Hope

Hope is not the same as wishing. I can wish I might win a million, but it's unlikely, a) because I don't gamble & b) because the odds are stacked against it.

I can hope. My hopes are fairly simple - good health & lives for my family & friends, a good death eventually for me, to do more good than harm in my life. 

But what hope do so many people in the world now have? If you follow the news you don't need me to enumerate the many devastating & utterly pointless conflicts, or the malnutritian & famine, or the crimes against women, the lack of basic human rights, sanitation & water.....That doesn't even include the people suffering from depression & mental illness.

"Individuals with very low levels of well-being—and in despair in particular—suffer not only poor outcomes on the health, longevity, and productivity fronts, but they also typically avoid civil society, live in loneliness and isolation, and are vulnerable to misinformation, conspiracy theories, and radicalization".

"A growing body of evidence suggests that the single most consequential component of subjective well-being is hope. It is critical to future outcomes for individuals and society. People usually think of hope as an emotion rather than something that can be measured and linked to behavioral, economic, and political outcomes. Economists who study hope define it slightly differently. Hope is not simply the belief or feeling that one’s circumstances will get better, that is optimism. Rather, hope is optimism combined with the belief that one has the agency to make things better".

https://www.brookings.edu/about-us/

My question is, if the world does not take action to make our countries more equal & evenly balanced, if we don't share land, wealth & resources, what will happen? My guess is that we will create a "monster" race. A race so disenchanted with the unfairness & inequality of many societies that they will be prepared to do anything to right the wrongs.

The difficulty I have is that I think the evidence for this is already there for everyone to see. All forms of extremism, religious of otherwise, are already clearly visible. The extreme right & extremely religious aren't able to listen. Populism is rampant. Self interest & power is all that matters to many. 

I would like you to think what you individually can do to force change. We have to hope that we have power to influence politicians because they are the only ones who can take effective action. At the moment I don't see much evidence of that.