Is the world going to hell?

Crises create community

Cedric de Coning’s email makes us feel hopeful, and we read on:

“This cooperation vs chaos response to crisis has also been observed in many other crises. I will paste a section from an article I have written about it:

“In A Paradise Built in Hell: the Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (2009) Rebecca Solnit documents with examples from the Mexico City earthquake, the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, amongst others, how many ordinary people rose to the occasion, organised themselves, and demonstrated altruism, resourcefulness and generosity amid the grief and the disruption of their everyday life caused by these disasters. She argues that these kinds of crises give rise to opportunities for purposefulness, a sense of community, and meaningful work that most people desire, but that is often unmet in our normal rushed lives in developed economies.”

The best time in history

Jose Luis Garcia Barahona is NRC’s emergency response director. We call him on Zoom and his face appears on the computer screen:

“Hi Jose! Where in the world are you now?”

He smiles:

“In Asker (outside Oslo). I’m in a very small house with a very big view,” he answers and turns the camera towards the window where we see a sparkling sea and coniferous forest with trees that stretch up towards the blue sky. He asks:

“Where are you?”

“We usually work from home, but right now we are in the office.”

“And risking your life,” he says with a short laugh – a reference to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions around office working.

“Have you been out travelling lately?”

“No, like so many others, I’ve been stuck because of the pandemic. The last time I travelled was last autumn, when I went to Sudan and Mozambique.”

“We would like to ask you a question: Is there anything positive happening in the world today?”

“Do you mean in the humanitarian sector or more generally?”

“It’s up to you.”

“As a couple of professors say in some of the books I have read: this is perhaps the best time in history to be born into. Life expectancy is higher than ever, and the percentage of people living below the poverty line is the lowest in history. More people go to school than before, and the number of people who die of hunger has never been lower.”

Back to our Zoom meeting with Jose Barahona:

“If you look at the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals individually,” Barahona continues, “you will see that – as in the case of girls’ education – there have been radical, yes, really radical changes! I think that nearly 80 or 90 per cent of girls worldwide are now able to attend primary school. That may not sound so impressive, but 50 years ago, only half of the world’s girls received an education.”

In the past, the world just shrugged its shoulders

“NRC works in areas of conflict and crisis. Not to be negative, but overall, doesn’t that entail a lot of misery?”

“But remember that there are far fewer major conflicts in the world than ever before. And the conflicts that exist – and many of them are horrible – are still ‘weaker’ in the sense that, during the last 30–40 years, there have been very few cases of conflicts between states. Very few! Historically, we see that conflicts between states were particularly cruel because states had access to the weapons that kill the most people. Today, we have first and foremost conflicts between armed groups, and they usually have weapons with less capacity for mass killing. That being said, for the people who live there, it’s awful.”

“Today, we have more and more proxy conflicts between states (conflicts where two parties use a third country in the fighting), and that is a major issue. Not to mention the climate crisis, which is a real cause for concern. There is a lot of bad news. But you asked for good news. I’m not presenting a naive picture to you now, I’m just focusing on the positives.”