I recently read a powerful book by Johan Norberg entitled Progress that laid out some ideas that I been noodling on lately and recapped in my previous note Better. He captured the ideas and supporting data much better so I summarize his key point below.

Terrorism, ISIS, War in Ukraine and Gaza, crime, mass shootings, famines, floods, pandemics, global warming…..doom and gloom everywhere. But despite what we hear on the news (and not minimizing the ongoing impact of human suffering), the great story of our era is that we are witnessing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever.  Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor, and infant mortality are falling faster than any time in history.  Life expectancy has increased more than twice as much in the last century than it did in the previous 200,000 years.  The risk of a person being exposed to war, die of a natural disaster, or subjected to dictatorship is lower than any other epoch.  A child born today is more likely to reach retirement age than his forebearers were to live to be 5. It is surely humanity’s greatest achievement.

The data is compelling.  The global experience of life has gotten A LOT better over the past several hundred years.  This progress gets distorted by our instant global communication and media…and our short memories.  We swim so deeply in modern invention that we forget the many layers of toil and discovery that it is built upon.  Many can’t remember what life was like without modern medicine, safe water, sufficient food, electricity and sanitation systems.  Sometimes we need to step back and take in the big picture…

Thank you God for progress.