By Tim Dean Thursday 16 October 2014
Photo: Don't let the bleak news headlines fool you. The future is looking bright. (Flickr: Garry Knight) With each year that goes by, the world is becoming a safer, richer and generally better place to live. So instead of looking at the headlines and losing hope, we can look at them as challenges to be solved, writes Tim Dean.
Don't let the bleak news headlines fool you. The future is looking bright, and no amount of haemorrhagic fever outbreaks, militant religious fanaticism, crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters or doom saying about the global economy ought to turn your smile upside down.
In fact, now is a great time to be an optimist about the future.
With each year that goes by, the world is becoming a safer, richer and generally better place to live. And this is true according to almost any metric you choose to look at.
Let's start with violence. While it might seem that the world is as dangerous a place as it has ever been, with wars both civil and uncivil abroad, "coward punches" and domestic violence at home, and the spectre of terrorism spreading fear throughout, the fact is there is less violence in the world today than at any other point in history.
According to the World Health Organisation, about 1.6 million people lost their lives to violence in the year 2000. That's a gut-wrenching figure. However, it needs to be put in perspective. The global population in 2000 was about 6 billion. That means less than 0.03 per cent of people - or fewer than 27 people per 100,000 - died from violence in that year. That's not so appalling when you consider that somewhere around 15 per cent of people in ancient hunter-gatherer societies died a violent death, and that figure was still about 3 per cent for the first half of the 20th century, including the two major world wars.
As Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued in his recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, even wars today are less deadly than they once were:
The number of people killed in battle - calculated per 100,000 population - has dropped by 1000-fold over the centuries as civilizations evolved. Before there were organized countries, battles killed on average more than 500 out of every 100,000 people. In 19th century France, it was 70. In the 20th century with two world wars and a few genocides, it was 60. Now battlefield deaths are down to three-tenths of a person per 100,000.
Every violent death is a tragedy, but the very fact that we are so outraged at incidences of violence today shows that most people no longer regard it as a viable solution to our disagreements.
That's progress.
What about poverty? Here the story is even more rosy. While there can be no doubt that millions of people continue to live in states of abject poverty, their numbers are declining at a startling rate in most regions around the world.
A recent United Nations report stated, "Extreme poverty rates have fallen in every developing region, with one country, China, leading the way ... Poverty remains widespread in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, although progress in the latter region has been substantial."
Speaking of Africa, a continent that is often perceived as being doomed to corruption and poverty, there the transformation has been profound. Africa is entering a new era of burgeoning prosperity, much like South-East Asia did in the 1990s. Not only are African economies growing rapidly, but the wealth is actually reaching the poor.
In fact, by some accounts, the entire African continent (except for a couple of holdouts) may achieve the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger this year, which is one year ahead of schedule.
In terms of our wealth, well, we really have nothing to complain about. Despite all the whinging about rising cost of living, most of these costs are discretionary (although many people strangely continue to feel that a crippling mortgage is somehow obligatory). The average income in Australia has risen dramatically over the past few decades. In 2000, the average pay was $33,769. In 2013 it was more like $58,000. That's a 19 per cent pay rise, even after adjusting for inflation.
Oh, and that recent bout of doom and gloom from the International Monetary Fund amounts to a small reduction in the forecast economic growth that the world ought to enjoy over the next few years. Getting wealthier, albeit slightly more slowly, isn't what a lot of people would consider terrible news.
OK, what about the environment? Surely the spectre climate change is of real concern? Well, it is. But even there progress is being made.
In terms of carbon emissions, we continue to pump out CO2 at record rates, with most of the growth in emissions coming from China. However, the European Union, United States and other OECD countries have actually seen emissions decline over the past several years.
China remains somewhat bullish about its right to emit carbon to fuel its return to be an economic power, but it is also acutely aware of the risks from pollution and carbon emissions and is aiming for a lower carbon future. China has already invested billions in low-carbon technologies, from ultra-supercritical coal-fired power stations to thorium nuclear to solar power. If a few more major economies (including Australia) sign up for a carbon price, it seems likely that China will jump on board too.
Another positive sign is that world economic growth has recently "decoupled" from carbon emissions. This has proven that economies can grow without needing to fume more CO2 into the atmosphere, thus removing another barrier to going renewable.
In the long term, we also have the prospect of limitless clean energy thanks to fusion power. It'll likely take decades to come to fruition, but when it arrives, it could radically transform our energy landscape and even help alleviate some of the effects of climate change, such as by using our abundant electrons to power atmospheric carbon scrubbers or to run desalination plants. We just have to make it to 2050 or so without totally wrecking the climate, and we stand a good chance getting through this thing without suffering catastrophic global warming.
And I haven't even touched on how our triumph over disease doubled life expectancy from 40 to 80, or how infant mortality rates continue to decline worldwide, or how increased automation and machine intelligence could soon lead to a long weekend every week, or how most of the world is becoming a far more tolerant place.
None of the above means the world isn't facing some grave challenges, nor that we ought to become complacent. In fact, "optimism" isn't quite the right word for how we should feel. Optimism can lead to a kind of merry apathy, a blind faith that good will prevail of its own accord. In that way, a fatalistic optimism can be as dangerous as apathetic pessimism.
A better term is one that sadly doesn't receive nearly enough use these days: "meliorism." This is the notion that the world is far from perfect, but we can improve it through our own actions. It reminds us that if we let the world unfold without our intervention, things will probably get worse, so we must act to change it for the better.
So instead of looking at the headlines and losing hope, we can look at them as challenges to be solved - challenges that can and will eventually be solved. After all, if we have been able to reduce amount of violence in the world, lift so many people out of poverty and do the countless other wondrous things that have made the world as it is today, then history is on our side.
Now is a great time to be a meliorist about the future.
Tim Dean is a philosopher and science writer. Visit his website and view his full profile.
Cheer up, it's not all doom and gloom - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
