Thursday, November 29, 2012

Do you think the world will be a "better" place in 100 years? Or: long-run optimism or pessimism?

Someone asked me this interesting question on Quora ( which I love btw, one of the best sites to ever be on ), just posting my answer here.

As intriguing a question this is, and being a fan of short answers, this one is difficult difficult, lemon difficult. Let me attempt one anyway based on my narrow  understanding of politics, development and humans in this world.

Where do I start to analyze this?

I will start with one of the major things which change the world order, war. The world today is becoming increasingly averse to war, every country fears nuclear retaliation will result in mutual destruction. But there was an inherent simplicity to war; we had a winner and a loser, hence a good guy and a bad guy (as history is written by the victors). 

So we as humans could find solace that they were the good guys or the bad guys, atleast we had a pro and anti stance. 

Today we have no "real" team do we? We do not have the communists or the fascists or the Nazis or the capitalists or the bourgeois. We only have the '99%' ,struggling to live 99% of the time. The world has swallowed the 80-20 rule, hook line and sinker.

The world today is becoming increasingly global, and the lines have blurred, the language barriers have melted, distance is no longer a limit and we have even discovered the Higgs boson.

The BRIC countries have risen up, or made an unsteady attempt to rise. The economic centers are shifting from the far west to the far east, we are running out of oil, or atleast the corporations want you to think that, we have made breakthrough in LED technologies, and energy sector. Our phones are more powerful than supercomputers of the age past.

We have become an online society. Our reliance on paper has ended, we now rely on electrons, those pesky little particles/waves which transfer money, send messages, fire people, buy shares, blow up airplanes and metros and crowded areas, show you maps, and allow you to 'like' stuff. We are lost.

Yet, everyday, collaboration far and wide helps challenge the very frontiers of our existence, intelligence shared keeps us safe, a few words bring warmth to a family far away from their son.

We are on a knife's edge of existence, but we have always been there. This is the unique property of being a human on this planet. We will never perish, because if enough of us suffer, I think we are capable and intelligent enough to collectively survive ourselves. But, how good or bad we are is ultimately not humanity's prerogative, but an individual's. Because humans never learn from humanity's suffering, only from their own.

So, after all this is said and done.

Q: What does this say about tomorrow?

Me: Nothing.

Q: Will it be better?

Me: Yes, certainly, for some people.

Q: Will it be worse?

Me: Yes, certainly, for some people.

Q: Why do you say so?

Me: Because there will be more people, so mathematically....

Q: You cannot measure that, can you?

Me: Nobody can.

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