The local paper yesterday had an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times--2019: What a year! A Harvard grad, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes, one he shared with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn (see photo below), and is a regular on CNN. He has been contributing to TNYT since 2001.
Coincidentally, I recently completed reading Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. Pinker is a Harvard professor. Both present a case for optimism.
Let me start with Kristof:
- If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever … since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
- Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.
- In 1950, 27% of all children died by age 15; that has plunged to 4%. In 1981, 42% of the global population subsisted on less than $2 per day; that figure has dropped to less than 10%.
- A half century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90 percent adult literacy.
I'll summarize Pinker's book with a few of his statements:- Sets out 15 different measures of human well being to support this argument, with the most obvious being the uncontroversial fact that, statistically, people live longer and healthier lives on average than ever before.
- ...an American is 3,000 times more likely to die in an accident than in a terrorist attack.[1]
- ...an innovation that makes the poor slightly richer and the rich massively richer is a positive rather than a negative achievement.
Pinker goes on and on with data and statistics. From a third source, how can you argue against the following, like life expectancy:
Child mortality:
Fertility rates continually dropping with improved economic conditions:
Accelerating GDP/capita growth:
Reducing global income inequality:
Expanding democracy:
Of those living in autocracy, 90% happen to be in China. China is showing dangerous signs of increased metastability.
Declining conflicts between great powers:
I'm particularly lucky, for compounding the above, I live in Honolulu, where we have everything I need, with great weather. Plus the continuation of Euphoria #4. Or am I up to #5?
Living costs are high, but affordable. One of the prices of Purgatory.
At 15 Craigside, we are surrounded by rainbows. That puts us closer to Heaven.
-
Finally, on this Friday, there is no major ocean storm on Planet Earth:
-
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น