July 12, 2022
Has the world entered a time of unusual turbulence, or does it just feel that way?
Scanning the headlines, it’s easy to conclude that something is broken.
The pandemic.
A protester shouts anti-government slogans at the protest site outside Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office three days after he was stormed by anti-government protesters in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena.
World cereal shortage.
Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Political and economic collapse in Sri Lanka.
The assassination of a former prime minister in Japan.
And, in the United States: inflation, mass shootings, a reckoning on January 6, and the collapse of abortion rights.
Is a feeling of chaos can be difficult to square with longer-term data that shows that, on many metrics, the world as a whole is getting better.
War is rarer today, by some measures, than it has been for most of the last 50 years, and when it does occur, it is significantly less deadly.
Los genocides and mass atrocities they are also becoming less common.
Life expectancy, literacy and living standards are rising, on average, to record highs.
Also steadily decreasing:
hunger, child mortality and extreme poverty, freeing hundreds of millions of people from what are, in absolute numbers, among the main threats facing humanity.
So why does it often seem that, despite all the data, things they only get worse?
There are a few reasons for this apparent disparity, some more reassuring than others, not to mention one important measure:
the state of democracyfor which the world is not improving at all.
Subtle gains versus obvious crisis
The ways in which the world is improving most significantly tend to be gradualdeveloping over generations.
Hundreds of millions could live healthier and more secure lives than their parents.
But those often subtle changes will lift entire societies at once, making it hard for people to notice the change.
We tend to judge how we are doing in comparison to those around us, or in comparison to our own recent past, not in comparison to abstract landmarks or previous generations.
And many of the positive changes have to do with prevention.
no one notices the wars that don’t happen, of family members who are not victims of disease, of children who do not die in infancy.
Still, try visiting a society in crisis, for example, Hong Kong in the midst of an invasive authoritarianism, the Lebanon in economic free fall, and tell people that we live in an era of rising welfare and receding threats.
You are likely to be met with amazing looks.
And thanks to the Internet, with much greater news consumption than before, even those who live far from crises now live in a digital world of constant and terrible updates.
An important story, such as a mass shooting or the war in Ukraine, can feel always present in our lives.
If your social media feeds and home screens display a constant stream of calamities, they can fuel an overwhelming, if sometimes misplaced, sense of threatas if the world itself were collapsing.
When people express that they feel like the world is falling apart, they are not talking about long-term metrics like life expectancy.
World cereal shortage.
Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Political and economic collapse in Sri Lanka.
The assassination of a former prime minister in Japan.
And, in the United States: inflation, mass shootings, a reckoning on January 6, and the collapse of abortion rights.
Is a feeling of chaos can be difficult to square with longer-term data that shows that, on many metrics, the world as a whole is getting better.
War is rarer today, by some measures, than it has been for most of the last 50 years, and when it does occur, it is significantly less deadly.
Los genocides and mass atrocities they are also becoming less common.
Life expectancy, literacy and living standards are rising, on average, to record highs.
Also steadily decreasing:
hunger, child mortality and extreme poverty, freeing hundreds of millions of people from what are, in absolute numbers, among the main threats facing humanity.
So why does it often seem that, despite all the data, things they only get worse?
There are a few reasons for this apparent disparity, some more reassuring than others, not to mention one important measure:
the state of democracyfor which the world is not improving at all.
Subtle gains versus obvious crisis
The ways in which the world is improving most significantly tend to be gradualdeveloping over generations.
Hundreds of millions could live healthier and more secure lives than their parents.
But those often subtle changes will lift entire societies at once, making it hard for people to notice the change.
We tend to judge how we are doing in comparison to those around us, or in comparison to our own recent past, not in comparison to abstract landmarks or previous generations.
And many of the positive changes have to do with prevention.
no one notices the wars that don’t happen, of family members who are not victims of disease, of children who do not die in infancy.
Still, try visiting a society in crisis, for example, Hong Kong in the midst of an invasive authoritarianism, the Lebanon in economic free fall, and tell people that we live in an era of rising welfare and receding threats.
You are likely to be met with amazing looks.
And thanks to the Internet, with much greater news consumption than before, even those who live far from crises now live in a digital world of constant and terrible updates.
An important story, such as a mass shooting or the war in Ukraine, can feel always present in our lives.
If your social media feeds and home screens display a constant stream of calamities, they can fuel an overwhelming, if sometimes misplaced, sense of threatas if the world itself were collapsing.
When people express that they feel like the world is falling apart, they are not talking about long-term metrics like life expectancy.
Rather, they tend to feel that humanity is defeated by turmoil and emergencies to a degree that it hasn’t been before.
But there is an argument, albeit one that would only console an economist, that today’s crises are rarer and less severe even than those of the recent past.
Consider the mid-1990s, a time Americans tend to remember as a time of global stability and optimism.
If today was truly a time of exceptional upheaval, then surely that world would look better in comparison.
Actually, the opposite is true.
In the mid-1990s there were genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Years of war in Europe amid the collapse of Yugoslavia.
devastating famines in Sudan, Somalia and North Korea.
Civil wars in more than a dozen countries.
Crackdowns and coups too numerous to mention.
Such events were, in fact, more common in the 1990s than they are today.
The previous decades were, in most ways, even worse.
But it’s unlikely that you remember all the disasters that occurred decades ago as vividly as you might recount, say, a terrorist attack or a political crisis this week.
And reductions in such crises have only reduced the world’s problems, not erased them.
No one wants to rejoice in a famine less severe than it might have been in the past, especially the families it puts at risk, and especially knowing that future conflict or climate-related crises can always cause another.
uneven optimism
Still, the sense that the world is getting worse is not universal.
In fact, it is mostly in the hands of residents of rich countries like the United States.
Survey after survey has found that most people in low- and middle-income countries like Kenia o Indonesia tend to express optimism about the future, both for themselves and for their societies.
These countries account for the majority of the world’s population, suggesting that optimism is, believe it or not, the prevailing global norm of mood.
Those countries, after all, are where those long-term gains in health and wellness are most pronounced.
But there is an argument, albeit one that would only console an economist, that today’s crises are rarer and less severe even than those of the recent past.
Consider the mid-1990s, a time Americans tend to remember as a time of global stability and optimism.
If today was truly a time of exceptional upheaval, then surely that world would look better in comparison.
Actually, the opposite is true.
In the mid-1990s there were genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Years of war in Europe amid the collapse of Yugoslavia.
devastating famines in Sudan, Somalia and North Korea.
Civil wars in more than a dozen countries.
Crackdowns and coups too numerous to mention.
Such events were, in fact, more common in the 1990s than they are today.
The previous decades were, in most ways, even worse.
But it’s unlikely that you remember all the disasters that occurred decades ago as vividly as you might recount, say, a terrorist attack or a political crisis this week.
And reductions in such crises have only reduced the world’s problems, not erased them.
No one wants to rejoice in a famine less severe than it might have been in the past, especially the families it puts at risk, and especially knowing that future conflict or climate-related crises can always cause another.
uneven optimism
Still, the sense that the world is getting worse is not universal.
In fact, it is mostly in the hands of residents of rich countries like the United States.
Survey after survey has found that most people in low- and middle-income countries like Kenia o Indonesia tend to express optimism about the future, both for themselves and for their societies.
These countries account for the majority of the world’s population, suggesting that optimism is, believe it or not, the prevailing global norm of mood.
Those countries, after all, are where those long-term gains in health and wellness are most pronounced.
Many of these regions also experienced decades of civil conflict and unrest during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union treated them like battlegrounds, propping up despots and insurgents.
But these same surveys also tend to find that in rich countries, most respondents express pessimism about the future.
Much of this may be due to economic mobility, rather than global headlines.
People in low-income countries tend to believe that they will be better off financially in the future, while people in rich countries consider it unlikely.
But pessimism about Personal circumstances of one can easily become pessimistic about the world.
Surveys in the United States have found that people who see little hope for personal financial progress also feel that the country as a whole is getting worse and disapprove of political leaders.
The erosion of secure jobs for the working class, as manufacturing labor flees abroad and unions weaken, is believed to have precipitated much of the Western populist reaction.
Not surprisingly, from this point of view, Americans viewed the 1990s as a time of global peace and prosperity, even if it was primarily a time of peace and prosperity for Americans.
But stagnant economic fortunes are not the only reason for pessimism in rich countries.
Of all the metrics that show constant improvement in the world, there is one where the world really faces a dramatic and destabilizing erosion:
democracy.
An era of democratic decline
For seven decades the number of countries considered democratic grew.
The average quality of these democracies – the fairness of elections, the rule of law, and the like – also steadily improved.
However, that increase began to decline about 20 years ago.
And for five or six years now, researchers have found that the number of democracies in the world it has been reduced for the first time since World War II.
Existing democracies are also becoming less democratic, more polarized and more prone to political dysfunction or outright collapse.
Consider the rise of strongman rule in Hungary, Philippines or Russia attacks on the courts in Poland Hindu extremism in India fears of a power grab in Brazil.
These may be especially serious cases, but they are vanguards of a global trend.
The same is true of the United States, a country widely described by democracy observers as experiencing a sustained erosion.
Because richer countries are more likely to be democratic, they are more likely to be affected by this trend.
This may speak to the growing pessimism in those countries.
It may also help explain why, for Americans, it can feel like the world as a whole is falling apart.
For Americans who have spent most of their lives in a safe and stable society, the shift to a seemingly endless political crisis is destabilizing.
It can make the world feel darker and more frightening, which can also make faraway events feel more frightening or more annoying.
People naturally look for patterns in the world.
Experience something once, especially if that experience is traumatic, and you will start to see it everywhere.
For Americans who have suddenly tuned in to say, domestic threats of election theft or civil unrest, similar events unfolding abroad will suddenly be felt. much more visceral.
That can add up.
A handful of distant crises that Americans might have dismissed as unrelated 30 years ago may, today, seem connected.
It might even look like evidence of a global collapse.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
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