Finding Hope When All Seems Lost

“The alarming juxtaposition is that on the other side of this brick wall were patients dying from malaria and children being born with HIV. However, the sheer joy and optimism of this village was unbreakable and, in every sense, unexplainable.”

With constant news of wildfires, protests, and a pandemic, perhaps we could be forgiven for thinking that 2020 has not been a particularly stable year. Online, a growing group of people quick to chime in at every opportunity to “lose faith in humanity” has created a culture in which it has become increasingly fashionable to be pessimistic about the state of the world.

Mainstream media would have us believe that the world is in a state of utter catastrophe. After all, it is more enticing to both liberal and conservative audiences to be fed content that magnifies divisive social issues or tells us how terrible our lives have become of late. But truth be told, the world is a better place now than ever before. This fact is undisputed.

A child born anywhere in the world today is far more likely to survive until adulthood than at any point in history. This year, 300,000 more children will survive malaria who would not have survived 20 years ago. Global infant mortality has nearly halved, and mean life expectancy has risen by ten to 20 years in almost every sub-Saharan African country since 2000. However, we rarely discuss these incredible developments.