NEED A SHOT OF OPTIMISM?

In 1951, the year of my birth, the global average for human life expectancy was 46. Today it is 73.

The percentage of malnourished people in the world has declined from over 60% in 1951 to 9% today — Gaza and South Sudan notwithstanding.

In America, the average annual income from wages in 1951 was $2,799. Today it is over $67,000 — almost exactly double when adjusted for inflation.

In 1951, twenty-one American states mandated and/or enforced racial segregation with the full power of government and custom. Today, segregation cannot be mandated or legally enforced.

In 1951, American women who worked outside their homes (34 percent) were largely limited to being secretaries, nurses, teachers, domestic workers, sex workers and salesladies. Today, the nearly 60 percent of women who work includes doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, police, lifeguards, musicians, etc. — and job discrimination on the basis of sex is outlawed.

In 1951, homosexuality was cause for being legally denied employment and housing, and people could land in jail for having sex or for cross-dressing. Today, I have hordes of gainfully employed, home-owning, married gay and lesbian friends who are just as out as they want to be.

Two-thirds of American households had a phone (land-line, of course) in 1951. Today, more than 98% of American households have at least one cell phone — which, for most, means they have a camera, calculator, television, radio, flashlight, mirror, bookshelf, and internet access tool in their pocket.

In 1951, more than 28,000 Americans were struck with polio, more than 10,000 of them with the paralytic strain. Today, the only cases of polio occur — very, very rarely — from the polio vaccine itself.

Nearly half of adult Americans smoked tobacco in 1951. Today, less than 12% smoke.

In 1951, less than 10 percent of Americans possessed a passport. Today, 48% do.

Yes, I know, it’s hard not to kvetch — oy, global climate change, oy, brutal deportations, oy, the military budget, oy, housing costs, oy, the Supreme Court, oy, incipient fascism, oy, greed and domination — and we tend to think that the absence of kvetching implies ignorance, or a lack of conscience and empathy. Yet the older I get, the longer my own lived memory stretches, and the more history I read, the more I see how far we have actually come in only a few generations. Oy yoy yoy, slavery. (For 250 years!) Oy yoy yoy, lynching and Jim Crow. Oy yoy yoy, the slaughter and forced deculturation of native people. Oy yoy yoy, smog and lead in our lungs. Oy yoy yoy, roadside zoos torturing animals. Oy yoy yoy, firetrap tenements. Oy yoy yoy, eugenics. Oy yoy yoy, child labor. Oy yoy yoy, syphilis and gonorrhea. Oy yoy yoy, World War I and the Armenian genocide. Oy yoy yoy, World War II and the Holocaust!

The older I get, moreover, the more I find the very existence of civilization to be miraculous and wonderful — how human beings who don’t even know each other have built cities, institutions, laws, scientific knowledge, food distribution networks, shipping routes, and so forth, the world over. And our progress is not only technological, medical, and material — it is social. Deny this and you deny the tremendous advances won by the liberation movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Deny this and you deny the heartfelt patriotic optimism of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963:

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. . . . [E]ven though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed . . .”

I’d rather run with that, try to build a politics of Look how much amazing improvement we’ve achieved (“Let’s not let them destroy it!”), instead of Look how horrible things are (“And I alone can solve it!”). So I’m thinking a lot these days about what that kind politics might look like, how it might message — and why progressive people are always ready to make a sour face when I say that things have gotten better.

Here’s what Louis CK had to say about this, well before his disgrace, and way before me: https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4