TOW #18 - Is Humanity Getting Better?

In one of the most captivating articles I've read in a while, author Leif Wenar begins with discussing the Plague of 1665 that wiped out about 20 percent of London's citizens. This number equates to about a million and a half lives in today's society. Eager to learn where the article was going, I continued to read about some of our greatest feats as humans. How our science is so penetrating, how our bombs are now informed by particle physics, how our computers are becoming faster, and how our transportation networks have become a thing of beauty. But yet, the author draws a comparison to the ignorance that led to the spread of diseases, such as London of 1665. Wenar claimed that pestilence doesn't threaten us because of the ignorance, but because of the success of our systems. Which begs the question, if the systems, such as transportation, are such a success, then why downplay them and draw the comparison to such awful times in the mid 1600s? Through the use of a metaphor that humanity is adding energy to itself, Wenar successfully argues that humanity is advancing, and that "more energy = more humanity." To prove that the more energy has brought more humanity he reveals "...the big picture of postwar history shows significant improvements in nearly all indicators of lived human experience. The average life span of humans is today longer than it has ever been. A smaller proportion of women die in childbirth than ever before. Child malnutrition is at its lowest level ever, while literacy rates worldwide have never been higher. Most impressive has been the recent reduction in severe poverty." In the end, we must realize that although our new success have brought along some evil, we must not overlook that there are so many things to overlook the bad. If we fail to recognize this, he claims, future generations will marvel that we did not see it.