Spur of the Moment Guide to FACTFULNESS: WEEK 10

p. 59-64

To further indicate that the world is doing so much better than we think it is the author provides us with some charts on 32 improvements. I’ll offer short comments on a selected few playing devil’s advocate.

BAD THINGS GOING DOWN

Legal slavery

There were actually 3 countries in 2017 where legal slavery still happens.

It seems though that, in a way, economic conditions and obligations toward state and survival “enslaves” us into work which does not provide enough financial or personal freedom. Although that situation is not as bad as legal slavery, it is still quite a dark thought. Especially since we don’t know where it might lead us.

Also, human trafficking is a real issue still and the numbers are big.

Oil Spills

So few compared to 1979 and yet the damage so great, in some ways irreversible and long-lasting. It’s like we say there were hundreds of murderers in the world 40 years ago and now there are only 6. So let’s assume that there happens to be a brilliant person out there who by the age of 50 could think up and work on so many inventions that the world would be saved from many a problem. But at the age of 5, this person is murdered by one of the six murderers out there. First, it totally sucks for this person’s family. Second, the world is SO much worse off even though it’s doing SO much better.

Nuclear Arms

Well, just the fact that a chart exists which is about thousands of nuclear warheads is a bit of an issue, isn’t? Until that number is zero, there’s going to be a big threat around. This is somewhat ironic since several countries “need” to have nuclear weapons in order to neutralize the overall nuclear threat.

Hunger

The share of undernourished people had fallen to 15% in 2015. I’m almost tempted to not even comment. We can apparently go to space, easily these days. So easily, in fact, we are thinking about how we can get people to live on another planet. But feed people on earth? That’s really hard.

GOOD THINGS GOING UP

New Movies and New Music

I grouped these two in one and I’m going to put them under 3 labels:

1. entertainment
2. education
3. openness

Movies and songs might sound trivial, but in my opinion aren’t. Of course, as with most things, everything depends on how you use it. For example, if you only use the Internet to spread hate instead of, say, learn things then you are not going to benefit from it.

Internet

There was 48% usage in 2017 versus 0% in 1980. I believe a lot on the Internet as a valuable tool; a way to education, information, collaboration, freedom, work, and openness. But this is starting to be distorted a bit. So it’s not only adoption rates we should be looking at.

Democracy

Now, this is interesting. Of all the charts of “good things increasing” (pages 62-63), there is only one with a ragged line (as in going up and down all the time) instead of s clear upward trend. Also in 2015, the share of humans living in democracy was 56%. Huge improvement from the 1% in 1816, but sounds a bit low, doesn’t it?

Chart description

So based on this chart there was a small spike up and down in democracy in 1850, then an upward trend with similar small spikes up and down along the line till the forties when there was a small downward trend. A big spike up in 1950 and then again small spikes up and down but at a higher conquered level until another upward trend, another higher conquered level around the 56% in the early 2000’s.

Meaning?

Possible insights could be:

1. generally, humanity, as it progresses, favors democracy (general upward trend)

2. said democracy needs to be conquered which means wars and conflicts

3. the scope and importance of the actions which take place after said wars and conflicts is what seems to make a difference

for example, after the Second World War, the first steps of what would become the EU were taken, which basically means Europe decided to focus more on long-term cooperation than division.

Problems:

1. it seems what’s been conquered can be lost, this appears to have happened a few years prior to the Second World war

It does seem that since then we’ve managed to maintain a high level (if we consider 56% high) of democracy, despite or perhaps thanks to wars and conflicts and what was achieved after those ended.

But does it mean that democracy can never lose ground again?

In theory, humanity could revert to a lower level of democracy and it would cost a lot as well.

This is a big topic which requires lots of research. I’ll start worrying if I ever stumble upon another such chart and I start seeing a downward trend…

Final Thought

Wars in the past have been fought for religion and for ideologies. During our current times where trust seems to have been lost among nations and trust to the institutions and the ideologies which—after costly wars and conflicts—won and propelled us forward seems to be weakening, we should perhaps be looking for what actions need to be taken in order for humanity to keep moving forward.

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