The
media leave us with an impression of doom, because good weather and good people
never make the news. But there are new great things happening this year. I
found four, and I am grateful to have lived long enough to see this.
1. On line education:
another Year of the MOOC
More
and more people follow free courses on the Internet, especially with the
emergence of the MOOCS.
MOOCS
stand for Massive Open Online Courses, free college level lectures delivered by
some of the best institutions on earth (so far from 45 different
countries). 2012 was already tagged as the year of the MOOC by the
New York Times, but since then, their progress has been incredibly fast.
For
instance, I am following a French sociology course today, just for the fun of
it, and there are participants in 174 countries. There are only 195 countries
in the world, this participation is really amazing.
I
am well aware that a great many people have no access to a computer, that some
countries impose a tight control on the web, and that there are illiterate
people everywhere.
But
also anywhere in the world, imagine what one person can accomplish, with the
right access to democratic ideas, irrigation, medicine, art or good information
on climate change!
Ideas
are very hard to stop.
2. Our health,
ourselves
Half
a century ago, the only hard-core medical idea that was well transferred to the
general population was the necessity of a good hygiene and the fear of
invisible pathogens. Nowadays, we have been elevated to a new level: if we
don't smoke, watch what we eat and are active enough, we will live longer and
be in better health. It is not just about seeing the doctor anymore and being
told what to do. Our health has become our responsibility: we are in charge of
most of it.
3. Medical justice
The human right to health is a recent idea. It was proclaimed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights but neglected by many world organizations including the World Heath Organization (you can Google and read the thesis of Benjamin Mason Meier 2009 if you want to know how it happened). Nowadays the WHO has changed its mind: "In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defense against transnational threats." Influential medical journals like The Lancet have evolved also from a world of medical charity to the notion of the right to health.
One
good news is that life expectancy has steadily increased in developing
countries in the last half-century.
One
of the troubling discoveries of these last years is that even in countries
(like most of Europe) where access to health is free to all, there remain large
disparities between social classes.
Look
at what happens if you follow the metro (or Tube) in London rich and poor
neighborhoods: your life expectancy can be over ten years shorter depending
where you live. I think that ten years ago, we didn't even know that there was
any difference. But there is a 10 to 15 years difference of life expectancy
between white-collar and blue-collar people in Germany and in France as well.
SOURCE:
Google "Lives on the Line" to see the full map produced by James
Cheshire, UCL CASA, June 2012. Journal article reference: Cheshire, J A. Lives
on the Line: Mapping Life Expectancy Along the London Tube Network. Environment
and Planning A 44(7). Doi: 10.1068/a45341.
How
is this good news? It is an opportunity to better understand how we
relate to our own health.
4. We recognize the
dangers of corruption
For
a very long time after World War 2, corruption was considered as a
"necessary evil". It was, for instance, common to the US government
to protect dictators in place against democrats during to Cold War. In Spain
for instance, from Eisenhower to Nixon, General Franco did benefit from the
help of the US (General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United
States, President Nixon). After the coup d’état in Greece in 1967, Senator
Metcalf criticized the US administration for aiding a "military regime of
collaborators and Nazi sympathizers."
American
businesses had the same practical ideology (realpolitik), giving bribes to
obtain contracts.
Nowadays,
most courtiers recognize that corruption is hurting everybody. It is all very
new!
For
instance back when the Berlin Wall fell, in 1989, businesses from developed
countries rushed to the new markets, without wondering first about how to
cooperate with corrupt officials and corrupt institutions. As a consequence, they
inadvertently created the most dangerous and powerful mafia in the world.
The USAID
- The U.S. Agency for International Development now says:
"Countries
weak in government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption have a
30 to 45 percent higher risk of civil war and significantly higher risk of
extreme criminal violence than other developing countries.
In
2012, 97 countries were considered very or highly corrupt."
See
also the International monetary fund Search on Corruption (start ≈ 1997)
Corruption
is “Public Enemy Number One” in Developing Countries, says World Bank Group
President Kim December 19, 2013
The
OECD - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development http://www.oecd.org/corruption/
(start ≈1999)
1 comment:
French Sociology in French?
I liked all that you wrote here, by the way....
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