"From my perspective it seems to me that we have changed tack in world relationships over the past 10 years, and I also think that this is brewing bad times. Confrontation is growing everywhere at a parabolic rate. Confrontations are wide spread in Europe, Afghanistan, Thailand (a country that despises anger as a show of weakness!) USA (Banking regulations, health care, etc.) and how long will last the bizarre UK compromise?

"Global Peace lasted an amazing amount of time...60 years. Easy when everybody is busy making money, but now what?

"Do you have a perspective on this trend or do you think I am alarmingly pessimistic?"

David Fuller's view These are big, perhaps unanswerable questions. I will worry about events more if I am feeling discouraged for any reason. However this is usually over the short term as I tend to be a long-term optimist, recognising that I am responsible for my state of mind, including my own happiness.

We have global peace only in the sense that there have been no further world wars, thankfully, but there are plenty of regional conflicts which appear to remain part of the human condition. Overall, I think the world is safer today than in the 1960s, when nuclear annihilation seemed like a real possibility.

Difficult economic conditions understandably increase anxiety but they can also bring out the best in people in terms of a communitarian spirit. I have expressed some concern over the possibility of commodity wars due to finite resources and most of us are concerned about climate change. Certainly our awareness of trouble spots is greater than in earlier decades due to global media coverage.