.-led coalition troops fought in Iraq between 2004 and 2009, more people per capita were killed in El Salvador. The United Nations (2011) reports some countries have revealed decreased homicide rates in the past 15 years – mainly in Asia, Europe and North America – but their data also shows increases in others (p. 9). Central America and the Caribbean are nearing a “crisis point” (p. 10). Humankind’s constant, sometimes alarming, fluctuations in community homicides has resulted in scientific hypotheses concerning clashes between internal and external environments. Recent research suggests our DNA holds instructions for reacting violently to environmental stress. Continue reading →

For millions of years, humans have mastered climate change and maximized environmental resources to arise as one of the planet’s most adaptable organisms. For hundreds of thousands of years, Homo sapiens have created material culture that’s made it possible to occupy nearly every corner of the Earth. For decades, the species has embarked on extraterrestrial exploration, including the dispatch of a planet-hunting spacecraft capable of picking through countless stars outside our solar system (Thompson 2009). Our collective human intellect combines ideas from around the world. This collaboration has given birth to a powerful economic, political, cultural and environmental phenomenon, called globalization. Globalization is the blending of cultures and commerce through complex innovations. For example, advances in telecommunication technologies are connecting businesses, consumers, scholars and activists. Innovations in automation and computerization are promoting universal standards for efficiency and sustainability. Common sets of communication skills and devices are required for sharing complex concepts. There is a growing momentum for combining languages. Scientists and mathematicians have adopted Arabic numerals for mastering and sharing concepts; it seems we’ll merge vocabularies and grammar too. Continue reading →