While Disasters Scream, Progress Whispers

There is a saying that progress is silent while disasters scream. Every day we are bombarded with stories of wars, disasters, crime and political turmoil. The constant noise can make it seem as though the world is steadily unravelling. Yet news is designed to report what is unusual and alarming, not the quiet improvements that unfold over decades. To understand what is really happening, we need to step back from the daily fireworks filling our newsfeeds and look at the long view.

The evidence tells a remarkable story.

In 1830, around 80–90% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. Today, despite recent setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and rising inflation, the figure is estimated to be under 10%—one of the greatest transformations in human history.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, safe piped drinking water was largely confined to the wealthiest cities. Today, more than 90% of the world's population has access to at least basic drinking water services, and the great majority also have basic sanitation. Hundreds of millions more people than ever before enjoy reliable food, shelter, electricity and essential services, although significant inequalities still remain.

In 1900, global life expectancy was about 32 years. Today it is around 73 years. We are living longer than any previous generation. Since 1990, the mortality rate for children under five has fallen by more than 60%, saving millions of young lives every year.

Two centuries ago, fewer than one adult in five could read or write. Today, around 87% of adults worldwide are literate. Education for girls, once a rare privilege, is now the norm across much of the world, although important gaps still exist in some regions.

Slavery is now illegal in every country, even though modern slavery and human trafficking continue to blight millions of lives. Women have gained the right to vote in virtually every sovereign state, while legal protections against racial discrimination and greater recognition of disability rights exist on a scale unknown to previous generations.

Violence, too, has declined over the long term. Research suggests that in many prehistoric and early agricultural societies, 10–20% of people—and sometimes even more—died through violence. Today, the global homicide rate has fallen to about 5.1 deaths per 100,000 people, one of the lowest levels ever recorded. Although violence remains tragically high in some parts of the world, humanity is far less likely to die by murder than our distant ancestors. Torture, public executions and cruel punishments, once accepted almost everywhere, are now widely condemned and prohibited under international law.

The Second World War claimed an estimated 70–85 million lives, around 3% of the world's population at the time. Since 1945, no conflict has approached that scale of destruction, and wars between states have become much less common, even though civil wars and regional conflicts continue to inflict terrible suffering.

Medicine has also transformed human life. Smallpox, a disease that killed hundreds of millions of people, was eradicated in 1980—the first human disease ever eliminated. Polio has been reduced by more than 99% since 1988. HIV, once almost invariably fatal, has become a manageable condition for many with access to modern treatment. Vaccination programmes now prevent an estimated four to five million deaths every year, and deaths from measles have fallen dramatically since 2000, despite recent outbreaks in places where vaccination rates have declined.

None of this means that the world is perfect. Poverty persists. Wars continue. Injustice, disease and suffering remain part of the human story. But neither should we overlook how far humanity has come. It is encouraging to know that the long-term direction has been one of progress. 

Progress is rarely dramatic. It arrives quietly—in healthier children, longer lives, cleaner water, fuller classrooms, greater freedom and expanding opportunities. These victories will never make the headlines, yet they have transformed the lives of billions of people.

Recognising that progress does not breed complacency; it breeds hope. And hope, grounded in evidence rather than wishful thinking, gives us every reason to continue the work of making the world better than we found it.

What is it about golden rooms that scream inadequacy?

A beautiful garden, a lovely blue-skied day to soak up the welcome winter sun rays. The Palazzo Parisio is a treat. The building is grand but the gardens are beautiful. I remember when visiting Versailles I was spectacularly unimpressed by the over-the-top furnishings. I mean one can have too much of gold, embossing, mirrors and intricate coving. 

It reaches joke-like proportions and you cease to be awed but feel a growing revulsion instead.  Wondering around the Palace of Versailles I did not envy royalty their silly gilded home.  Then, I entered the gardens around the palace and felt an unpleasant envy of the bloody rich.

Here in Naxhar on Malta, the  Palazzo Parisio has also pleasant rooms but a bit Louis the XVI, if you get my drift.  What is it about golden rooms that scream inadequacy? 

The Palazzo’s gardens outside are a wonderfulI place to have coffee and I sit on white garden chairs soaking up the smell of flowers and the sound of birds. 

There is only one other table occupied and I hear that peculiar braying voice of the wealthy, declaring they started their business years ago and have made so much money! They're sitting on the table next to me. How they have moved from Florianna to Naxhar to be closer to smart bars and better parking. Their gloating satisfaction sets my teeth on edge. What is it about ‘the rich’, ‘the would-be rich’ or ‘the has been rich’ that their exaltation in their material successes (real or imaginary) hits such a sour note with me? I must admit to it being nauseous to my system. A similar reaction to encountering a vomit smelling toilet onboard a rough cross-channel ferry. Don't get me wrong an aspirational attitude is admirable in so many ways, but a gloating self-satisfaction is never attractive. 

All of us vaguely know the humility that is truly appropriate when you examine yourself closely. You get a whiff of your own hypocrisy, your shells of pretence, the lies you tell yourself to cover over the cracks. In those moments of truth, we all shift in our seats in discomfort at the truth bubbling up from within. Instead of cackling over the misfortune of others like this lot. They are now discussing, their friend Lola’s disastrous boutique dress shop with inappropriate glee. They knew in advance it would end badly! Now, they speculate on another friend who has withdrawn from Facebook. “She was always a bit odd into nature and stuff! Must be something disastrous happening in her life?” 

I am asking myself, what no meaningless selfies of random spectacular venues, no gloating achievements/homes/cars etc what a loss! I sit here judging others so harshly when I am so rarely as vicious on myself. Perhaps this pernicious self-gratification habit sneaks into all our lives without us even noticing. Instead of examining our internal landscape we begin enjoying speculation on the ruins of others.  Just as I do now on my neighbours in this garden.

I will cease this attack on the rich around me and just enjoy the coffee, the sun's rays, the flowers and beckoning gardens instead. It's probably why being in nature is such therapy for the soul. You look at beauty and find nothing to criticise and just soak up its wholesomeness. Sigh with appreciation that it, like the sun beams on all with uniform abundance, impervious to all our inadequacies and shortcomings.

"Busy not thyself with this world, for with fire We test the gold, and with gold We test Our servants."

Bahá’u’lláh

As pernicious as nose picking

Tomorrow, I must hustle for a job.  There was a scene in a series, Auf Wiedersehen, about English builders in Germany where one of the main characters says aggressively to everyone he meets, “Gi us a job!”, followed by, “I can do that, and then “Gi us a job!” repeated.  Well, thought I’d try that approach tomorrow.  I’m far too shy, it will do me good.  Face to face, it’ll be harder for them to say no.  Mind you, face to face, it will be harder to hear them say, “Sod off!”  The thing about most small islands, in my experience, is that jobs are rare and when available  naturally go to the locals.  On Rhodes in Greece, I tried for a job in a hotel.  My appointment with the personal manager went something like this.

 

Me, a bit nervous, knock on the door of a swanky office.  He grunts from inside and I take that as an invitation to enter.  I walk in to find a middle-aged man picking his nose and talking on his phone while seated behind a desk that should have belonged to the president of some Middle Eastern oil state.  At least he can multitask.  There was a running gag about a certain American president who was reputedly unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Anyway, he gestures with his phone for me to come in, while continuing to mine for gold. 

 

I approach his desk and decide I’m not going to shake his hand.  Then, I compromise, if he offers me the nose picking hand I’ll demur, but if it is the phone hand I’ll go for it.  Then, it occurs to me, what if he is an ambidextrous nose picker and I’ve arrived at the tail end of an orgy of nose picking all morning with both hands?   I decide it will be safer not to go for a handshake at all.  

Approaching his desk, I make sure I am not close enough for a handshake.  That feels much safer.  I needn’t have worried Mr Manager of Personnel is still talking on the phone and drilling a second shaft with his little pinkie.  I have a young nephew, who, when speaking on his mobile begins pacing up and down the room as if in a walking race.  One of my sons, who will remain nameless, will talk on the phone while scratching his ass.  Perhaps, we all have these little oddities when we are using the phone and only notice other peoples and not our own perversities.  Poor guy, perhaps nose picking is his phone thing, suddenly he hangs up and says in Greek,

“Well, what?”

Understanding him but not able to speak Greek in response I explain in English that I’ve come about a job they’ve advertised.  He leans back into his mammoth chair and gives the Greek no, which consists of a clicking noise made with the tongue against the top of the mouth followed by a quick nod back of the head.  Well, that’s a pretty clear no.  I thank him; Anglo-Saxon civility is as pernicious as nose picking.  It’s programmed in.

Leaving the office, I feel like I am in a different skit from the two Ronnie’s where one of them goes in to ask for a pay increase only to be rejected and humiliated.  As he leaves the same office, he is transformed into a schoolboy and his suit has changed into a school uniform complete with shorts and a cap.  He is so small he cannot even reach the handle to get out.  A wonderful image capturing all the vulnerability and feeling of smallness of the occasion.  

Later on, I’m talking to a friend who knows everyone on the island.  I describe my encounter and he explains that the personnel manager is the hotel owner’s cousin.  That is why he got the job.  And then in dark tones, as if this explains everything, “from one of the villages” waving his hand as if to some dark tribal outback. 

I am taken back to another conversation about the island being like a dog’s dish and no one likes to see another dog at the dish.  Especially, a foreign looking dog’s head.  It just means there’s less to go around.  So, I enter the fray with little illusion and a great deal of misgiving.  There are times when one really has to ask just how much rejection can a person take?  Can one overdose on it?  Does it do irreparable damage to one’s self-esteem?  To do what one loves and get paid for it is light upon light.  If writing could earn me money, I’d be in clover but the reality is these stories that are pouring out of me at present are a displacement activity.  You and I know I need to be out earning a living.  How does one reach mid fifties and be so useless at the basics of life?  Practice and perseverance, that’s how.  I have long perfected the art of putting off what needs to be done.  No more, tomorrow I’ll bite the bullet, but tonight I’ll have a big bun and some chocolate.  Challenging day ahead after all!