Are Things Getting Worse?

Tom Kando 

 Many bad things are happening in the world today. 

I sometimes feel that the world is worse off now than it has been during most of my life. I say most, because I do remember times when the world was in worse shape than it is now - notably during the first five years of my life, 1941-1945. I spent those years in Hungary. At that time, things there were similar to what they are today in the South-Eastern part of Ukraine. Budapest and its surroundings were being pulverized, annihilated, obliterated, wiped off the face of the earth. 

There have been other turbulent periods and catastrophic events affecting humanity during my life. But an awful lot of crises are currently piling up on top of each other. 

For one thing, we are in the third year of a pandemic. There have been 540 million cases and 6.5 million deaths. The US alone has had 87 million cases and 1.1 million deaths. That’s 16 % of the world, even though we only make up 4% of the world’s population. As a result, America’s life expectancy is declining. 

You might argue that we are better off with Covid than the world was with the previous pandemic - the 1918-1920 “Spanish Flu,” and you would be right. Here are the facts: The Spanish Flu infected 500 million people, a number which Covid already exceeds. However, that was 26% of the world’s population at that time, whereas Covid has only infected 7% of the world so far. On the other hand, Covid is outlasting the Spanish Flu. As far as deaths are concerned, the Spanish Flu killed about 35 million people, or 1.8% of the population of the world at the time, or one out of 56 people. So far, Covid has killed 0.08% of the world’s population, i.e. one out of every 1,200 people. Thank God for vaccines! 

Then all of a sudden there is Putin’s terrible war. For no justifiable reason whatsoever, this psychopathic dictator decides to destroy the neighboring country, inflicting death and horror on millions of innocents. Why? Because he can. And he has his hands on the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. 

Dictators and authoritarianism are sprouting in many countries. In the US, it’s called Trumpism. Democracy and truth are in decline in Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Myanmar, Russia, and elsewhere. 

However, there is good news on the democratic front as well: The Ukrainians are putting up a heroic resistance. France recently made a wise electoral choice. Biden defeated Trump. 

Other worrisome problems include America’s unique epidemic: 400 million guns. As a result, mass murder has become a near daily phenomenon. The favorite victims are people of color and children. To paraphrase Maureen Dowd, we do what the Aztecs did, we practice child sacrifice. Meanwhile, global warming continues unabated, as the planet gets ever closer to irreversible decline. As a result of the environmental crisis and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we are approaching a global food crisis, with imminent worldwide starvation. 

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Am I saying that things are hopeless? No. This article is a jeremiad, a lamentation and a warning. I realize that experience consists of reality and perception. Today’s “chicken-little” atmosphere is, to some extent, due to a sensationalist media and Internet which magnify the negative and the catastrophic. Just one example: A few days ago, there was a lull in American mass shootings. Therefore, the top of the news on the major TV networks was a mass murder that had just occurred in Nigeria. We had to be reminded that horror takes no respite. 

It has been pointed out that violence is not new, or that there is less of it now than in the past. It’s the Steven Pinker thesis: He shows us, in "The Better Angels of Our Nature,"    that there is today more peace and less violence than before. In the US, violent and other crimes are up over the past three years, but they are nowhere near the levels of thirty years ago: In 1990, our homicide rate was 10 per 100,000. Today it is half of that. 

Even so , the feeling that the world is more chaotic and self-destructive than it was before persists. I fret a lot about the Ukraine war. Not because it is a greater conflagration than earlier ones - Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, - but because it has a greater potential to escalate into nuclear Armageddon. 

When looking at the world geopolitically, I have a sense of “doomsday,” of foreboding and anxiety. The gathering clouds, like in 1938. Politically, the world is shifting from bipolarity to multipolar chaos: World War Two was followed by over seventy years of stability, including a Cold War between two superpowers, and a three-quarters-of-a-century long Pax Americana. This has come to an end. We now return to the chaotic coalition politics of the 19th century. The West huddles under the NATO umbrella, China and Russia are solidifying their sinister alliance, This return to 19th century-style politics of great-power alliances is scary because our destructive powers have become unlimited. The great powers alliances of the 19th century produced World Wars One and Two. Were such a process to return, it could result in the extinction of the human race. 

The world has been hit simultaneously by a pandemic, a horrific unprovoked war, the collapse of the environment, and American confusion about politics, guns, race and other existential problems. I wish I could interpret this perfect storm in biblical terms, as God’s punishment. 

However, There is no God. There are only statistical probabilities. If an overage of catastrophes occurs simultaneously or in rapid succession at some point, this is no different from tossing eight consecutive tails when flipping a coin. Just coincidence. 

To be sure, the disasters which I mention are largely man-made. If our species fails, it is not for want of trying. It is due to ignorance.

But  let’s give mankind some credit: The world is facing some huge new challenges, and it is struggling to develop the new institutions and policies necessary to cope with new problems. For example, there is an enormous influx of immigration in the Western world. Automation is causing the loss of many jobs. And yes, there is growing inequality, poverty, injustice and conflict. But many countries are working on solutions to these issues. For example, we are trying to pass a corporate global tax law. Sooner or later, the establishment will have to change and listen. Considering how the world is changing, it is surprising that it hasn't tumbled into complete anarchy. We do have a system in place that seems to prevent the worst things from happening. Few countries are pure anarchies, and there are also bright spots. 

I don’t mean to infuse the next generations with a sense of defeatism and powerlessness, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is much work to be done, and given humanity’s creative energy the possibility of progress.

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