Pinker on the myth of violence

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html

I remember checking this talk out before - very sensible stuff.
The book I recommended a while back about the tactics and strategies of the Ancient Warlords shows how massive and constant the loss of life was, as armies fought across Asia and Europe back in the day. The land is just soaked in blood. I'm very happy I live now.

all sound principles:
centralized power--answering to an authority
higher standard of living--life
symbiotic relationships of trade, etc
global minded thinking through media--no more ethnocentricism, more empathy

and the question: not why wars, but why peace--what have we been doing right?

all the above
the west traditionally seeks one answer to things

what i'd wonder is if, in the ebb and flow of life and time...is there a potential for things to
reverse:
i imagine the symbol of yin/yang--in taoism
i was once told by a swami it's meaning. the dot in each half makes one aware that nothing is
completely this, or that. the joke was that even Hitler [thought to be the opitamy of evil] had
his circle of those who loved him]. just like the ebb and flow of the tides. the duality of things
tends to not be perfectly one thing or the other.

all the patterns in history tend to not just be a straight upward line but rather a sequence of hills
and dips gradually forming an average that ultimately rises [what Pinker i think was talking about though not in those words].

so back to my question. on a macro level. will it lower with micro dips and rises in a manner that is unnoticable to us. like the metaphorical frog in the hot pot


that things are improving i think is without challenge--population alone should at least be some kind of proof of that.
but of course, some nutter out there can always argue that the death toll of gerbals is higher and so the ultimate life count remains as it always has been--with human being ahead of game this time round.