Gapminder
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A few of my friends, my wife included, frequently bemoan the fact that the world as we know it is coming apart and things are getting worse every day. The daily onslaught of news on the human condition does not help alleviate this feeling for them.
Ever the optimist, I assert that on the whole this generation is doing better by itself and by its fellow man compared to any other generation in the past. Obviously I say this with no data, only as someone who is actively engaged in a grounds-up effort to provide opportunity to those who have none. Personal experience of being with some of these people gives me that optimism. Now it turns out that there is also data available to show that our lot is getting better, not worse.
Take a look at Gapminder They present human development data across the world in some very cool and innovative ways (Google has acquired their technology to make it available for free).
Go to the tools section and try out the GapMinder World, 2006 (the first one on the Tools page). You can change the X and Y axes (It defaults to Income v/s Life Expectancy but you can change them (e.g. you can compare Life Expectancy v/s Military Spending). It gives you a clear indicator on how things are changing around the world (except in Sub Saharan Africa where, due to the AIDS crisis, things have slipped back a bit).
BTW: It is also a fantastic way to get kids interested in statistics. Over the weekend my 6 y.o look at it over my shoulder and the next thing you know she spent more than an hour in front of the computer playing with the X and Y Axes. She kept telling me everything from “How Malawi compares with the United States in Child Mortality (I explained to her what that is)” , she was playing with Physicans per 1000 people etc, population growth over time etc.
I would also recommend the 1 hour Tech Talk they have posted (given at Google) and the video on Slums.
(Sorry, this post does not fit into any one category that we have - so I choose a few of them)
There was a very interesting interview on NPR today about the decrease in violence over the centuries. Of course you have your blips (Nazi Holocaust, Rawanda, WWII & dropping the Atom bomb in Japan), but on the whole it appears as if violence is decreasing around the world. The media doesn’t help since violence = revenue for them, which is why I’ve stopped watching the news and prefer to listen to NPR.
Here’s the interesting thing though, the guest mentioned that there is a slight disconnect/delay between what society deems as a negative, and the action of actually eliminating that negative. For example, a majority of individuals felt that slavery was bad yet it wasn’t abolished immediately. The same example can be seen with parenting and hitting kids - 20 years ago it was pretty normal whereas just recently it’s becoming something that is seen as being too violent. So interestingly enough, even though we only talk about being less violent (lets get rid of torture, bullying, free range animals, et cetera), the mere fact that we’re collectively thinking about it is seen as an indication of things to come. Another interesting fact raised is that our sense of morality (in regards to violence) seems to increase exponentially with each generation, so it may seem that violence continues to increase at a rapid pace even when it may indeed be decreasing. Anyway, maybe the world isn’t falling apart as we all think it is.
I’d like to know how much of this morality will remain if our easy access to life’s basic needs are taken away. At that point, I’m pretty sure that it will all be a dog eat dog world, morality be damned.
Which is indeed the point I was making. The trend is clearly in the direction to provide more people with life’s basic needs and that is being borne out by all kinds of data. Morality is a very loaded word and more importantly relative to the times we live in so I don’t know if the following makes a lot of sense
I can understand a statement that says “our tolerance to violence has decreased” because that can be measured with how quick we are to respond to a numeric value e.g. a body count.