One of the major things that I think about is the continued progression of economic development among underdeveloped countries. This by definition involves social and technological development, so that more and more people have access to modern day conveniences, irrespective of their physical location. Pretty soon, everyone will have access to electricity (hopefully clean energy) and kids everywhere from Bangladesh to Nigeria will be able to go to school and make something of themselves, rather than being condemned to a life of poverty stricken hardship simply because of where they were born. The world is already headed there, but I think we should be approaching it by the end of the century.
Hmmm, what else is left? African countries of course need to continue to develop. Another war may be good, in terms of technological breakthroughs, but we seem to have done a good job regarding that without any major wars since World War 2. Maybe we really are reaching a point in human history where everyone sees war as the most ineffective form of politics. Maybe I’m just too optimistic. Renewable energy seriously needs to break major ground, and soon, if this little vision of mine is to come true. We can’t afford to have the N-11 economies depend even on natural gas; they need to transition to solar and all that good stuff, for all of our sakes’. Population will continue to grow, but it should be on the decline again by 2100; Thomas Friedman thinks the ensuing labor shortage could be filled with robotics. I think he may have a great point. But the population shouldn’t be too great of an issue, so long as good old human ingenuity is a step ahead. Barring that, everything else could theoretically go toward the end of the century.
But anyway, that’s not why I’m writing this. One of the main conundrums I’ve thought about has to do with the reduction of extreme poverty around the world. I remain thoroughly convinced that there is a certain virtue in such desperate poverty, in that people existing in such hardships inherently gain a greater appreciation and insight of life in general. And those of us who are not born into such poverty can watch and learn from it. How many works of art have been made about such people that have been successful? Khaled Hosseini’s books, accounts of the Rape of Nanking, stories of the Tibetan/Palestinian/so many other peoples’ struggle for independence, etc. HONY is wildly popular and it’s literally just some guy taking photos of people and listening to their stories. Some of them do deal with these kinds of hardships, especially the photos he took on his world tour. My question then, is this: will this aspect of the human story be lost if everything goes according to plan? Even now, the UN is busy making a new set of MDGs, at least one of which will address the elimination of poverty. We as the human race will be closer than ever before to making that dream a reality. And it would unquestionably be better for everyone when we do achieve that goal; or, at the very least, make it so that everyone has electricity, a fridge, etc. But will that aspect of growth through extreme hardship be lost? I don’t know and I think about it quite a lot. I suppose all hardship is relative and there will always be people who suffer more than others because of circumstances in their lives, but will the degree of that change as we move forward in time? I think it most certainly will, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.
2 comments so far
4:19 pm - 10-18-2014
“Maybe we really are reaching a point in human history where everyone sees war as the most ineffective form of politics. Maybe I’m just too optimistic.” – I live in Ukraine, It’s Europe. We have war here. A year ago I have the same ideas as you and even in nightmares I couldn’t suppose this to happen in my European country. Today we have dozens of conflicts all over the world. People think that wars are in the past only because they live too far from armed conflicts. For about 60 years we do not have wars in well developed countries, while on the east and Asia they seem to never stop. But there also live people that deserve to have future.
7:27 pm - 11-21-2014
I don’t truly believe that war will ever become obsolete. Before the events between Russia and Ukraine unfolded, I had hoped that war between major nation states, particularly well developed ones, would become less common and less destructive in scope. Many of the conflicts elsewhere in the world, from the Middle East to African regions are usually internal and among non-state forces, so they aren’t nearly as grand in scope as the wars of the previous century. I wanted to believe that we were moving into a phase of history where the international bodies and economic connections among all of us would render war to be even more ineffective than it already is. At the same time, though, I’m a very skeptical person by nature and I doubt that my own hopes will ever come to fruition, as the conflict in your country makes clear. But I do agree with you that there are people everywhere who deserve to have that future. I think more people around the world will experience it now compared to before.