The world is becoming a better place

Despite the frequently stark and unflattering tone of this work, there is much to be enormously optimistic about. 

Contrary to the view that moral standards are slipping, and that humanity is in a state of inexorable decay, we are on the threshold of a new and collective enlightenment^[1].  Whether we step over that threshold or turn back into the relative darkness of our past depends critically on how we confront the transitional challenges^[2] we are now facing. 

There has been no better time in history for a commoner to be alive than today.  Certainly, if you could travel back in time and choose your position in society then there would be many who could improve their lot.  The wealthy, powerful and privileged have often had it good.  Stepping into the shoes of Montezuma 1^st would for example be an opportunity not to be missed by anybody.   But if you had to take pot luck; if you were more likely to pre-incarnate as one of the downtrodden masses then far better to be downtrodden today than at any other time. 

While on-going atrocities^[3] and injustices around the world do not give us much hope that base human nature^[4] is evolving to a higher moral plane, the human collective has certainly made enormous strides in two thousand years and even more over the last two hundred, though the seeds for recent progress^[5] may have been sown earlier.

Within living memory we have witnessed some truly remarkable changes.  Things have happened that only a few years earlier would have seemed inconceivable.  Not only has their occurrence been startling, but so has the manner of their occurrence.  The changes have been rapid, profound, but relatively smooth: a succession of revolutions leaving any onlooker breathless with optimism. 

The changes are global.  The end of the Cold War; the fall of the Berlin Wall; Nelson Mandela elected President of South Africa;  these are certainly the highlights.  But there are many more, tenuous though some of them may be: an ostensibly permanent truce by the IRA; the peaceful and democratic overthrow of Pinochet in Chile; the demise of other Latin American dictatorships; the incipient end of the hegemonies of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Mexico, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan; the election of the first black US President; the Arab Spring; and the list goes on. 

The changes in Chile, and others such as the radical reform of the New Zealand electoral system, were voted in by a majority of the electorate against the concerted weight of the political establishment, the entrepreneurial class^[6], and the media.  The manner of these changes is reflective of the general global mood. 

All these events signal a coming of age.  The giant drugged into obedience for millennia by an endless succession of mendacious and self-serving priests and lords has been woken up and empowered by the mass media and communication technology of the Information Age.  Awakened she is now throwing off the myths and institutions that bound her.  No longer will it be possible to fool as many people as much of the time as it has been in our History to date. 

Ironically it has been the pursuit of profit and not the pursuit of some noble humanitarian goal that has brought about this awakening and empowerment.  The profit-driven globalisation^[7] of trade, travel, communication, the mass media, and the internet has opened the eyes of the world not necessarily to truth, but to options, and that was enough. 

Prejudice and hatred fester^[8] when isolated from the object of hatred.  Being able to see first hand that your enemy is not the many-horned beast you had believed relieves your enmity like an enema.  Open debate^[9] and the free flow of information are the best vaccines known against fanaticism. 

Knowing that there are others struggling against oppression generates an unspoken global solidarity.  You know you are no longer alone.  You know that others who care^[10] are watching.  Chinks of vulnerability begin to appear in the armour of your master; the immutable truths^[11] you had been fed all those years become exposed as propaganda and instruments of subjugation; your mentors and heroes are revealed as fallible; your gurus are shown to be dirty old men^[12].

Yes, there has been much progress.  But progress is not linear; human and social behaviour is cyclical^[13]; pendulums swing.  There are reactions and reverses that can be very dangerous and long-lasting.  During and since the COVID pandemic we have seen a global reverse that is anti-science, anti-democratic, racist and mysoginist.

Unfortunately there is an enormous potential downside^[14] to living in the global village.  It seems that no great good in life is not also associated with a great "bad".  There is always another side to the coin!  It is the other perhaps unsavoury side of the coin that is given particular attention in this work, but not in denial of its obverse.