By Barend ter Haar.
Always look at the bright side of life, Monty Python suggested. They had a point. A fixation on what goes wrong and what might go wrong can make us blind for everything that goes well. So, let us have a look at the bright side of the problems of our world.
Take the age-old scourges of poverty, hunger, disease and violence. For thousands of years it seemed certain that these problems would be with us forever. Life was short and brutal. Most people died from diseases, hunger or violence long before they reached old age.
And look at us now. Hunger and violence have become rare[1], not only in the West, but in most parts of the world. Many diseases that were still deadly a century ago, can be treated successfully now. Globally, life expectancy has more than doubled. Few people live in a palace like Versailles, but more than a billion people live much more comfortable than Louis XIV did: better food, better medical care, more leisure time and a much wider choice of entertainment.
Of course, we are now confronted with new threats and problems. But look at them from the bright side: they are the unintended price we pay for the immense progress we made during the last century.
Take for example our risk of a premature death. Our ancestors often died young because of disease, violence or lack of food, factors that they could barely influence. Nowadays among the main reasons that we die prematurely are eating, drinking and smoking too much and exercising too little[2], all factors we can influence (if we want).
What is true at an individual level is also true at a global scale: our new problems are the consequences of our own successes. Climate change and loss of biodiversity are not acts of God, but the unintended result of the growth of human power over nature. Population growth in African and South Asian countries is the result of better health care, not of higher fertility. The number of refugees is on the increase although the number of conflicts is decreasing, because a growing number of people can afford to flee instead of waiting to starve or be bombed.
This not to say that the old problems of hunger and war have been solved, or that the new challenges are not huge. To stop self-mutilating policies might be as difficult as to quit smoking, but the bright side is that our capacity to address these challenges (if we want) is larger than ever.
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[1] About the decline of violence see: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker,
[2] See annex VI of Threats and challenges for the Netherlands by Barend ter Haar and Eva Maas ( https://www.clingendael.nl/publication/threats-and-challenges-netherlands)
