[url]http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/8789981/glad-tidings/[/url]
[quote=The Spectator]It may not feel like it, but 2012 has been the greatest year in the history of the world. That sounds like an extravagant claim, but it is borne out by evidence. [B]Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity.[/B] The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and [B]people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded[/B]. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. [B]We are living in a golden age.[/B]
To listen to politicians is to be given the opposite impression — of a dangerous, cruel world where things are bad and getting worse. This, in a way, is the politicians’ job: to highlight problems and to try their best to offer solutions. But the great advances of mankind come about not from statesmen, but from ordinary people. Governments across the world appear stuck in what Michael Lind, on page 30, describes as an era of ‘turboparalysis’ — all motion, no progress. But outside government, progress has been nothing short of spectacular.
Take global poverty. [B]In 1990, the UN announced Millennium Development Goals, the first of which was to halve the number of people in extreme poverty by 2015. It emerged this year that the target was met in 2008.[/B] Yet the achievement did not merit an official announcement, presumably because it was not achieved by any government scheme but by the pace of global capitalism. Buying cheap plastic toys made in China really is helping to make poverty history. [B]And global inequality? This, too, is lower now than any point in modern times.[/B] Globalisation means the world’s not just getting richer, but fairer too.
The doom-mongers will tell you that we cannot sustain worldwide economic growth without ruining our environment. But while the rich world’s economies grew by 6 per cent over the last seven years, fossil fuel consumption in those countries fell by 4 per cent. This remarkable (and, again, unreported) achievement has nothing to do with green taxes or wind farms. It is down to consumer demand for more efficient cars and factories.
And what about the concerns that the oil would run out? Ministers have spent years thinking of improbable new power sources. As it turns out, engineers in America have found new ways of mining fossil fuel. The amazing breakthroughs in ‘fracking’ technology mean that, in spite of the world’s escalating population — from one billion to seven billion over the last two centuries — we live in an age of energy abundance.
Advances in medicine and technology mean that people across the world are living longer. [B]The average life expectancy in Africa reached 55 this year. Ten years ago, it was 50. The number of people dying from Aids has been in decline for the last eight years. Deaths from malaria have fallen by a fifth in half a decade.[/B]
Nature can still wreak havoc. The storms which lashed America’s East Coast in October proved that. But the speed of New York City’s recovery shows a no-less-spectacular resilience. Man cannot control the weather, but as countries grow richer, they can better guard against devastation. The average windstorm kills about 2,000 in Bangladesh but fewer than 20 in America. It’s not that America’s storms are mild; but that it has the money to cope. As developing countries become richer, we can expect the death toll from natural disasters to diminish — and the same UN extrapolations that predict such threatening sea-level rises for Bangladesh also say that, in two or three generations’ time, it will be as rich as Britain.
War has historically been humanity’s biggest killer. But in most of the world today, a generation is growing up that knows little of it. [B]The Peace Research Institute in Oslo says there have been fewer war deaths in the last decade than any time in the last century.[/B] Whether we are living through an anomalous period of peace, or whether the risk of nuclear apocalypse has proved an effective deterrent, mankind seems no longer to be its own worst enemy. We must bear in mind that things can fall apart, and quickly. Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s. For now, though, it is worth remembering that, in relative terms, we have peace in our time.
Christmas in Britain will not be without its challenges: costs are rising (although many children will give quiet thanks for the 70 per cent increase in the price of Brussels sprouts). The country may be midway through a lost decade economically, but our cultural and social capital has seldom been higher — it is hard to think of a time when national morale was as strong as it was during the Jubilee and the Olympics. And even in recession, we too benefit from medical advances. Death rates for both lung and breast cancers have fallen by more than a third over the last 40 years. Our cold winters still kill people, but the number dying each year halved over the past half-century. The winter death toll now stands at 24,000 — still unacceptable in a first-world country, but an improvement nonetheless. Britain’s national life expectancy, 78 a decade ago, will hit 81 next year.
Fifty years ago, the world was breathing a sigh of relief after the Cuban missile crisis. Young couples would discuss whether it was responsible to have children when the future seemed so dark. But now, as we celebrate the arrival of Light into the world, it’s worth remembering that, in spite of all our problems, the forces of peace, progress and prosperity are prevailing.[/quote]
Also Far Cry 3 came out
[quote]We are living in a golden age.[/quote]
idk if you can make that claim. it's hard to tell whether you're in a golden age or not. that's something we generally say in hindsight.
This is what I've been saying all along.
This is what I've been writing in all the threads where people whine "worst year ever".
Shit's been great globally.
Shit's been great personally.
Shit's good, and we should all stand back and appreciate what we have. Even those living in poverty have families, and those without have their lives, hope and the future ahead of them.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history[/url]
You better not fail on us now.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;38865531]idk if you can make that claim. it's hard to tell whether you're in a golden age or not. that's something we generally say in hindsight.[/QUOTE]
I'd just like to point you to UNESCO's latest Human Development report from October which quite clearly stated "if you disagree then ur gay"
Max Payne 3 and Hitman Absolution came out, too.
Welp at least we didn't fuck up our last year
The only thing though is the amount of legands who died this year. :(
It is indeed a good year. My boostar earnings since last year has grown exponentially.
[QUOTE=yawmwen;38865531]idk if you can make that claim. it's hard to tell whether you're in a golden age or not. that's something we generally say in hindsight.[/QUOTE]
No, we are living in a time of great innovation, science, freedom and democracy, a time where a single persons voice has never been more heard or less relevant than today.
Post-WWII 'till today, and the days to follow, are a golden age.
dont forget the beginnings of marijuana legalization in murica
They forgot to mention the death of Kim Jong Il; North Korea hasn't been spending as much money on Hennessy Cognac, Movies, Daffy Duck memorabilia, and swedish hookers anymore, some of that budget might have gone to the starving this time.
Well! It's only downhill from here!
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;38865544][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history[/url]
You better not fail on us now.[/QUOTE]
Historic fatalism is stupid. There is no "things are gonna endlessly get better". It's great to feel optimistic that it could, but it's stupid to have such a feel-good approach to the future.
Romans thought things were gonna get better. Then we had a [I]thousand years[/I] of 'dark ages'.
Not saying things are gonna turn shitty for us, but there's always always always the possibility of it.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;38865740]Historic fatalism is stupid. There is no "things are gonna endlessly get better". It's great to feel optimistic that it could, but it's stupid to have such a feel-good approach to the future.
Romans thought things were gonna get better. Then we had a [I]thousand years[/I] of 'dark ages'.
Not saying things are gonna turn shitty for us, but there's always always always the possibility of it.[/QUOTE]
actually the early dark ages were easier for the average peasant than the constant warring in the roman empire.
life expectancy shot up after rome fell iirc.
[quote]War has historically been humanity’s biggest killer. But in most of the world today, a generation is growing up that knows little of it. The Peace Research Institute in Oslo says there have been fewer war deaths in the last decade than any time in the last century. Whether we are living through an anomalous period of peace, or whether the risk of nuclear apocalypse has proved an effective deterrent, mankind seems no longer to be its own worst enemy. We must bear in mind that things can fall apart, and quickly. Germany was perhaps the most civilised nation in the world in the 1920s. For now, though, it is worth remembering that, in relative terms, we have peace in our time.[/quote]
Some numbers:
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph1.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph2.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph3.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph4.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph5.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph6.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph7.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph8.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph9.PNG[/img]
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/graph10.PNG[/img]
[quote]• Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It’s not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 1940s when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I’ve been quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they could perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the postwar decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.
None of this was a foregone conclusion. Until the sudden end of the Cold War, many experts (including Albert Einstein, C. P. Snow, Herman Kahn, Carl Sagan, and Jonathan Schell) wrote that thermonuclear doomsday was likely, if not inevitable.137 The eminent international studies scholar Hans Morgenthau, for example, wrote in 1979, “The world is moving ineluctably towards a third world war—a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it.”138 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, according to its Web site, aims to “inform the public and influence policy through in-depth analyses, op-eds, and reports on nuclear weapons.” Since 1947 it has published the famous Doomsday Clock, a measure of “how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction—the figurative midnight.” The clock was unveiled with its minute hand pointing at 7 minutes to midnight, and over the next sixty years it was moved back and forth a number of times between 2 minutes to midnight (in 1953) and 17 minutes to midnight (in 1991). In 2007 the Bulletin apparently decided that a clock with a minute hand that moved two minutes in sixty years was due for an adjustment. But rather than tuning the mechanism, they redefined midnight. Doomsday now consists of “damage to ecosystems, flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt.” This is a kind of progress.
• Zero is the number of times that the two Cold War superpowers fought each other on the battlefield. To be sure, they occasionally fought each other’s smaller allies and stoked proxy wars among their client states. But when either the United States or the Soviet Union sent troops to a contested region (Berlin, Hungary, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan), the other stayed out of its way.139 The distinction matters a great deal because as we have seen, one big war can kill vastly more people than many small wars. In the past, when an enemy of a great power invaded a neutral country, the great power would express its displeasure on the battlefield. In 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States expressed its displeasure by withdrawing its team from the Moscow Summer Olympics. The Cold War, to everyone’s surprise, ended without a shot in the late 1980s shortly after Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to power. It was followed by the peaceful tear-down of the Berlin Wall and then by the mostly peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Zero is the number of times that any of the great powers have fought each other since 1953 (or perhaps even 1945, since many political scientists don’t admit China to the club of great powers until after the Korean War). The war-free interval since 1953 handily breaks the previous two records from the 19th century of 38 and 44 years. In fact, as of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.140 Not since the 2nd century BCE, when Teutonic tribes challenged the Romans, has a comparable interval passed without an army crossing the Rhine.141
• Zero is the number of interstate wars that have been fought between countries in Western Europe since the end of World War II.142 It is also the number of interstate wars that have been fought in Europe as a whole since 1956, when the Soviet Union briefly invaded Hungary.143 Keep in mind that up until that point European states had started around two new armed conflicts a year since 1400.
• Zero is the number of interstate wars that have been fought since 1945 between major developed countries (the forty-four with the highest per capita income) anywhere in the world (again, with the exception of the 1956 Hungarian invasion).144 Today we take it for granted that war is something that happens in smaller, poorer, and more backward countries. But the two world wars, together with the many hyphenated European wars from centuries past (Franco-Prussian, Austro-Prussian, Russo-Swedish, British-Spanish, AngloDutch) remind us that this was not always the way things worked.
• Zero is the number of developed countries that have expanded their territory since the late 1940s by conquering another country. No more Poland getting wiped off the map, or Britain adding India to its empire, or Austria helping itself to the odd Balkan nation. Zero is also the number of times that any country has conquered even parts of some other country since 1975, and it is not far from the number of permanent conquests since 1948 (a development we’ll soon examine more closely).145 In fact the process of great power aggrandizement went into reverse. In what has been called “the greatest transfer of power in world history,” European countries surrendered vast swaths of territory as they closed down their empires and granted independence to colonies, sometimes peacefully, sometimes because they had lost the will to prevail in colonial wars.146 As we will see in the next chapter, two entire categories of war—the imperial war to acquire colonies, and the colonial war to keep them—no longer exist.147
• Zero is the number of internationally recognized states since World War II that have gone out of existence through conquest.148 (South Vietnam may be the exception, depending on whether its unification with North Vietnam in 1975 is counted as a conquest or as the end of an internationalized civil war.) During the first half of the 20th century, by comparison, twenty-two states were occupied or absorbed, at a time when the world had far fewer states to begin with.149 Though scores of nations have gained independence since 1945, and several have broken apart, most of the lines on a world map of 1950 are still present on a world map in 2010. This too is an extraordinary development in a world in which rulers used to treat imperial expansion as part of their job description.[/quote]
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;38865740]Historic fatalism is stupid. There is no "things are gonna endlessly get better". It's great to feel optimistic that it could, but it's stupid to have such a feel-good approach to the future.
Romans thought things were gonna get better. Then we had a [I]thousand years[/I] of 'dark ages'.
Not saying things are gonna turn shitty for us, but there's always always always the possibility of it.[/QUOTE]
True, although the "Dark ages" weren't that dark, and in many ways life was pretty ok after the Romans fell to bits.
[quote]Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It’s not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 1940s when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I’ve been quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they could perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the postwar decades would be many orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history.[/quote]
Uh, Hiroshima? Nagasaki?
[QUOTE=GrizzlyBear;38865678]The only thing though is the amount of legands who died this year. :([/QUOTE]
It's like that every year
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;38865821]Uh, Hiroshima? Nagasaki?[/QUOTE]
oh shit, sorry I cut out the bit before. it's looking at the time since 1945
I want to see Africa and the Middle East be peaceful regions in my life time.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;38865740]Historic fatalism is stupid. There is no "things are gonna endlessly get better". It's great to feel optimistic that it could, but it's stupid to have such a feel-good approach to the future.
Romans thought things were gonna get better. Then we had a [I]thousand years[/I] of 'dark ages'.
Not saying things are gonna turn shitty for us, but there's always always always the possibility of it.[/QUOTE]
Ideas and inventions don't cease to exist once they've been created. That's why the world will always become better.
You're making the mistake of having a narrow view. You're looking at only the Roman empire, covering a mere 4% of Earth's landmass, and only over 1000 years.
Compare the dark ages to when we were hunter-gatherers. They didn't even have agriculture. That's one idea that didn't disappear, and made life better for the people of Earth. And the more we have, the better life will be even if we land in a temporary 1000-year slump in the west.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;38865821]Uh, Hiroshima? Nagasaki?[/QUOTE]
I think the article wants be as as optimistic as possible. It only focuses on the good things that happened.
Eh, I still fucking hate this year. Aside from starting a new education, nothing really worth celebrating has happened to me this year that didn't happen last year, so fuck it. Just another shitty year to add to the great list of shitty years I'll want to forget when the years stop being shitty.
[QUOTE=Simski;38865907]Eh, I still fucking hate this year. Aside from starting a new education, nothing really worth celebrating has happened to me this year that didn't happen last year, so fuck it. Just another shitty year to add to the great list of shitty years I'll want to forget when the years stop being shitty.[/QUOTE]
It's only what you make it to be.
[QUOTE=mac338;38865918]It's only what you make it to be.[/QUOTE]
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you shit, what do?
[QUOTE=Simski;38865942]When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you shit, what do?[/QUOTE]
Eat it, like a man.
Shit success, like a winner.
EDIT: Seriously, be the best you that you can be. Work hard always. Have fun always. Success just comes to those who do. Good friends, relationships, jobs and a good life.
[QUOTE=Simski;38865942]When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you shit, what do?[/QUOTE]
shitade!
[QUOTE=Simski;38865942]When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you shit, what do?[/QUOTE]
make fertilizer (bombs)
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