Born On A Cusp

FrenchBeard and I are convinced that The Amazing Race has a lot of lessons to teach people on how to be more decent human beings. Our top three:

Karma. However you wish to call it — You reap what you sow, What goes around, comes around, What you give off, you get back — karma works. It just does. And often, the show’s racers have had to learn this the hard way. And when it does come around, they are the first to utter the words: “Karma hit us, man!” Then they begin to send off more positive vibes to the Universe, and stop stealing other team’s taxis or speaking ill of competitors or showing disrespect to ‘ordinary’ people.

Que sera sera. What will be, will be. In all the show’s seasons that we’ve seen, one of the biggest lessons has always been that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just don’t know what’s going to happen next. You could be the most physically agile, and the smartest with map-reading, and you set out on the confusing streets of Lithuania to do the Roadblock convinced you’ll be the first to step on the Pit Stop mat — but then your cab runs out of petrol and of course decides to make a 5-minute stopover, quickly changing your fortune and that of the team behind you. What else could you do?

Be kind. Not be a doormat that people can step over, but, be kind. Do not barge into a local market in Kenya and, without regard for any other, holler, ‘Does anybody speak English!?!?!’ If there were shoppers right then who in fact knew English, it shouldn’t surprise you that they’d choose to ignore you instead of dignifying your queenly demand. And kindness is not only for people, but for other beings too. Do not cuss the donkey and slap his ass if he chooses to stop for a slow munch of the lovely hay instead of helping you win your million dollars by carrying your haul onto the finish line. That donkey has a soul, too, and should be treated as such. In the end, kindness does pay, and brings us back to the lesson of karma.

(Fewer kids are dying, thanks to simple solutions such as vaccination and breastfeeding. Photograph by bornonacusp.)

Excerpt from Foreign Policy, Five Reasons to be Thankful This Holiday Season:

Your Plane Isn’t Going to Crash: 2006 was the safest year on record for air travel.

Last year, there were just 77 major commercial plane crashes worldwide, the lowest number ever recorded. Of those, only 20 were fatal crashes, resulting in 855 people killed. That’s an amazing safety record, given that 2.1 billion passengers boarded flights last year.

Why: Better safety standards. Planes themselves have gotten far safer.

Fewer Kids Are Dying: Mortality rates for young children are at a record low.

The number of children younger than 5 who died worldwide in 2006 fell to 9.7 million, the first time that figure dropped below 10 million since such records have been kept.

Why: More kids are getting vaccinated. More kids are avoiding malaria by sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets. Higher rates of breast-feeding and vitamin A supplements. Safer water, better nutrition, more cash for public health, and more community health workers.

Wars Are History: The number of wars involving states, and the deaths they directly cause, has decreased dramatically.

Between 1992 and 2003, the number of armed conflicts involving a government fell more than 40 percent, and the worst of those—conflicts with more than 1,000 deaths—decreased by 80 percent. The post-1945 period is the longest stretch in centuries that hasn’t featured a war between major world powers.

Why: With the end of the Cold War came the end of developing-world proxy wars between the USSR and the United States. As the colonial era waned, so did the wars of independence from colonial rule, which accounted for more than 60 percent of international conflicts from the 1950s to early 1980s.

Poverty Is Down: Fewer people are living on less than $1 a day.

In 1981, 1.5 billion people were living on less than $1 a day. By 1990, that figure had fallen to 1.25 billion people. By 2004, the extreme poverty rate had fallen to 18.4 percent, or just 985 million people. If current trends continue, the world will achieve the Millennium Development Goal of cutting in half—from 32 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2015—the portion of the population in the developing world that ekes by on less than $1 a day.

Why: One word: Asia. From 1981 to 2001, the number of people living in extreme poverty in East and South Asia dropped by half a billion people. By 2004, the extreme poverty rate in East Asia was down to just 9 percent. China gets most of the credit, with an annual economic growth rate of 8.5 percent for two decades, but other Asian countries, such as India, have also translated high growth rates into less poverty.

You’re Living to Retirement: People are living longer than ever.

A child born 50 years ago could expect to live about 49 years. A child born today, however, can expect to live 18 more years, to age 67. China and India, with their billion-plus populations, account for much of those gains.

Why: Modern medicine. In the early 1950s, 50 million people contracted smallpox each year. By 1979, the disease had been eradicated. In developing countries, improved sanitation and water quality has helped people avoid coming into contact with deadly microbes in the first place. And in the developed world, medical advances are bringing down death rates of three major killers—heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

(Read entire Foreign Policy article here.)