The NerdWorld Report

In this Issue:

• Glass Half Empty

• Evidence of Our Decline

• "We Suck Less"

Other Stuff:

• Interesting Links

• Legal disclaimer

• The NerdWorld Organisation

• Letters from Readers

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Nattering Nabobs of Negativity

or

"It's Not Getting Worse...   It's Always Been This Bad"

Lately I've been hearing talk of the "decline" of our civilization.   Evidence to support this decline is everywhere:  the looming war with Iraq, disrespectful children, the perjury of our past president, pervasive "special interest" campaign money, "reality" TV shows,  high taxes/deficits/government spending, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.  It seems you can't spit without finding some evidence that our civilization is worse than it was just a few years ago, and certainly worse than it was in the good old days that I remember from when I was a kid.

Bunk!  (or should I say some other two-part word describing the bodily functions of a bovine which is very prevalent in our modern vocabulary... another example of our decline?)

The world isn't going into the toilet.  The world has always stunk, but in fact, it's actually getting better.

The Glass is Half Empty

We seem to be a "Half Empty" society.  For reasons known only to afternoon talk show producers, we tend to focus on the unseemly aspects of our lives.  The Headline never shouts

99.9% Of Kids Go To Bed Well Fed

but instead reads

Children Hungry in Our City

There is no market for good news.  The obituary section of the paper is three times the size of the birth announcement section.  We read lurid tales of murder and other crimes.  We feel righteous anger at the criminals getting off with light sentences, never noticing the overall drop in the crime rate and (in my mind, firmly related to this drop) the explosion of our prison population.  We watch "American Idol", not to see great singers, but to laugh at the idiots who sing as badly as we do.  We are drawn pathologically to tragedy, like the moth to the flame. 

The Evidence of Our Decline

Is the world getting worse?  Let's check some objective evidence, starting with the biggest measurement there is, "Life Expectancy".  As they say on the sports shows, "Let's go to the video tape."

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an American born in 1929 could statistically expect to live to age 57.1.  People like me born in 1957 can hope for a lifetime of 69.5 years (Woo Hoo!  23 more years of hedonism for me!).   Your 4-year old child, born in 1999 should live to the ripe old age of 76.7!  So in less than the lifetime of a typical Florida retiree, we've extended our average lives by 34%!  Ok, so maybe we're not actually living longer; maybe it just seems longer. 

What about crime?  Surely any society on a downward spiral such as ours must be swimming in criminals.   According to the Department of Justice (see  http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/gvc.htm for details), almost every measure of crime is down over the last decade.   Violent crime, which held essentially constant from 1973 to 1994, has dropped approximately 48% as of 2001.  Property crimes show similar declines.  How is it possible for a society that eschews personal responsibility, celebrates disrespect for authority, diagnoses every 4th child with ADS, and exceeds the posted speed limit by an average of 10+ MPH could also have cut crime in half in less than a decade?

So America is getting better in a few specific areas, but let's talk about the whole world.   After all, we're in a global economy now.   NAFTA has stolen thousands of jobs.  Our manufacturing base has been exported overseas.  The stock market is down, taking our 401K plans and dreams of early retirement with it.

Well, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average is down 30% since January 1, 2000, but it has gained 3,894% since January 1, 1950!  Even if you got into the market as late as 1990, you would see a gain of 181%.  Of course, the stock market is a fickle thing, subject to various psychological diseases, phases of the moon, and the alignments of several planets.  Let's cut to the chase:  How does our total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) look?  Since our manufacturing is declining, we should be getting poorer.  But the GDP grew by a whopping 274% from 1980 to 2002 (through recession, the Iranian hostage crisis, and the worst of our "national malaise").  Even considering our current economic slowdown, the GDP has grown 6.3% above inflation from 2000 to 2002. (see http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/gdplev.xls)   Somehow, with all our problems, we're still making money.

Shoot, I guess financially the world is a better place, but surely world politics have gone into the gutter.   Well...    In 1940, Europe and Asia were battlegrounds as despotic empires attempted world conquest.  In 1980, the Iron Curtain locked up half of Europe, and roughly 1/3 of the world's peoples suffered under Communist oppression.  Today, the Soviet Union is gone, and the trappings of modern democracy are taking shape where totalitarians once ruled.   (By the way, those 1940 empires lost the war.  Their leaders died and their countries were humiliated, and eventually rebuilt, by the victors.)

140 years ago, an American president suspended habeas corpus and routinely executed people based on the outcome of military tribunals.  85 years ago, more than half of our adult population was explicitly forbidden from participating in our democratic processes.  50 years ago, a young black boy could be lynched for whistling at a white woman.  30 years ago, our president resigned after concealing his involvement in a "second rate burglary".  Today, we debate how far Affirmative Action should go to correct the social injustices our great grandparents took for granted.  Instead of summarily executing captured enemy soldiers, we agonize over the morality of using military tribunals for combatants arrested in war zones.

Ok, we've got more social justice, more freedom, and a higher standard of living, but let's talk morality.  But here we have a major problem: How do you objectively measure morality?  It's similar to the problem highlighted by a survey of 100 people renewing their drivers license that found that 85% of them think they are above average drivers.  We never worry about our own morality, only the other guy's.  We don't want to restrict internet pornography because we're afraid we'll accidentally get caught by a porno pop-up ad while we surf the web at work;  We want to protect our children.  Carrie Nation was not concerned about accidentally getting whisky instead of sarsaparilla, she wanted to keep the rabble clean and sober.  Everyone is certain that they are moral, but everybody else is definitely on shaky ground. 

So while the overall measurement of morality is essentially impossible to objectively define, let alone measure, there are ways to measure how morally we judge ourselves.  Church attendance can be used to measure the state of structured, public morality, and it shows slow declines in regular church attendance.  Currently, American church attendance hovers around 40%, while it was almost 50% in 1955 (see http://www.onmission.com/webzine/mar_apr02/vitals.htm).  But does church attendance correlate with "morality"?  (Bill Clinton was a regular church-goer.)  How about charitable giving?  Sure it's a tax deduction, but it still costs the donor hard cash.  Good statistics on charitable giving are also hard to come by, but the United Way of America reports that per capita donations to non-profit organizations has increased by 61% between 1990 and 2000.  (see http://national.unitedway.org/stateofcaring/view.cfm for details).  So maybe the Nattering Nabobs have a point about a decline in morality, but the data really doesn't exist from which to draw firm conclusions.

"We Suck Less!"

I once worked for a company that had a very hostile management style.  Our companies' various manufacturing plants were always pitted against each other, and no matter what, senior management claimed that the local plant was always the one doing badly and sorely in need of smarter, harder-working, and more effective management teams.  It didn't take us long to realize that no matter how well we did, we would always be berated for our poor performance, especially compared to the other plants.  We realized that our senior managers thought we were terrible, and our only hope was to improve from terrible to merely bad.  We dreamed that someday we would be just slightly less bad than the other plants.  And if that day should ever arrive, we new what our motto would be:  "We Suck Less!"

The world may be a terrible, rotten, dirty, nasty place.   Life may be nasty, brutish, and short, but it is less nasty, less brutish, and less short than it was 5 years ago.  In 5 more years, it should suck even less.

Remember, despite the high cost of living, it still remains popular.

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