We Can't Fix the World, So Now What?

[The Reverend Bob]

Before doing anything think if it hurts anyone.

That is a nice little platitude but I hardly think it is going to save the world.

 

[The Reverend Bob]

Y'know, I have seen precious few people who claim to want to change the world, and who spend all their time attempting to make the world over into a vision THEY have, who do anybody any good. All they do is acquire publicity.

It is the one who quietly attempts to help the folks in his/her little corner, while trying to keep him/herself 'good' (whatever that means to him/her) who does the world changing.

Let's examine what one young man did...whether you believe in Him as God or not...as a simple itinerant preacher who never wrote a word, and never went more than 300 miles from His birthplace (counting his parent's trip to Egypt when he was a toddler). He spent three years preaching, just teaching people. Look what came of that.

Or Siddhartha Gautama, who spent his entire life searching for, and then teaching about "The Middle Path," and Buddhism was born.

There are many such individuals...and if you look closely at them, you will see that they didn't go galloping off to change the universe: just the little area surrounding, and including, them.

I know a few like that. I don't think any of them will gain the following Jesus or the Buddha have, but they changed themselves, and the few who know them.

If we could all be more interested in making ourselves and our neighbors better and happier, rather than attempting to impose our idea of what a 'better world' would look like on everybody else, the world would be a 'better world.' It couldn't NOT be.

You and I don't often agree but when we do...

 

[Milton Platt]

I'll bite. How?

We need to have the collective personal and political to get it done. That is what is lacking. There are already answers to many of the problems, but we just don't want to pay the price. Some problems are more complex and thorny to be sure.

As to specific answers to specific problems, I defer to the experts in those fields.

 

[leov]

That is a nice little platitude but I hardly think it is going to save the world.

Try it.

 

[The Reverend Bob]

And so you let what amounts to a philosophical stereotype dictate what you believe about yourself, and how you frame-up your intrinsic worth. I have say - I'm not on board. No one and nothing gets to dictate my worth to me. Not one being, non-being, action, inaction, consequence, cause, effect, etc. All dust in the wind, so much fluff and nothing. I am what I am. If I end up feeling at some point that I need to apologize for that, then that's on me... my own responsibility, and I need to face that problem head-on, myself, and ultimately drop kick it out of my way.

Aight, ya'll believe nobody can judge you. Amirite?

 

[The Reverend Bob]

We need to have the collective personal and political to get it done. That is what is lacking. There are already answers to many of the problems, but we just don't want to pay the price. Some problems are more complex and thorny to be sure.

As to specific answers to specific problems, I defer to the experts in those fields.

So basically you don't have a plan

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Aight, ya'll believe nobody can judge you. Amirite?

Of course they can, they can also enact consequences on me based on whatever judgments they make.

However, whether or not I, myself, take their judgment under advisement and see it as an area in which I should change is completely up to me - as it is for everyone on this planet. There seem to be a lot of people confused on that point.

 

[Milton Platt]

So basically you don't have a plan

I'm not required to. The OP didn't ask for individuals to have designed plans to solve the world's problems in the aggregate. It would be a ridiculous assumption that any individual has the expertise to do so.

The OP simply stated that humans can't solve the problems (as opposed to won't). I suggested that they are able (whether they will or not). I provided just as much evidence as provided for the claim in the OP (none).

 

[Wandering Monk]

Just about everyone of us can see that this world is full of problem, so much so that some of us think humanity may be at the brink of extinction. We all have our personal catalog of the various problems we believe the world faces, my own personal list of troubles includes: War, famine, poverty, greed, homelessness, sexism, racism, capitalism, YouTube unboxing channels and the Kardashians.

It is in my opinion that the world would be a much better and much friendlier place in we could only solve all these problem. So my mind cooks up plans on how we should deal with these problems, like this guy did:

But is it truly my responsibility to fix all the world's problems? Why in the world do we take it upon ourselves to think that if only we did something, we could fix it? So, it seems to be this wanting to fxi the world is a temptation, a desire that leads us into sin and suffering. We desire control, we desire people conform to our beliefs and we desire that it all goes our way. And soon it is our way or the highway and the boots start marching a long as they are been doing throughout history. And it looks like the best laid plans of mice and men come to naught once again.

So now what do we do? Is there anything we can fix? I can assure you there is somethings can do, particularly we should firstly follow Socrates dictum "Know thyself" and believe one the reason we love to look at the world's problems and center ourselves on fixing them instead of examining our own lives and fixing what is going on inside of us as individuals is because the darkness outside of us seems more easy to deal with, because we have all these messiahs, politicians and others saying they have solution and we are in great company with the other legion of followers.

But to "know thyself" is to go on a lonely journey into the dark recesses of the self and lay our eyes bare on our own human nature and acknowledge that we are all evil, all egotistical and we are all disgusting. It is a frightening journey.

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[Wandering Monk]

Share of married to other ethnicity:

 

[Wandering Monk]

Share of Americans who would vote for a qualified black for President.

 

[Wandering Monk]

 

[The Reverend Bob]

View attachment 30323

Our World in Data? - Brett Hudson Matthews - Medium

 

[Wandering Monk]

Our World in Data? - Brett Hudson Matthews - Medium

All the data are well sourced. For instance, undernourishment sources: References:

World Bank, World Development Indicators. Indicators | Data [accessed 25th September 2017].

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2017. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2017. Building resilience for peace and food security. Rome, FAO.

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2018. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2018. Building climate resilience for food security and nutrition. Rome, FAO.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Our World in Data? - Brett Hudson Matthews - Medium

You do realize that the entire article focuses on the poverty metrics pretty much exclusively, right?

His beef (and I admit, it is a valid point) is with the definition of "poverty", as it changes throughout time - noting that even people with no income and a decent plot of land in the past (which was a more frequent thing considering there were fewer humans taking up the land), could sustain themselves without being considered "poor" due to having no monetary means, simply because their land/food/farming assets made up for the monetary deficit. But, all this means is that the graph is less dramatic, and probably more horizontal in nature, were this disparity in poverty definitions to be taken into account (which it likely cannot be reliably).

So... where is your source discrediting all of the other information, from all of the other graphs showing a positive swing in ideas and conditions throughout the world? Even the author of your article notes that "Our World in Data" does represent other data much more validly and reliably. Even if poverty, specifically, has remained about constant or even gotten worse, that does not, in any way, make the world "worse off" as a whole.