2019年是人类历史上最好的一年

Why 2019 has been the best year in human history

为什么 2019 年是人类历史上最好的一年

If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.

如果你对这个世界的样子感到沮丧，那么请听听我下面这个观点：在人类历史的长河里，2019 年是史上最好的一年。

The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that since modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago, 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.

让你烦恼的那些糟心事的确存在，但自 20 万年前晚期智人出现以来，2019 年可能是儿童死亡率最低、成年人文盲率最低、以及引起剧痛且有畸残风险的疾病患病率最低的一年，这一切也真实存在。

Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27% of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4%.

历史上，人类几乎有一半会在孩童时期丧命。往近了说，直至 1950 年，仍有 27%的孩子活不过 15 岁。现在，这一比率降到了 4%左右。

Diseases like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on AIDS. Half a century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90% adult literacy.

小儿麻痹症、麻风病、河盲症及象皮病这类疾病的发病率正在下降，此外，在世界各国人民的共同努力下，艾滋病的不治之势也得以逆转。半个世纪前，这个世界上的大多数人都不识字；如今，成人识字率接近 90%。

You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. Climate change remains a huge threat to our globe, and it’s likely that we will miss a U.N. target of eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. We should keep pressing on all these fronts, but we’ll get a morale boost if we acknowledge the backdrop of hard-won improvement.

读到这些你可能会心里不舒服。这个世界还有那么多不幸的事，歌颂我们目前取得的进步可能显得有些不合时宜、容易引起误解，还会产生适得其反的效果。气候变化仍然对地球造成巨大威胁，我们也可能无法实现联合国定下的一个目标，即在 2030 年前消除极端贫困。我们要在这些方面继续推进下去，不过，如果我们能承认取得这些进步有多么来之不易，我们会更有信心一些。

“We are some of the first people in history who have found ways to make progress against these problems,” says Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data website.

“针对这些问题，找到应对方法并有所进展，我们是历史上的先驱者。”马克斯·罗塞尔这样说道。他是一位来自牛津大学的经济学家，同时也运营着一个叫作“用数据看世界”的网站。

“Three things are true at the same time,” he added. “The world is much better, the world is awful, the world can be much better.”

他还补充说：“有三个事实同时成立，那就是——这个世界变得好多了，这个世界还是很糟，这个世界可以变得更好。”