Is The World Getting Better Or Worse?

The world is most certainly getting better. It only gives the impression of being worse because we have access to so much more information nowadays. So every time something bad happens or some crisis manifests, everyone knows about it.But a simple reference is look at how things were at the beginning of the 20th century. There were two large scale world wars. Hundreds of millions died in those conflicts. The poverty, infant mortality rates, death from diseases, etc. where all much higher. Both my parents lived through World War II as children and both lost siblings and family members either to conflict or childhood diseases. The Spanish Flu in the early 20th century killed between 50 to 100 million people. Nowadays, even the recent flu outbreak early this year killed only a handful. And the main difference is technology and access to medical care. And while wars are not completely gone, the likelihood of a conflict on the scale that occurred in the past is highly unlikely largely due to how globalization has made all economies too intertwined to make any conflict likely.Now are there things that should be of concern? Absolutely. The biggest threat I see is climate change. It will radically change the biosphere of the planet and will likely displace millions of people over the next few hundred years. We could be taking better steps to mitigate this, but many individuals who have a vested interest in the status quo (Koch brothers), take steps to spread dis-information.But as a species, there has never been a better time in our history to be alive. Would anyone honestly want to go back in time a few hundred years?

I would concur that first world societies actually help mitigate those 'animal urges' to a degree. For a first world society to function, there has to be a fair level of empathy and altruism that exists. Otherwise, the society would collapse.With that being said, if we get to a Lord of the Flies type scenario where we are starting to compete for rapidly dwindling resources, then our baser instincts of survival will start to manifest.As Phat alluded to, we have to start to be honest about the size of our population and the ultimate carrying capacity of our planet. Technology and movement into the first world will also help. But ironically, we will be dealing with other problems if the population peaks and then starts to decline. While that likely will be good from an environmental perspective, it is going to have economic consequences because many of the systems in place currently were designed with an increasing or static population in mind. Social security, medicare, and so forth could start to run into problems with declining populations since they are designed to utilize current funds to pay for previous generations. So that will result in strains on the systems. Also, our economy itself is driven by growth and revenue and that could start to hit the skids with a population peak or a population decline. We could start seeing deflation manifest and asset prices in things like housing begin a downward spiral. Mind you I see this as more of an issue for countries that do not have good immigration policies or are not considered 'desirable' from a migration perspective. Like Japan, China and India.