The year before I was born fewer than one in three countries in the world could be considered properly free. Today, according to Freedom House, nearly one in two can be classified as free. Despite the grinding stupidity and tedious witlessness that so often dominates our domestic politics we should remember that this is a great time to be alive.
In fact there have been few better eras in human history. This is a big claim but it’s justified given the expansion of liberty and opportunity across the planet these past 30 years. Of course there are exceptions and there remain many black holes of misery but the overall trend is clear. From Latin America to East Asia by way of Eastern Europe millions, no billions, of people lead more comfortable lives in more decent societies than seemed probable or even possible just 40 years ago. Even Africa, for all its troubles, is not uniformly without hope.
This transformation doesn’t have a single cause by any means but a good deal of it can be ascribed to the triumphs of liberal democracy (once thought something unique to western europe and the English-speaking world) and market capitalism. This has been an unusually prosperous and, crucially, peaceful era. It doesn’t always seem like that, of course, but that doesn’t prevent it from being true.
Even the grimmer parts of the globe are often less grim than they were. Lunatic dictators are the exception, not the rule and a billion Chinese have opportunities their grandparents could scarcely have imagined. Similarly, India’s rise, while unfinished, makes it hard to imagine there ever being another Bengal Famine. And much else besides.
The question, perhaps, is whether all this represents a passing phase. Have we reached the zenith of liberalism? Perhaps. The possibilities afforded by authoritarian capitalism are not always encouraging even if, again, the capitalism part of that bargain at least allows these countries’ people to live half-free lives. That’s better than at least one of the alternatives.
More to the point, 35 years ago another World War was not wholly inconceivable. While never impossible it demands rather more imagination to see how such a conflict could arise now. Experience has been a tough schoolmaster but the 21st century, so far anyway, is a better place than the 20th was. The earth is an unusually peaceful place at present and those wars that do rage are smaller, more limited in scope and kill fewer people than was the case in the mechanised 20th century.
At the local level, sure, there remain problems and some of them often seem intractable. But as recent events have shown even the Middle East is no longer quite the outlier it was in terms of liberal aspirations and opportunity. Reactionary forces may yet prevail but fundamentalism’s track record is not encouraging and does little to suggest it can meet the long-term aspirations of those it seeks to repress.
Of course there will be troubles ahead. One can imagine any number of scenarios in which Resource Wars break out while meeting the needs of a growing global population will be difficult (but perhaps easier than in the past thanks to GM crops?) and shifting climate patterns may yet or eventually precipitate chaos and great geopolitical upheaval.
But in general or viewed from outer space this planet, despite its shortcomings and quotidian grumbling, is a better, safer, healthier, better-fed, more peaceful, freer, more liberal place than it has been at just about any point in recorded human history. For men and especially for women. Dr Pangloss would be proud.
Which is another way of saying that opinions on the present crisis in Egypt differ between those who fear catastrophe and those who see hope, not rage as the force driving the protests. Perhaps the optimists will be confounded and the world will take a sharp turn for the worse. If so then we may look back on these past 30 years as a Golden Age whose passing will be mourned as we wonder how and why and where we let it all slip away…
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