Yeah, but it also seems to trend to population decline and environmentalism, if the current wealthy nations are anything to go by.
Some things get better, some worse, but, overall, better. I’m glad my children (two daughters) are growing up in this age (minus the climate crisis) versus my childhood in the 80s (and I had a fond childhood.)
The things that seem to make a big difference are not always what one expects. Having computers, new textbooks and fancy school buildings may matter less than dedicated teachers and electricity to allow students to study at home. In some places a bicycle is almost as good as a car. Having access to clean water is vital for health; having it in your home frees up hours of time for other things. Low levels of corruption are key to fostering prosperity and incentivizing productivity. Sone of these things are correlated to democracy, which may have fallen on harder times. But a few small changes exceeds the sum of their parts.
As long as we continue to kill this planet and use up it’s resources, I don’t see how it could be argued we are getting better. It may feel better but it is not.
I don’t think a civilized humanity is going to last on our current trajectory. SOMETHING is going to break eventually.
Be honest, how many of you rather be born today rather than the day you were actually born on?
- I’d rather be born today.
- I’d rather be born on the day that I was.
0 voters
Back to 23 years under Apartheid if I don’t have to? Why would I?
Some Westerners have very rose-coloured ideas of what “the good old days” were for a lot of the developing world.
Damn - clicked the wrong dot.
Strictly personally, except for the fact that if I were born today I’d have my whole life ahead of me, I preferred the 60s for being a kid, the 80s for getting a good job and starting a family. Could easily do with out most tech. In fact, preferred a world w/o cellphones, and w/ far fewer screens.
Disclaimer, I was born a middle class white male.
Over the last fifty years, life expectancy in the US has improved by a decade.
God no, democracy is receding and climate change is past the point of no return. Todays youth will be cursing our names.
It went down under Trump.
Thre thread title said the world.
As billions have risen out of poverty, some in the richest counbtries are now living more like in a middle income country.
Last ten years? Not so good for democracy in the U.S. – or India. There are ups and downs.
My 96 year old mother has macular degeneration but still has her eyesight. If born just twentry years earlier, she would have gone blind of a much younger age. And her key med went generic in Europe in January.
But he mentioned life expectancy in the US, you know in the post I was responding to.
All this prosperity people are touting isn’t sustainable. It’s a poison pill, they want more, more, more. This will trigger more pollution, more climate change, so they’ll buy more air conditioners, more climate change. It’s collapsing. Anyone under the age of 50 doesn’t have a reasonable future, I’m so glad I never had kids.
They already are. Polls show widespread fear of having children.
There always are environmental challenges, include in the middle ages when there were fewer people available to work the problems. Climate change is inevitable, but yes, it is better when climate change comes slowly.
Decatastrophizing climate change is a hard pull because I have no evidence that we will find workarounds, except that we have with past challenges, and are generally better off today. Just because a Republican politican may have once said what I just wrote doesn’t make it true or false. And even here, there is a middle ground:
Predicting armageddon won’t avert it, but innovation and investment might.
I have never met a smart optimist. We are in this mess because people didn’t take the threat of climate change seriously and we’re still not. We tell ourselves that the system won’t collapse because it hasn’t collapsed. It’s nonsense. Russia is run by a dying mad man who is threatening nuclear Armageddon and our previous president was his bitch. Democracy is receding across the world. France almost elected a fascist government. But everything will be ok because…reasons.
In fact, people in poorer countries have less children as their quality of life improves. And people in richer countries have fewer children after their quality of life improved. This is why as the population increases from eight to eleven billion, the number of those under fourteen is projected to remain at the same level as now - about two billion.
Can we feed so many people? What would Malthus say? Rosling would deny being an optimist, and might share some of your fears.
You can change your own vote.
The vote is a fairly weak substitute for the question of global improvement. There are more personal issues involved.
The natural world is most definitely not becoming a better place, so no. Innumerable species that were abundant as recent as the 1980’s when I was in school are endangered now, the loss of habitats is staggering, entire ecosystems are at the brink of collapse, etc. etc.
This is a good point. The book talks about how a few species like giant pandas are safer with increasing numbers. However, this would seem to be the case for very few species even if it is true. To say nothing of their environments.
I believe the world is getting better in some respects (e.g. increasing enlightenment regarding treating minorities with more respect and fairness), worse in some respects (e.g. increasing polarization sometimes to the point of violence of people with opposing views on many things, mostly political) and improving, but not fast enough in still other respects (e.g. global warming, population homeostasis).
Another thing both improving in some respects, and getting worse in other respects is wildlife habitat. On the one hand too many private and public environments are still being exploited and raped, destroying wildlife habitats (e.g. rain forest destruction, coral reefs). On the other hand many national parks around the globe are improving and seeing a significant rebound of some species.
This excellent series highlights many national park improvements:
For the most part, we no longer see the indiscriminate decimation of species (e.g. buffalo, doo doo), but poaching endangered species is still a major problem that is not being dealt with fast enough.
As far as general appearance of the population—we’re getting worse. Have you seen what the average Walmart shopper looks like these days? Bring back dresses, suits and hats (real hats, not baseball caps)! And stop cussing so much!
That would be the decimation of feces. 
I think you meant the Dodo.