How do Teilhard’s projections for the future help us to gain a correct perspective on our lot today?

This Week

Today I’m departing from Teilhard’s insights into the phenomenon of universal evolution to focus on one a little closer to home.  How can we read today’s events in the context of his universal perspective?  In short, is there any way that we can see the world today as ‘the best time to be alive”?  We will see next month a long list of statistics from Johan Norberg (“Progress”) which substantiate Teilhard’s optimism (and today’s data), but after reading Nicholas Kristoff’s article in today’s New York Times, I’m jumping the gun in presenting Norberg’s thoughts on this subject.

Kristoff begins his article with a sentiment that I regularly receive from readers of this blog.  As he puts it, such optimism

“..sees it as disrespectful of all the tragedies around us.”

   He lists such tragedies as:

• The suffering of children in Gaza
• The atrocities in Sudan
• The wildfires in Los Angeles

And finally, one particularly tragic to a liberal such as himself:

• An unstable threat to Democracy moving into the White House

So how to put such grim news in perspective?   He begins with what he considers the worse thing that can happen: “the loss of a child”.  He follows this with an unexpected statistic that seems highly orthogonal to conventional wisdom.

“2024 seems to have been the year in which the smallest percentage of children died since the dawn of humanity.”

   As we will see later from Norberg in more detail, Kristof offers a timeline:

150 years ago: over 50% of global newborns died

70 years ago: 25% of global newborns died

Today: 3.8% of global newborns died (All United Nations statistics)

   Another way to look at this is that since 2000, eighty million children’s lives have been saved.

A second way to put today’s news in Kristoff’s perspective: reduction in global extreme poverty.  We will look at Norberg’s more extensive data later, but Kristoff points out that last year this figure has plummeted to 8.5%.  Another way of looking at this is

“Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty.”

Still another perspective is in the areas of education and literacy, “the greatest forces empowering human beings, yet when I was  a child, the majority of human beings had been  illiterate.”  He sees a distinct contrast in today’s literacy rate.  “Now we’re approaching 90% literacy worldwide, and the number of literate people is rising by more than 12 million people each year.  Every three seconds, a person becomes more literate”.

Summarizing a few other topics:

• • While AI is evolving rapidly, with its perceived threats, so is its applicant to new medical breakthroughs.
  • While threats to the environment continue to mount, for the first time in history paths to the decarbonization of the glove are emerging.

Kristoff suggests that we take a deep breath and make a New Year’s resolution to look at the data and recognize that

   “For all the challenges we face, there is no better time to be alive.”

   Happy New Year!