Look forward to the future
The Globalisation Institute blog has been running a series of posts ‘Quote unquote’ which have had some excellent liberal quotations as well as many on development issues.
Today’s is very perceptive:
This is my long-run forecast in brief: The material conditions of life will continue to get better for most people, in most countries, most of the time, indefinitely. Within a century or two, all nations and most of humanity will be at or above today’s Western living standards. I also speculate, however, that many people will continue to think and say that the conditions of life are getting worse.
- Julian Simon, in a Wired magazine interview.
This is very true. People all over the world are living in better conditions than ever before (the sole exception is war torn regions of Africa). Freedom is greater than ever, we are living longer, eating better food. We have more productive lives but we also have more free time than ever. In large areas of the world absolute poverty has been all but wiped out. We have huge populations being lifted out of poverty at a greater speed than ever before. Racism, sexism and homophobia are becoming increasingly unacceptable in many areas of the world.
Yet what do we hear? Doom and gloom.
True there are problems, but we are better equipped than ever to face them. We should celebrate the achievements of humanity and face up to the problems with hope not despair.
We should look to a future of wealth not poverty, of a clean environment not pollution, of freedom not slavery, of tolerance not bigotry. We should say to the doom mongers and pessimists that they are wrong, our future is ours to take and we will take it. That we will face up to the problems that are presented to us but rather than despair we shall combat them and celebrate the advances they bring.
To combat our environmental problems we don’t need to flagellate ourselves or try and recover some mythical golden age of harmony with nature and happy subsistence. We can find new ways to deal with the problems that polluting actions solve, we can find the means to improve our lives even more whilst dealing with the problems we cause our environment and eliminating the causes.
Let us celebrate what we’ve achieved and look forward to achieving even more good.
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April 30th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
‘Racism, sexism and homophobia are becoming increasingly unacceptable in many areas of the world.’
I do honestly take your point about positive thinking, I do.
But I’d change that to ’some’ not ‘many’..or at least limit yourself to referring to the western world - although I have my reservations there.
You’re right that we should not make the mistake of thinking everything is always getting worse, but I would argue that things are not getting better quickly enough.
Then you also have to look at whether racism, sexism and homophobia are falling in terms explicit or implicit. Laws don’t change peoples prejudices.
Take the Shilpa Shetty debacle - Channel 4 were absolutely right to say there was no overt racism..there didn’t need to be, most discrimination is low level, difficult to define and hidden beneath the guise of other things.
Then there’s homophobia of the evangelist church in Africa…
And to suggest that sexism is becoming ‘increasingly unacceptable in most parts of the world’ is plain wrong and more than a little complacent.
Most people in the world wouldn’t even understand what you mean - I’ve heard men, in many parts of the world, argue theat they’re not sexist, they believe that women are equal and anyway the reason why women don’t get beaten in their family is because it doesn’t work, it doesn’t make them do as their told any better, it just makes them grumpy.
Yes, lets look forward, yes lets celebrate the achievements and the progress that we’ve made but don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re nearly there…we’re only just beginning.