Every day we are bombarded with negative news and rarely is anything that makes you feel good about life published in the media. This is a refreshing change of pace and reminds me that there is a lot of good in the world. Good news on the state of humanity is a great way to end 2015. This is a slightly longer read, but well worth it.
11 Reasons Why 2015 Was a Great Year For HumanityWe are living through the most astonishing period of human progress in history. And nobody’s telling us about it.
As 2015 draws to a close, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’d claim that it’s been a good year for the human race. The bad news has been relentless: war in Syria, a refugee crisis in Turkey and Europe, earthquakes in Nepal, terrorist attacks in Paris, mass shootings in the US, floods in India. With the media screaming blue murder and social media feeds filled with complaints about how selfish/materialistic/shortsighted our fellow human beings are, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
You’d be wrong though.
Franklin Roosevelt once said, “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” And if we apply that criteria to the world as a whole then 2015 was a very good year indeed. Here’s why.
1) We got a lot closer to global, universal education
2) Extreme poverty dropped below 10% — the lowest rate ever
3) More people got connected to the internet than ever before
4) Millions of people gained access to finance for the first time
5) AIDS deaths came down for the 15th year in a row
6) Malaria death rates are at an all time low
7) Polio is about to be eradicated forever
8 ) Fewer people went hungry this year than ever before
9) More people have access to clean water
10) Child mortality plunged for the 43rd year in a row
11) We reached a tipping point in the fight against climate change
https://medium.com/future-crunch/11-reasons-why-2015-was-a-great-year-for-humanity-70db584db748#.b2v6jbo8u
