Apology and Optimism

I’d like to apologize for some of my recent negative rants on the social structures of our society, things are very complex. I came across a book recently called Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker which outlines the unbelievable progress towards happiness, prosperity, life span increases and overall quality of life worldwide. Contrary to news headlines and the common university ideology that the world is in shambles, humanity is doing better than ever before.

People are being raised out of abject poverty at radical rates. The percent of people living in abject poverty has flipped from 90% globally about 100 years ago, to 10% globally in 2019. That is an unbelievably good thing. The only sad part is, it doesn’t make the news.

There are several scientists who have literally saved billions of lives over the past 50 years. And most of them nobody even knows their names. These innovations through incremental scientific discovery has lead to vaccines which prevent horrible diseases, fertilizers which allow us to grow food on lands never before available, technologies which allow us to shift our energy consumption towards more sustainable methods etc. Things are getting way better, people are living longer, people have more leisure time, more prosperity, better food, and better overall lives! This shouldn’t be ignored, and we shouldn’t despair at the world we live in, people are trying to change the world for the better and they are doing it with the scientific method!

For those with the notion that our glib existence is on the decline, think again, humans have never been better, and although our problems are still formidable we can help by working together, utilizing our capacity for reason, and solving problems one at a time.

Hustle it up!

2 thoughts on “Apology and Optimism”

  1. What about the environment and global warming? Did the book have any thoughts on whether we’re fixing that? Curious.

    1. A lot of positive changes are being made towards the negative effects on the oceans. More than half of the garbage has been removed. One of the aspects which is still suffering is over-fishing. But people are working on that too!

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