Charles Kenny

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November 24, 2011 | 8:00 AM | By

Happy Thanksgiving: Two thought-leaders on things getting better

Flickr, ~Sage~

Thanksgiving tends to produce a standard stock (schlock?) of stories that fit the holiday theme and also appear to be produced based on the assumption nobody actually reads them.

Stories about turkeys, shopping, hunger, obesity, the wackiness of American family life or maybe the pilgrims. You can usually guess what they say without even reading them.

But here are two Thanksgiving articles that I think are well worth reading, both of them noting that we should give thanks that the world is getting better.

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times asks Are we getting nicer? Yes we are, Kristof says:

It’s pretty easy to conclude that the world is spinning down the toilet.

So let me be contrary and offer a reason to be grateful this Thanksgiving. Despite the gloomy mood, the historical backdrop is stunning progress in human decency over recent centuries.War is declining, and humanity is becoming less violent, less racist and less sexist — and this moral progress has accelerated in recent decades. To put it bluntly, we humans seem to be getting nicer.

Kristof then goes on to cite evidence of increasing amounts of niceness.

Over at Foreign Policy magazine, Charles Kenny (author of the book Getting Better) similarly suggests we should all be Counting our blessings. Says Kenny:

It’s been a tough year, and one in which a lot of people around the world might be struggling to find things to be thankful for. In the United States, unemployment remains stubbornly high, growth stubbornly low, and good sense on Capitol Hill stubbornly absent. European debt, meanwhile, looks about as secure as a Las Vegas mortgage. But look more broadly at the state of the world and there’s a lot going right — so give that thanks and pass the gravy.

Kenny then goes on to list 10 facts (the blogosphere likes lists, especially lists of 10, however arbitrary they may be) that demonstrate the world, overall, is on an upswing.

He begins by noting the increased amount of vegetarianism, a trend turkeys — if not turkey farmers — can also celebrate.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Charles Kenny, Nicholas Kristof, Thanksgiving
July 26, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Two views on East Africa crisis: Famine is a crime; famine is bad science

As the United Nations and the international community ramps up to airlift food and supplies into East Africa, mostly for starving Somali refugees, two perspectives on this crisis seemed especially interesting to me.

In Foreign Policy, Charles Kenny contends that, in this day and age, allowing a famine to occur is basically a crime against humanity:

For all its horror, starvation is also one of the simpler forms of mortality to prevent — it just takes food.  Drought, poor roads, poverty — all are contributing factors to the risk of famine, but sustenance in the hands of the hungry is a pretty foolproof solution.

As a result, famine deaths in the modern world are almost always the result of deliberate acts on the part of governing authorities. That is why widespread starvation is a crime against humanity and the leaders who abet it should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

That might sound a little melodramatic, but read his argument. Compelling stuff.

On a different line of thought, David Dickson, editor of the Science and Development Network, contends that the UN, Western powers and aid organizations could have been well-prepared for this crisis — if they had paid any attention to the scientific evidence reported by weather and drought prediction experts.

Dickson writes:

Earlier this week, the UN declared the drought in southern Somalia had become so bad that it could be officially declared a famine — the first time the word had been applied to this region in almost 20 years.

The news came as little surprise to agencies that had been monitoring the lack of rainfall over the past year, which is partly linked to the La Niña event in the Pacific Ocean. They had predicted that a widescale shortage of food was highly likely to occur.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Justice, Charles Kenny, David Dickson, famine, human rights, science, Somalia