Scorecard for Planet Earth

What’s good about the world? 

We’re not looking for miracles or final results. We are looking for improvement.  Let’s not look at the world we don’t have now, but look more at the far and recent past where almost nothing was possible, available, accessible, and the like. 

Our list does not include everyone everywhere.  Progress is not constant nor uniform.  In some places forward steps come in leaps while in others backward steps seem the rule. 

With all we hear daily of riots here, wars there, violence in the streets, intrigue in the palace, assassinations,  subversions, perversions, and all others, we take a pause and consider what we have is far, far beyond the situations of almost all only a century or two ago.   

 We now live in a world where most people---

• Have some civil rights.
• Have basic schooling.
• Have machines to make life easier.
• Have food produced by an agricultural bounty.
• Have some rights to practice a religion of choice.
• Are neither slaves nor indentured.
• Can vote.
• Can seek desirable employment or self-employment.
• Can gravitate toward a better life.
• Can live in peace.
• Can read to better understand life.
• Can travel, explore, and select a personal lifestyle.
• Enjoy clean air, water, and sanitation.
• Know torture is not a lever of compliance.

It is remarkable that some decline these gains in favor of a Utopian conquest. It is remarkable that some see only faults and depressing conditions.  This is not an appeal to globalism which has its own entire set of unexpected and unintended consequences, nor simplistic policies of open borders, one government for all, pure capitalistic measures, or rule by the barrel of a gun – all being projections of complexity to understandable simplicity.

What is important is to keep a scorecard transcending your lifetime, before and beyond.