It used to be, at least. ;-)

If you're using the Pinker article as your "I have facts and you don't" argument, then I think your facts are just about as anectdotal as Centinal's assertions.

First of all, Pinker is a psychologist, not an historian.   History is a favorite topic of mine, one that I've widely read, and although I'm no lettered historian, neither is he, thus my "internet opinion" is just as valid.  Nearly every sentence of his is riddled with errors.

Until 10,000 years ago, all humans were hunter gatherers. This is the group that some believe lived in primordial harmony - there’s no evidence of this.

I'd quibble with both his timeline and his assertion.   To date, there has been no archeological evidence in the paleolithic of warfare.  On the contrary, there is widespread evidence of harmony and care.   The first evidence of warfare occurs in the mesolithic, a time of great environmental stressors as the planet adapted to the final retreat of the ice sheets.  Using today's few remaining tribes to make broad, unsubstantiated-by-actual-finds assertions about past behavior is sloppy.

Moving slightly further forward, we can see that violent punishment was common in the Bible - Moses tells his followers to kill all the men and married women of a village and rape the virgins. The death penalty was used for murder, idolatry, disrespecting your parents and “collecting sticks on the sabbath”.

Ah, and we all know that of course people actually DID this kind of thing routinely.  The Bible tells us so ;-)  Again, there is little factual historical evidence that backs that up, and much that refutes it.   The key written sources for the distant past (Herodotus, Homer, assorted clay tablets) don't describe this.

Hobbes got it right. “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In anarchy, there’s a temptation towards preemptive violence, hurting the other guy before he hurts you

Current archeological thought is that Hobbes got it wrong, at least in the aspect that Pinker is using as support.   Life in the 40,000 years of the paleolithic was much richer due to its unique environmental circumstances. Sure paleo-man had to work and risked death in pursuit of a meal, but I doubt he indulged in interpersonal violence of the scale Pinker implies; tribes that did so would quickly end up gone, as males were needed for both the strenuous work of hunting megafauna and reproduction.  As I stated before, there is no archeological evidence that backs up his claims.

The rest of his assertions lie within the concept of "gee, we're just so much smarter now."  

Read the comments to that article.  I'm certainly not alone in my critique, and others express it more eloquently than I do.

EDIT:  There is one concept in his article I agree with, and think is valid.

But with the rise of the Leviathan - the State - there’s a monopoly on violence. This helps explain why we still see violence in the absence of the state - zones of anarchy, failed states, street gangs.

The State does indeed impose a structure that makes it much more difficult to act out on violent impulses: mainly, the threat of incarceration is much greater and immediate now than in the past.  Perpetrators cannot disappear as easily these days.

A related observation, which he fails to make but which I think is just as applicable, is that the modern State provides new outlets for men who, in past ages, would have raped and pillaged their way to riches.   Bernie Maddox is William the Conqueror in a suit ;-)   As is Bill Gates.

...Sure, you may be less likely to die at the hand of another, but the 20th - and thus far the 21st centuries are raw examples of bloodshed on a scale unprecedented in human history!

Still, given your mathematical card tricks, seemingly per-capita, however illogical it may seem, and even obscene, even given WW1 and 2, pol pot, Veit Nam, the Holocaust, Stalin, Mao, genocides throughout Africa, Iraq and Darfur, it "seems" we are living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

This is due in large part in ridding ourselves of the cruel and sadistic aspects of religions and cultures like fundamentalist Islam, who stone people etc.

Maybe GW should get some credit then for our peaceful new world, huh?