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Is the world getting worse or better?
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
The world is definitely getting worse, global warming continues to get worse. Deaths from terrorism are on the rise. More and more people are on antidepressants. There is an epidemic of narcissism. The richest 62 people have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world
On the other hand, the world is definitely getting better. The terrorism threat is overblown and in fact violence worldwide is at all time historic lows. The world is more connected, cell phones are improving the lives of people in poor countries and they are leapfrogging old, inefficient technologies altogether. Life expectancy is up, infant mortality is down. The average person lives better than royalty did in earlier times.
So which is it?
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Comments
The world can't get better if there aren't always things to improve upon.
Simple nutshell answer "Yes" & "No" "Maybe"..."Maybe not"...
It all depends on which side of the fence one finds oneself on and what frame of mind one is in....
On a personal level...The world/universe is just doing what it normally does, nothing special...Nothing to write home about really...It is how it is, and even though at times "I" may like it to be different, "I" also know that it is different and will continue to "change"... Change is inevitable suffering is optional.... that's life...
It was the best of times it was the worst of times ~ Charles Dickens
The world is getting better. You have to look on an overall statistical bases to see the changes happening from year to year. There was actually a book written regarding how the crime is down overall. I cannot recall the name of the book off the top of my head, but perhaps Googling it-you will be able to find it.
I think that is just about the perfect answer
There has always been narcissism. Isn't that what the Roaring 20's were about, to a great extent? That era practically celebrated the narcissism epidemic. There have always been wars, terrorism, and genocide. The more things change, the more they stay the same, but in new permutations.
On the other hand, society-at-large is evolving in the right direction, I think; it's no longer OK to beat your wife and kids, force your kids to work 12 hrs. a day with no schooling and sell your girls into prostitution or servitude, there's support for widowed moms and their kids so they don't have to starve or mom doesn't have to go into prostitution to support her kids, we no longer throw sewage into the streets and then wonder why so many die of plague and smallpox, medical help has vastly improved if you can get it and can afford it, and we can enjoy international travel without having to worry about drowning at sea or spending months getting to where we want to go.
But corporations still rule and are pushing us to the brink of environmental collapse, so in another 50 years, the question may no longer matter.
@person
The world has been going through continual changes, billions of times longer than any us monkeys in shoes have developed the capacity to tap dance.....
so
just what criteria could any of us temporary coalescings of karmic inertia use, to judge better or worse.
Well, this young man is doing his best. Maybe, instead of wondering, we should all put what weight we can, behind him, and join him in his quest....
I think it is a question of what you compare things to.
There is a certain cynicism in the air that I don't like, a hint of the surveillance state, where more and more hard fought freedoms are trampled in the name of a phantom war on terror. The media still seem to be largely insane, focused on a very few events which get amplified and present a massively unbalanced view. The younger generation are getting fewer chances than their parents did, will work longer and be rewarded less. The economy, the banks and the wealthy seem beyond any sensible control, and people are more fixated by material wealth than ever. Socialist care and responsibility is being eroded in favour of free market systems which are not better, just more profitable for the few. There is a threat that the middle classes will be largely wiped out in the next thirty years by advancing technology. Materialist atheism seems more and more prevalent.
So I am thinking that compared to the 1990's, things have definitely taken a turn for the worse. Forward progress has halted, and we have taken some backwards steps for the first time since the beginning of the 20th century. It is our responsibility to ensure it doesn't become a long term trend.
Unfortunately some of the power and redistribution mechanisms we used to rely on seem to have become corrupted.
@Dakini yes . The world is at the brink of environmental disaster . But when that does happen and the human species is wiped out the world will heal itself and go on. Just like the dinosaurs got too big for their own good, man has gotten too smart for his own good. Greed killed us.
This could make an interesting sort of social science project. I could imagine charting the progress of a number of different metrics like physical health, mental health, material wealth and security, violence, environment, etc. Some like narcissism or altruism might be hard to quantify.
Then you could put them in a line graph to chart their trajectory and then even somehow average them out to come up with an overall score for how the world is doing.
My assumption would be that there would be lots of ups and downs and some categories would be more positive than others but that overall the trend would be upwards.
I think there are plenty of good reasons to think that society may collapse and humanity would fall into barbarism again. But barring some sort of astronomical extinction level event (ie. the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs) some amount of humanity would survive and rebuild, hopefully having learned lessons and would be able to build a better world.
Kind of a loaded question. The world is changing, as it always does. People and governments are being stupid and selfish and belligerent, as usual, so entire civilizations will probably join the list of failed cultures. I can't see any indication we've learned a lesson at all from history, considering our congress in the supposed enlightened USA right now officially denies global warming exists because it would mean upsetting their oil industry masters.
Our way of life will have to change, but it remains to be seen how painful and bloody that will be. Life itself will adapt and go on, but we'll lose a lot of unique, beautiful species along the way.
Don't you wish you had a time window to see what the world will look like a thousand years from now?
Its intended to be something of a Rorschach test, it maybe doesn't have a right or wrong answer in itself but rather reflects one's own views on the matter.
Another lens to view it through is the religious/rational worldviews. Most religious notions understand that the world was once purer and has only continued to regress from that grace. While the rational view coming from the Enlightenment is that we learn and our thinking and values grow and progress.
It seems to me that a lot of us are looking at our countries and trying to make a global comparison. There are a lot of things that have improved in the richer nations, but those things are still acceptable parts of culture in a lot of other countries. The world is a pretty big place with a vast array of differences, so it's a hard comparison to make. It's not ok in the US to beat your wife and kids. Well, unless you are a principal in Georgia and 19 other states who hit kids with paddles. But it's legal in Saudi Arabia to kill a woman for adultery. Child labor is still an issue in a lot of places, as are safe and fair labor practices in general. Selling children for sex is an area that is booming, with the majority of clients coming from more "civilized" countries.
As usual, it really all comes down to what can we do as individuals? Regardless of what we each perceive as the problem areas, how can we help? In most of our worlds, we speak loudest with our dollars. It does little good to speak out against child labor and unfair wages if we are the ones buying the goods that demand cheap labor because we don't want to pay more. It's easy, always, to look and point fingers. As always, much harder to look at what role we play in any of these problems and figuring out what we can do to change things. Usually the answer is undesirable, so we just go back to talking about what the problem is instead.
@Swaroop I'm just trying to interpret your LOL. No judgement but did the wording just strike you as humorous or is it some comment on humanities ability to survive and learn? If you're pessimistic about humanities future I'd just like to draw a comment out of you in the spirit of enhancing the thread.
You kind of just proved how we are progressing in a positive way.
Not so long ago there was simply no way to know these things.
People being evil make the news more than people being good because good is actually expected.
I haven't noticed a study being done but for humanity as a whole, I think the percentage of compassionate people has gone up.
Kids can see how kids in other countries live and can relate better to one another than when I was young. It took me a few months to get a reply from my Chinese penpal in grade 3. Months! Now the kids got mail in the blink of an eye.
In this the age of information, ignorance is like a choice. A choice many get made for them by others. For those of us that get to make that choice it is also the age of misinformation and we have to sift through evidence brought forth by some seeking to enlighten and some seeking to confuse.
I see war, greed and hunger as symptoms of a horrible disease of the mind called "us and "them"" but feel it is akin to growing pains.
If war and greed are growing pains on our way to a higher place, we still have a very long ways to go, since they have been a part of humanity since before we were even the humans we are now.
@David I tend to agree that better communication and being able to see others leads to greater empathy, as GI Joe says "knowing is half the battle"
I have this other hypothesis though that the coarsening of the political dialogue came about partly because people with very different views can now regularly and easily see how the other half is and find it maddening.
@person I was laughing at your pious hope that mankind would learn from past mistakes. Please don't mind me. I am a congenital cynic.
It was the perfect answer, it was the flawed answer. It was the final solution, it was the beginning of the problem.
More of the same?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
That's fine, I wasn't hurt or offended. I was more hoping for a nice deep throated, cynical argument.
@person that I am good at. I was picking up so many fights in FB that I quit. It was taking up too much of my time and energy. I am hoping that it would be different here.
@Swaroop, it does seem to me that your MO is a little confrontational, and perhaps a little argumentative. It doesn't bode well for life in general.
Why is it, do you suppose, that you have this 'poke in the chest' attitude?
I'm not trying to get at you. I'm suggesting you perhaps might find it to your advantage to examine why exactly you have this 'prickle'... this cynicism that is manifested as a bit of 'in your face'... You say it's 'congenital'.... why do you suppose that simply because it's congenital, that it can't be ameliorated....?
We ran a thread some time ago on the difference between a sceptic (Skeptic, in American English) and a cynic.
Fights aren't healthy, particularly on Fb when basically, the dregs of the world post selfies and pictures of their dinner last night - whether still on the plate or now on the pavement.
So - How can we help?
Humans are destroying the earth, we are all too many here. This comes at the expense of nature , trees are cut down , animals must flee or die out . If we had lived more in harmony with nature , and respected it, things would looked much better.
As the american indian said: "When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money".
@federica thanks for your concern. After joining NB I am really trying to practice right speech. But old habits die hard. Thank you again.
@Namada there is so much wisdom in Indian sayings. They were so right... They had such respect and reverence for their environment....
@Swaroop you're very welcome. We'll support your efforts, even if we ever-so-gently have to give you a nudge now and then...!
@Swaroop The discourse here is generally much more civil than the rest of the internet. A part of Buddhism is to not be so attached and that includes our ideas and beliefs. So if they are challenged hopefully we won't be so hurt or at least we understand why we shouldn't be.
Its also helpful to take a more philosophical approach to debate in that the objective isn't to win and sort of force others to accept your view but rather the point is to increase understanding and knowledge by investigating and challenging our beliefs.
So hopefully we can all find a way to present our views without getting belligerent and personal and even if we do we've got @federica who won't hesitate to plant a boot where it counts if we get too hot.
....'boot'....? Hmmmm.....I prefer to think of it as a pretty, delicate little summer ballet pump (with attitude), rather than a size 9 Doc Marten, but I gets ya point.....
Cynical perhaps, but also an interesting point. Unlike previous generations we live in the Information Age, almost anything you wish to know is only a search engine query away. So is ignorance a choice? I don't believe so, because people are steered by the media into particular channels.
But I think we may have to wait to find out. Recently I have been finding myself using Wikipedia more and more, and while I am aware of its shortcomings, there is also much that is good that one could say about it. If people can genuinely get into the habit of searching for what they don't know, that would be a tremendous boon.
I do wonder if it is too much to expect. Perhaps people have to be especially trained to search and use information well, and what we are looking at now is a lost generation of casual, quick Q&A internet users who don't have the depth to research a complex topic like a world religion and learn from it. But if the school system and parents adjust, the next generation could be amazingly knowledgeable.
Wikipedia certainly is very useful if people treat the articles as a starting point for research. If you read the debates about the content, and access the information in the footnotes, you can get much deeper into the subject matter.
People in the western world are very educated. But knowledge and wisdom are too different things.
Dosent matter how many books you have read about economics, if you do not know how to handle your own suffering, which you dont learn in a regular western school.
Our own personal movement is usually the start. Strangely understanding the 'best and worst of times' is generational, with us doing the generating, allowing us to accept and settle.
As far as I am aware the process of understanding this causation from attitude, is transformative and transforming.
Better yet
“Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” ~ Lao Tzu
http://opcoa.st/0DT12
Ironically, American Indians cut down more trees than anyone else, lol.
Talking is easy. Acting is not.
I doubt very much they did it on the industrial scale now being ministered in the Amazon, or for the same reasons (money), though.....
Actions speak louder than words.
If we all acted responsibly, and demanded our politicians follow suit, we might gets somewhere.
I put my rubbish bin out once a month because there is so little going in there. I mostly recycle or compost....For starters.....
What makes you say that? Have you anything to back that up with?
"American Indian" is a very vast group of people that covered the entirety of not just the US but North America. I doubt that the Navajo and Hopi cut down a lot of trees in Arizona and Mexico.
I live in a very forested area, and the Native Americans were prevalent here. Did they cut trees? As needed, yes. They also cut and burned areas to encourage growth of berries and other things. But the giant white pine forests did not disappear until Europeans arrived to log it out, and they wiped out the entire landscape in a matter of years. The Indians did not have the numbers to cause the amount of damage that has been done in the last 150 years or so, and they understood that doing so would harm them and what they needed to live. They cut and burned forest to live, not to make profit. Unlike the Europeans.
Outstanding.
As a committed Hinayanist (as a start) I believe any person engaging positive change through effort is a best use of time and potential.
It is why the Theravadin approach of individual effort eventually and complementarily engages an expanding compassion of a self widened to encompass others ...
Right speech includes silence, friendliness, skill, accessible and appropriate to the situation speech. So for example @person may pose a question knowing the answer is conditional. In other words getting worse or better is up to us ...
Right speech certainly is not so easy. Some aspects such as friendliness and appropriate to the situation are straightforward, but skillful or beneficial often are not. In those areas the depth of our personal understanding can be significantly tested, and what we put forward as being beneficial or skillful can be an interesting reflection on our measure of empathy and insight into others as well as our own state of progress.
Whether I am more Theravadin or Mahayanin or even Tibetan in approach I haven't yet gotten my head around, it requires an in depth knowledge of the traditions to make that determination so I am currently just picking up things from all of the traditions as I go along.
Is the world getting worse or better?
Quantumly speaking, yes.
Point is, we seem to have a romantic view of certain cultures and people. That's not the right attitude. Humans are the same, they are all part of the problem. Every culture has been guilty of violence (against nature and against people), one way or another. Even 'peaceful' Buddhists persecute minorities once they acquire power. So no need to create a myth around certain cultures just because they haven't done as much damage as the rest.
It's not about myths or romanticism. You said as a point of fact that the Indians destroyed more trees than anyone else. I was appalled how a nomadic hunter gatherer culture is capable of doing it @techie
The hunter gatherer by definition cannot be greedy because they can accumulate only as much as they can carry on their back. Greed is a by product of the development of agricultural societies.
This is known as 'backpedalling'.
You were politely asked to provide evidence of your statement....
Furthermore, as I recall, it was the white guy with guns who basically wiped out the Bison, in the USA. As well as the Wolf.... Even though both creatures were also 'called upon' by American Indians in their co-operative partnership with Nature....
There's no question at all in my mind that where Nature provides, man exploits - and he exploits to excess, for personal gain and profit, often to the detriment of the donor in the first place.
There are voices, loud and screaming, demanding attention, now presenting sound and well-researched opposition to the money-grabbers. It's important to look at the bigger picture, determine the values we wish to perpetuate, and implement them at grass-root level.
Grass-root level means educating the future of this planet - Our Children - to respect, nurture, cultivate and safeguard the essential qualities and positives which go to preserve and conserve Life.
It is at home - and at school - that such urgent values need to be instilled.
I look at the cross-section of young people today, and by far the majority, sadly, are engaged in the shallow, trivial, superficial egotistic drive to create an existence in which they are their own epicentre, of their own personal little trite, technologically-driven world.
We may wish for an improved world for our children.
Our task is to improve the Children, for our world.
@techie we need to moderate our tone my fellow country man. Or we may get a taste of @federica's size 12 boots.
size 9. 12 is for spammers, flamers and those who join to self-promote/advertise.
It was a research paper, can't find it online. My bad! Lots of forests were destroyed.
@Swaroop not all American Natives were nomadic. There is lots of evidence of very large population centers and cities with pretty vast trade networks. In some areas, they were more nomadic and much smaller in population. But not everywhere.
Also, the native population is estimated to be as high as %90 larger before smallpox and other Eurasian diseases were introduced to the Americas.