I cant think of a witty heading

Despite all my rantings on this very blog, I do actually think of myself as an optimist. Yes, we have many, many problems in the world today, but I think we often take for granted how good we have it nowadays, and there is actually no such thing as “the good old days”.

One of my greatest wishes in life is to time travel. When I was younger (three weeks ago) I would lie in bed for hours, wishing that I could travel to the old days, just to experience what life was like. It is no surprise that my favourite subject at school and varsity was history, and one of my most-loved past times is looking at old photos, particularly of places where I have lived- Botswana, Knysna, Cape Town- to see the fundamental differences that have occurred over time, to the landscape, the infrastructure, the clothing and long to spend just one day living in these times. But don’t get me wrong, as much as I would love to visit another period, I would never want to live in any time but now.

Nowadays, the world faces many challenges. Racism, xenophobia, sexism, religious fundamentalism, global warming, human trafficking, AIDS and widespread poverty are real issues that we are trying to deal with. And that is what sets us apart from “the good old days”. Think of any other period in time. They were seen as simpler times, because while they also had almost all of these issues, they weren’t seen as issues, but rather part and parcel of everyday life. Racism was rife, as was sexism and religious intolerance. People in the olden days never saw these as problems. There was no human conscience. There were certainly no laws prohibiting these atrocious behaviours, and anyone who stood up against them was ostracized and even arrested. Global warming was dismissed as a theory by a minority of crackpot scientists.  

I believe that the next step in humanity’s evolution is a cerebral rather than physical evolution, and that we are slowly gaining more morality each and every day. While governments may not be doing enough to help the world, many individuals are. Nowadays we have Greenpeace, PETA, Habitat for Humanity, Medicine sans Frontieres, Human Rights Watch and the like. There are also scientists working day and night to find cures to our many diseases such as AIDS, cancer and malaria, as well as solutions to global warming and famine. We have laws in place to prevent and punish many of the horrors that human beings like to inflict on each other. Human trafficking is illegal worldwide, as is slavery. There are laws in most countries that outlaw child labour, and same-sex marriage is now legal in several countries, including South Africa, Spain, Argentina and the Netherlands. Two weeks ago Barack Obama, the first black American president, also became the first sitting U.S president to come out in support of gay marriage.

Human beings are evolving. We are becoming more humane every day, and though we still have many problems to overcome, and it may seem like we never will, we are tackling these problems on a daily basis, slowly but surely. It is definitely a case of two steps forward and one step back, but we’re moving forward. Long may it continue.