Despite the fact that twenty-fi rst century statistics on war, genocide, and political violence have been moving in a positive rather than a negative direction (Human Security Centre 2006, 1–9), this is neither generating higher levels of individual or collective well-being, any heightened sense of national or global security, nor any greater sense of social and economic justice. On the contrary an increasing number of individuals and groups in the industrialized North are facing an “epidemic of depression” and there are growing levels of fear and uncertainty about the future (Seligman 2005, 210).