A general feeling of terror has gripped us all. Gruesome beheadings, religious bigotry, fears of worldwide tension make the world a place of horror.

A comment much used lately is that never has such horror been witnessed and that the present is the worst of the worst in the world’s history.

Granted that these goings-on—especially the ones depicted so horribly on our screens—are gruesome. But let’s get our life in the right perspective and accept that yes, we are surrounded by perpetrators of evil, but now is definitely not the worst of times.

What we suffer most from nowadays is too much news. And this news is in our face, not something we sit and watch but which follows us, gets flung at us.

We receive it on all our devices at all strange times of the day and night, while we drive or seek relaxation. Back then news was less immediate, less graphic, less ubiquitous. Then CNN arrived and gave us the first Gulf war in super-Technicolour continuously and in amazing detail. Subsequently, Internet and the ease of transmitting news on iPads and the like gripped us.

Besides thinking we are submerged in terror because news travels faster now, news that glorifies peace, serenity and solidarity is considered hardly worth watching, so few news media transmit it.

This has resulted in us—especially westerners—feeling we are being targeted, with poor innocent people sentenced for some strange reason to die an inglorious death.

We, or many of us, feel affronted and feel that a jihad is in place and that we need to fight this tooth and nail—maybe resume the crusades or make sure Islam and all its adherents are punished for the blood of the beheadings.

How sad to reason like this: it is even more horrid than the actual beheadings which are nowhere near being sanctioned or condoned by the majority of Muslims.

The world has had worse scenarios—even relatively recently, in the 60s, the world trembled as two super-powers fumbled with buttons to possible world annihilation. A few years before, Jews were exterminated and a world war was fought , with total destruction wreaked.

Terrorism was not absent in recent decades —the Brigate Rosse, the Munich Olympics, habitual hijackings and all sorts of fear-inducing acts were perpetrated in times which today we look at and paint in golden hues.

Life is good—some of us unfortunately, in the name of Allah, or the cross or whatever, are maddeningly fundamentalist and illogical. But this horror of the few is not necessarily the sum total of our present.

The positive far outdoes the wrong and the bad—but who cares about the positive when the gruesome negative is so much more enticing?

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