Progress in the World

Despite the perception created by negative news coverage, there are several things that are measurably better in the world today. Here are some areas where progress has been made:

Decline in Global Poverty: Over the past few decades, extreme poverty rates have been significantly reduced worldwide. According to the World Bank, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty fell below 10% for the first time in history.

Improvements in Health: Many health indicators have shown improvement. Child mortality rates have decreased, life expectancy has increased, and deaths from major diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis have declined. Vaccination rates have also risen, leading to the prevention of numerous infectious diseases.

Increased Literacy and Education: Global literacy rates have improved, and more children than ever are attending primary and secondary school. The gender gap in education is also narrowing, with more girls having access to education and higher education enrollment.

Technological Advancements: Rapid technological progress has brought numerous benefits. Access to information has increased through the internet and mobile technology, connecting people worldwide. Advances in medicine, renewable energy, and communication have positively impacted society.

Decrease in Crime Rates: Despite some fluctuations, crime rates have generally declined in many parts of the world. Homicide rates, for instance, have decreased in numerous countries over the past few decades. Additionally, advancements in technology and law enforcement have contributed to better crime prevention and detection.

Increased Global Cooperation: There has been an increase in international cooperation and diplomacy, fostering peaceful resolutions to conflicts. Organizations like the United Nations, regional bodies, and global partnerships have played a crucial role in promoting dialogue, humanitarian efforts, and sustainable development.

Environmental Awareness: There is a growing global awareness about the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability. Efforts are being made to combat climate change, reduce pollution, protect ecosystems, and promote renewable energy sources.

Human Rights Progress: There have been significant advancements in human rights, including increased recognition of LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, and improved protections for marginalized communities. Many countries have enacted laws to address discrimination and promote inclusivity.

A Philosophy of Life

1. Man is inherently neither good nor bad. His social usefulness and personal efficiency depend on his individual training and development, on his own interpretation of his early experiences, and on the life situations with which he is confronted.

2. Man is not aware of his individual strength and powers. He has intellectual, moral, and creative capacities which he does not recognize and therefore, cannot fully utilize.

3. Man can control his own actions. Emotions are not his master but his tools. He is motivated by his convictions, his attitudes, and his goals that he sets for himself, although he often may not be aware of them, nor realize their fallacies.

4. Man influences his own destiny without knowing it; he is aware more of what is done to him than what he does to others.

5. Man’s greatest obstacle to full social participation and cooperation is an underestimation of his own strength and value. Educational methods and training procedures tend to instill false concepts and attitudes about oneself in comparison to others, and cultural patterns fortify them.
6. Man’s greatest evil is fear. Courage and belief in his own ability are the basis for all his virtues. Through his realization of his own value, he can feel a sense of belonging, and be interested in others.

7. The basis for harmonious human relationships is respect for one’s own dignity, combined with respect for the rights and dignity of others.

8. Every member of society is entitled to the same dignity and respect. Fundamental human equality is not affected by any individual incidental characteristic like race, color, religion, sex, age, social and economic position, education, physical or mental health and beauty, moral or intellectual development, skill, or personal achievement. Any assumption of superiority or inferiority on the basis of such incidental factors is arbitrary and fallacious.

9. Peace of mind and peace on earth can be achieved when man will abolish the superiority of one man over the other when each person’s value will be firmly established in his own mind as well as in the minds of his fellow man, and when no compensatory desire for prestige or power will set man against his fellow man.

10. We need each other’s constant help to maintain our vision of what we each could be, to fortify our good intentions and noble aspirations, and to counteract the discouraging and demoralizing experiences to which we are all exposed in our daily living.

– Rudolf Dreikurs (1897-1972)

Love

The experience of loving is unilateral.  It asks no response, nor does it demand the other to be deserving.  Any and every human being deserves love.  It is not earned; one deserves it.  So every human being offers us the opportunity of loving them.  The loving rewards, not the being loved.  It is our privilege, not our duty.  Love has no rewards beyond the experience of it, nor does it require any.

“I love you” is most deeply a feeling, then an activity, and least of all, words.  As words, it is often used to stop loving, or reassure, or push away.  When the feeling forms the words, the words are not merely heard, but are seen and touched.  As a feeling, it brings the loved into being and the lover to the experience of another being.  Alone, each is beautiful; experienced together, they create.

The feeling of love arises out of your person, unreasonably and wonderfully thrusting itself on, and contagiously evoking response in the other.  When felt unreservedly without hesitance, shame, or fear, the loved one has no choice but to love.  The slightest hesitance or most meager reservation in loving can undo.  If the love feeling in you does not wake a love response, do not chastise the other, but look into your own heart to find wherein your loving lacks fullness or is crippled by your hesitance.

Many good and bad feelings are mistaken for love. Caring for, forgiveness of, tolerance of, infatuation with, dependence on, feeling close to, being friendly with, going to, accepting from, sacrificing to, being excited by, understanding of, and countless others.  These feelings are not only not love, they are seldom part of loving.  They are part of living with, but not loving of.

“I love you” means something very special and very concrete.  It means that I surround you with the feeling that allows you–perhaps even requires you–to be everything you really are as a human being at that moment.  When my love is fullest, you are most fully you.  You may be good, or bad, or both; tender, or angry, or both; but you are you, which is the very most I could ever ask or expect.  And so I experience you in all your beauty and all your ugliness.  But you, not what I expect, or want, or what you feel you should be, or were fashioned to be, but really you.  I do not love you for what you are.  My love of you enables you to be what you are.  Love shatters roles and illuminates persons.  The acquired masks are discarded, and we face each other as we are.  Because being loved allows the other to be what he or she really is, it is much easier to know when you are loved than it is to know when you are loving.  The affirmation of your love is in the other person’s being; the confirmation of being loved lies in your experience of being yourself.  This you can most readily and reliably know.  Since it is easier to know when you are loved than when you are loving, the most serious personal distortions of human experience lie in the loving, not the loved experience.  Most psychiatric problems arise out of confusion of loving; mistakes about being loved are rare, if they occur at all.

What are the prerequisites to our loving?  I am convinced that if one is really one’s self, one is loving, if for no other reason than that the loving is so natural, so practical, and so rewarding.  The reasons for nonloving must of necessity be unnatural, formidable, and powerful.  I suspect these outrageous reasons stem from a fear of being alone or separated, since the need to belong is the second most powerful feeling I know of–second only to love.  But to love is to be alone, at least initially and momentarily, since it is unilateral and not dependent on response from the loved one.  And since the fear of being separated makes us very concerned with the response of the other, and so keeps us from loving, the very fear of aloneness and separation oddly enough results in our awful aloneness and deadly separation.

Can one set out to love?  Love by nature is involuntary if it is meaningful.  So do I have to sit around and wait for it? Hardly, though most of us do.  I can bring it about, but not by trying to love.  One of the most frustrating experiences I have had is the experience of loving my wife when I am not with her.  We encounter each other and something goes wrong; I am hurt and confused.  I go to my work and, in my inner experience, feel my love and am determined to let her know of this when I see her next.  I see her and find the same awful troubles, now more convinced than ever that she does not appreciate the wonderful loving person I am.  I have no humility, and so I do not really love.  I am alone and so I reflect.  I reflect on myself.  This reflection is a feeling, not thought.  The self-reflection arising out of aloneness quiets and stills.  Gradually, it illuminates my surroundings.  I sit in the autumn sun and feel quiet, and know surely that there is a larger, and incomprehensibly beautiful universe of which I am only a part, but a moving part.  Ultimately this feeling will include my wife.  I go to her and see her and me as something more wonderful and larger than the alone of me.

My self-reflection illuminates her for me.  Then I participate in us, and really know her deservingness, and I love without requiring a response.  We know each other.  My humility in the experience of our relationship has suddenly made it possible for me to love and be loved.  My humility is not my experience of my insignificance, but my experience of my being part of–belonging–and being extended the privilege of loving what I am so meaningfully a part of.  So humility breeds love.   Perhaps equally important, such humility enables me to experience the identity I have with her.  We are felt as two alikes, and love of her becomes love of me.

However complicated this seems to you, I tell you it is simple.  Without it I am empty, and within it I am.  Without it I know you feel empty, and within it I know I could love you.  And so the importance of I Love You is its importance to me.

– Thomas P. Malone, M.D.
from The Art of Intimacy