In centuries past common diseases caused immense suffering. But in spite of advances in medical science that have greatly lengthened the average life span, we know we will still die. Rather than having our lives cut short by the killer diseases of earlier years, now many of us will expire at a greater age from such debilitating afflictions as cancer or heart disease. Many will lose their mental faculties long before their bodies wear out. In poorer nations, suffering and death from diseases that are largely preventable still cut an enormous swath of misery and despair.
Barbarity is responsible for much mental and physical suffering.
Nothing reduces man to brutal cruelty more quickly than war, and man is always fighting his fellowman. War causes not only deaths and crippling injuries on the battlefield but heartbreak, the destruction of families and poverty. It sows the seeds of enmities that last for centuries. After the terror of the wars of the first half of the 20th century and the worldwide disruption they engendered, mankind has enjoyed a moderate reprieve in the sense that wars since then have been regional rather than global. Yet nothing has changed in human nature that offers much enduring hope for the future.