Morality and humanity in 2007

Perhaps it's dreaming, but Warwick McFadyen raises the now so-often overlooked issue of morality and humanity in 2007:

"Perhaps at heart we are just Daleks. Our calling is only to ourselves in the most vicious and uncaring way. Humankind is a fragmented chain of self-interest. This grey despondence, sweeping across the inner landscape like low cloud, is due to a convergence of news items in recent days. The Daleks came to my mind. Exterminate.

First came a report by the World Federation of United Nations Associations, based on a "state of the future" survey.

Perhaps I am being too much the naysayer. The report did, after all, find rising rates of life expectancy and better access to health and education, and a recent UNICEF report also has found that the number of children dying before they reach five years of age has fallen below 10 million annually. Worldwide, child deaths stand at 9.7 million a year; in 1990 the figure was 13 million. This is good news, isn't it? Only 9.7 million children a year not making it to their fifth birthday? The trend is downwards. Smile.

A single statistic from the World Federation report slithers like a snake through the grass of widening utopia. It is this: the world's population is 6.6 billion. Out of that figure, 225 people earn the equivalent of the globe's poorest 2.7 billion people. Two hundred and twenty-five. Which is less than two trams' worth of commuters. The figure of 2.7 billion is roughly the population of China doubled."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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