D PARTNER
Eastown
Current values have the day
Ben Farmer (Chronicle, July 25) rightly assumes, I believe, that "to many"... we seem ..." to be living in the opening scenes of a post-apocalyptic movie", with regard to the apparently escalating deterioration that we witness in any state-of-the-world overview of global events.
He quotes Indrajit Roy, lecturer in global development at York University, who presents a brighter view of modern global life, itemising areas where humanity has made improvements in comparison to past decades and centuries.
In conclusion, he states it is a luxury to just talk about the apparently declining state of the world without doing the hard work of seeing what people are doing to resist that decline. I am less than convinced that circumstances in today's global picture warrant a more favourable evaluation than in previous generations/centuries.
I agree that the very evident decline, as I see it, the world over, is at the hands of politics and politicking. The question I ask Ben Farmer and those of similar view is, will the "hard work" of seeing what people are doing to combat such a decline halt a worst-case scenario, which in my view could come about on any of a number of fronts.
Short of a grand-scale change of perspective on what actually matters in this life and achieving a global consensus on that, it seems that the current values, as represented by politicians focused on dollars and popularity, will have its day.....or night.
PAUL BABER
Aramoho