Life Is Neither Easy or Fair
Take a look around the world. Whether you look at Mexico, Haiti, Africa, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the former USSR, China, or India you see that the vast majority of people are just barely making it. They don't have much of a cushion to fall back on in case of really bad times. The odd part is that right now is probably the very best that mankind has ever had it. At the moment there is less plague and mass starvation than at any time in our history. Literacy among ordinary people is higher now than at any time since we were apes hanging around in Africa.
Water is still a problem, and it is getting to be more so. Fresh, clean, healthy drinking water, water for irrigating crops, and adequate treatment-disposal of contaminated waste water. Carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gasses are continuing to increase in the planet's thin atmosphere.
In the middle of the twentieth century people around the globe tried to improve communication and reduce the chances of nuclear war. The United Nations was founded, and at first actually did some good. The USSR and the USA were dragged screaming and kicking into agreeing to reduce their insane quantities of long range missiles, bombers, and multiple warhead nuclear missiles. Genuine efforts were put into trying to stop nuclear proliferation, and the results were often positive.
Now early in the twenty first century things don't look so rosy. More and more unstable little religious dictatorships have developed or purchased nuclear bombs. Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. Iran is working real hard on getting its own bomb. Other countries in the Persian Gulf region are trying to do so. The rich, arrogant, and many times racist countries like the USA, Russia, England, and France still have thousands of nuclear warheads. There is no real sign that any of these countries intend to actually go fully 100% non-nuclear.
Around the planet the trend is towards more people owning and driving automobiles, and in those countries which have had cars for years, the trend is clearly towards more powerful or larger cars which consume more energy and pollute the air more.
The tropical rain forests in the Amazon continue to be cut down, the oceans are warming, and coral reefs are dying. Extinction of plants, insects and other life forms is taking place at approximately the same rate as the last time the Earth was hit by a major asteroid.
The supply of food and water for human consumption increasingly contains trace amounts of pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, hormones, and other chemicals of dubious value to human health. Antibiotics are routinely fed to animals solely to increase profits by helping them fatten up, and people all over the plant are eating far more meat and fat. Obesity and cardiovascular disease are now major problems in a growing number of places, and the problem is spreading rapidly as people eat more processed foods high in sugar, fat, and salt; all while they are getting far less exercise in their daily lives.
Economic systems worldwide are making the rich and powerful even more so, and the middle and working classes are losing out. Communism and Marxism are dead. China, India, Russia, and America are all competing to see who can become the richest and most wild-west, get rich quick, virtually unregulated capitalist economies. Thinking is increasingly short term, even among those government planners we thought were intelligent and well educated. Worrying much about the long term consequences of any policy or behavior is no longer considered the “in” thing to do.
At the micro level healthy, beautiful, wanted babies are still being born, and flowers are still blooming. Each day there are still beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
But at the macro level things do not look so good. A great many different factors have been trending in a negative direction for at least the last fifty years. Not only does mankind seem incapable of reversing this growing pattern of self destructiveness, the general trend among humans is growing increasingly self-centered. In developed parts of the world empathy for people who are less fortunate is continuing its rapid decline.
I don't really know how to end this little document. In the past this might have been thought of as a wake-up call. In 2010 most people won't even try to read it, and among those few who do, it will cause many to simply yawn with boredom. Maybe it would be best to look at things from the perspective of how the planet will gradually recover once humans have fully self destructed. What a total fucking waste. And mostly because of greed. Oh well, so long humans. Good try.
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