Dear Mark
Congratulations to you and your wife on the birth of your daughter. I also hope the World will be a better place for her to live and will contribute what I can to make that happen for her and all our children.
I just want to raise some responses to some of your points however.
This is your first paragraph.
While headlines often focus on what’s wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today.
You say health is improving but I would disagree.
I think healthcare or our understanding of healthcare is improving but not health per se. Nearly every family now knows someone either in their family or friends who have some form of cancer.
Diseases such as Alzheimer’s are on the increase as is mental health generally. More than 10% of adults in the UK are taking anti depressants. Also I believe anti depressants are the largest selling drug in the US.
You say poverty is shrinking.
We seem to have more homeless people and others living below the poverty line than at any time in our history. More people using foodbanks. Not to mention the huge amounts of refugees in Europe displaced by our actions. I think the poverty gap is actually increasing.
Knowledge is growing but the use of it isn’t. The idea of common sense has gone and I am not sure if people know the meaning of courtesy any more. It feels like the more we learn the less people want to know. I doubt anyone could name a scientist alive now but could name a dozen ”Celebrities” there is a reality TV character who is celebrated on television in England who wears a watch but can’t tell the time!
People are connecting online but not in person.
People send people friend requests on Facebook but ignore them in the street? ( Personal experience) What’s the point of that and how did that happen?
Technology , in my opinion, is disconnecting people from each other and from their surroundings. People have their faces stuck in a screen instead of embracing the real world.
We have created a generation of Crane neck Kids.
Whole families who do not converse with each other any more but are all obsessed by their personal screen.
Technological progress is automating every possible process to replace humans and in the case of industry and business if these humans aren’t working then there will be a massive irony that the technological progress to streamline their business to be more profitable to produce products that the very humans that they are aimed at will not have the income to buy.
That covered the first few paragraphs of your letter more to follow.
commonsenseandadvertising 