10 Reasons Why It’s Realistic To Be Optimistic About The Future
I will not lie to you. There’s a lot that sucked in 2016. A lot of good people passed away. Homelessness, poverty, wars, famines – as well as politics that have everyone’s panties in a twist lately (for good reason mind you, but still).
With it all, there are a LOT of really positive things happening. It will empower our ability to create and improve our state of mind if we give these facts some serious attention and love.
Prepare to be optimistic, despite yourself!
1. Marked improvement in combating extreme poverty
According to the World Bank, in 1990, 35% of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty. As of 2013, this number was reduced to 10.7%. Our efforts are making a difference. In actual numbers, this means that in 1990 1.83 billion human beings were living on less than 1.90 per day. In 2012, the number went down to 881 million and in just one year, between 2012 and 2013, this number was reduced to 767 million. The significant one-year change was mostly due to efforts in India and China. We still have our work cut out for us – but things do change and have been changing for the better, scary headlines notwithstanding. Jim Kern, the President of the World Bank said something incredibly inspiring: “for the first time, we have the opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation.” Let’s do it.
Now in case you are still skeptical and thinking – “Great, we solved extreme poverty- but what about the rest? Times are hard.” Well, they may be, but overall our global per capital income has exponentially increased. in 1800, global per capita income was measured at $700 and it jumped to $200 in 1900 (based on today’s dollars). The number skyrocketed to $10,070 in the present day.
It is estimated that before the Enlightenment, people, wherever they were in the world, did not expect to live past 30. Life expectancy began to increase with industrialization, only in industrialized countries. This gap is being bridged and world life expectancy is rising to around 70 years old, with no country in the world exhibiting the low life expectancy of even the highest levels of the 1800’s.
Each generation is literally smarter than the one before – 3% smarter than the generation that preceded it, to be exact. This is known as the Flynn Effect, named after James Flynn who studied this fact. And as posted by a Forbes article before me, kindergarten kids today have access to more knowledge at their fingertips than a genius in a research lab a mere generation ago. So, hopefully, our smart descendants can fix some of the problems we have left them with our limited brain capacity.
According to TEF, The Emerging Future, with what seems like impeccably backed up sources, the rate of exponential technological development is astounding. In merely 5 years, we will be at 32 times the amount of development of today. In ten years, this number jumps to over 1000 times. This is actually even a logical conclusion of the speeding up advancement we have seen in our own lifetime. We plebes who are unfamiliar with tech literature can only begin to imagine the cool ways our experience will be augmented by technology. Smart contact lenses anybody? And yes, for you naysayers out there, technology also comes with its drawbacks. But remember? We are getting smarter. We will know how to handle it.
Just like in history, when electricity once replaced steam against a lot of pushback, we are now experiencing a new era in which the creation of renewable energy is more efficient, affordable – in addition to being better for the environment – than the energy sources we have been using until present. Not only are the algorithms doing the work, the younger, new generation of managers who understand change are taking over, making use of renewable energy more attractive.
UNESCO, in their Education For All Monitoring Report, reveals that in the mid 19th century, no more than 10% of the adult population could read. At all. Today, they estimate that 80% of adults worldwide have some level of literacy, despite world population more than quintupling in the same time period.
Yes, I do read the news and I know how bad things are everywhere. Wikipedia lists 44 open armed conflicts around the world. However, Harvard Professor Steven Pinker claims that we are living in the most peaceful time in history (please don’t jinx it, Professor Pinker!). In the “Better Angels of Our Nature” he explains that in the last quarter century, the number of deaths from armed conflict has decreased significantly – and although his charts don’t include the full brunt of the Syrian conflict, recent ISIS terrorism and more, the trend still holds fast. Professor Pinker attributes this trend to the greater connectivity of the human species, bringing greater understanding and reduced willingness to engage in armed struggle.
Charles Kenny, the author of “Getting Better” states that the worldwide infant mortality rate was about 19.5%. He is quoted by technology entrepreneur Ryan Allis who reasonably argues that the real rate was likely closer to 30% because the world’s poorest countries were not recording infant mortality in those years. Today, the worldwide rate is at 3.69%. And of course, this is 3.69% too much but the evidence of our successfully tackling world issues is too large to ignore. Access to cleaner water, better food distribution, immunization, medication, sanitation, and education have all had a hand in this result.
9. Previously unfathomable access to knowledge and education
The internet. It changed everything. Today, 35% of the world has internet access and with increased technologies, more and more people in developing nations and around the world have access to the web than ever before. This connectivity offers new opportunities for education that did not exist in the past. The classes are coming into our homes and people can continue to study and develop themselves throughout their careers at minimum cost.
This is wonderful news for our own personal development, while enabling a marked societal change as well; it is a way that we can continue to empower ourselves to take on the new digital challenges that we are being offered.
10. Reduced barriers to entry to business owning
I grew up in the US and was raised to believe that anyone could do anything if they put their mind to it. And while this was always true, when starting a business meant huge investment and risk, this was not so easy. Everything is changing. One friend is setting up an empire selling things on the internet without having to manufacture a thing; another created a boutique marketing agency with clients around the globe using international phone numbers, good internet access, turning her daughter’s erratic sleep schedule as an advantage. We no longer need to spend a fortune to make a fortune. The digital age has democratized becoming a business owner in a way that offers increased opportunity for all.
We definitely still have challenges – the biggest among them is a frightening increase in wage inequality in western countries. But knowledge is power and we can do something about this. As you see, things do get better. We may have challenges before us, but it is reasonable to be optimistic. It just doesn’t seem that way because we read too many newspapers.
