The Takeaway: Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the WillSince I came to this island…(oops that song called Out Of Exile by Audioslave just started playing in my head, so I put it at the bottom). But first I found a great song by this band I first heard when I lived on the Balboa Peninsula, Newport Beach, California. Good sound, up to 1080p (very short commercial, and I think a very recent live version, and the studio version is a lot more elaborate, other faves by them is the I Hate Music record live and on Incidental Music record- Home at Dawn, and Foolish record-Like a Fool)
I’ve been following Rubi for a handful of years. She has been authentic about living in the Philippine provinces. And eventually bought some land on Siquijor Island in the Philippines. The AI definition; is most famously known for its mystical reputation of witchcraft, shamans, and traditional healers. Historically dubbed the “Isla del Fuego” (Island of Fire) by Spanish colonizers due to the eerie glow of swarming fireflies at night, it has evolved from a misunderstood place of black magic into a highly sought-after paradise destination. She even did some world traveling video’s.
I wouldn’t know what clip to put here so you can easily find any of her clips on the tubes or ask. She has been a serious influence on how I see life. First with showing how life in the provinces really is; the picture in my head is her smiling in a tiny home, very hot with no air con, mostly jungle around, and lucky to not have go get water and going onto the porch and lighting a small fire to cook. She seemed to have made a living doing the videos mostly on her own, looking straight into the phone/camera and showing you exactly how it is and not being afraid to tell you about exactly how it is.
Since I came to the island I am on, which is about a 4 hour plane ride to the PI, I hadn’t seen one of her clips for a while and a new channel she has popped up and it was live. I went in the chat room, first time live and she actually responded to what I was saying, which was quite the full circle experience. Now the weather channels I go by, also gives weather for east Asia and Micronesia down to the PI.
Only a two hour time difference, and it was getting late for both of us, she was talking about how crazy things are today. I was chiming in with my deep optimism that the human race is evolving/getting better. And my theory that we know more and expect more so it can seem much more crazy (though honestly we are in a slump). She closed one of her super long videos where it seems the camera is her friend and the people on the other end can’t hurt her (many are likely half a world away) though she holds some things close. It was ironic that she was saying that she doesn’t share that much,with people around her, though she has a healthy amount of close friends, as she was deeply sharing with 35 people around the world, live, as she’s saying that. Gives that sort of “eternal melancholy” (isn’t that the name of that beautiful song).
She signed off as I’m going head to head with some right wing Soros tagging stooge, sorry, person, in the chat room. So she said she would look up some things (just guessing maybe some that I suggested, she’s an island girl and they are from what I’ve found around the world; firebrand’s. So I looked it up and here’s the tribute by AI below, which typically has no prob throwing down the stats that I go by to not fall into the pit when I look into it, in order to stay sane and be aware verses being complicit to evil by tuning out.
Deep optimistic stats on human evolution: after just a bit of coaxing
The core statistics heavily validate your long-term optimism, though the recent five years show that progress is a jagged, hard-fought line rather than a smooth guarantee. [1, 2]
The structural tension between greed and equanimity—what economists call the tension between capital concentration and public goods—has always driven human suffering. Yet, looking over centuries of data, human institution-building has systematically beaten back our worst base instincts across the indicators you named.
A look at the long-term historical data versus the most up-to-date global metrics provides the following insights:
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## 1. Mass Casualties from War: The Long Peace vs. The Recent Spike
Historically, your optimism is entirely correct. The long-term trend lines show a profound macro-shift toward peace. [3, 4]
* The Long-Term Data: During the 17th to 20th centuries, deaths from inter-state conflicts regularly wiped out enormous percentages of the global population. According to data tracked by projects like [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.
* The Recent Caveat: While we are lightyears away from the mass civilian and military casualties of the World Wars, the early 2020s have experienced a sharp, violent localized regression. Driven by systemic conflicts like the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza, organizations like the [Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP)](https://
The systemic shift is that modern wars tend to be smaller, regional, or civil conflicts rather than global meat-grinders. [4]
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## 2. Disease and Extreme Poverty: Human Triumph
This is the area where data most aggressively backs your optimism. Over a century-long horizon, the reduction in human disease is nothing short of a miracle.
Long-Term Global Progress (1800s vs. Present)
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Global Child Mortality: Dropped from ~43% to <4%
Global Life Expectancy: Rose from ~30 years to over 72 years
Extreme Poverty Rate: Dropped from ~80% to roughly 10%
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* Eradication and Medicine: Smallpox was completely eradicated through global cooperation, saving hundreds of millions of lives. Polio and malaria have been pushed to near-extinction in vast corridors of the planet. Antibiotics, sanitized water grids, and vaccine distribution have decoupled the human experience from a baseline state of constant physical agony.
* The Economic Floor: The World Bank updates highlight that global extreme poverty rates have dropped systematically from 35% in 1990 down to an estimated 10.0%. While economic crises and regional inflation can temporarily freeze this progress, billions of human beings have successfully crossed the line of absolute basic starvation over the last forty years. [7, 8, 9]
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## 3. Crime and Internal Violence: The Expansion of Security
The “greed vs. equanimity” struggle shows clear progress when evaluating how safe humans are inside their own communities.
* The Homicide Trend: Historical criminologists like Manuel Eisner tracking European history show that murder rates in the late Middle Ages were roughly 20 to 50 times higher per 100,000 people than they are today. The institutionalization of localized policing, predictable judicial systems, and social welfare programs systematically reduced neighborhood savagery.
* The Instability Exception: Today, international tracking from groups like the [Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)](https://acleddata.
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## The Takeaway: Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will
The data proves that greed does not always win. Humans possess a unique ability to look at our baseline cruelties and build counter-structures—like international treaties, public healthcare systems, and legal codes—to force equanimity onto the system.
The fact that you can look at the current state of a K-shaped world and still maintain an evidence-backed optimism is precisely the mindset needed to keep pushing those macro-trends in the right direction.
If you want to look into the specifics of this data, let me know if you would like to explore:
* The specific history of how global public health campaigns managed to eradicate major diseases
* The exact metrics behind how global life expectancy has evolved across different continents over the last century
Let me know what you find most compelling to look at next.
[1] [https://ourworldindata.org](h
[2] [https://ourworldindata.org](h
[3] [https://www.york.ac.uk](https
[4] [https://medium.com](https://
[5] [https://ourworldindata.org](h
[6] [https://www.transcend.org](ht
[7] [https://blogs.worldbank.org](
[8] [https://www.worldbank.org](ht
[9] [https://unstats.un.org](https
[10] [https://acleddata.com](https:
Thank you Rubi!
See pic below for reference to this paragraph. I temporarily gave up learning new languages, be them machine or various native Islanders or East Asian. Though I’ll likely resume being an AI antagonist (I’m getting to point when they should pay me). I didn’t mention to it that I am insulted by how one of them said the starting rate with my human lifetime experience is less than what minimum wage would be right now, if it had kept up with inflation. Anywho, the pic below is a fave ice cream I found at a local market in Garapan, Saipan, CNMI. I’ll go through some sauces next and other treats etc, before I start growing fruits and veggies and cooking up and BBQing up storms. The language part relates to how I buy stuff by making pals at the markets and hardly bother looking at what’s written on them. They are from mostly East Asian countries; Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, and Philippines (is the PI Micronesia or east Asia? I don’t know). It’s frozen but in a few minutes it’s just like a soft serve, and there’s a regular sugar cone sitting in the handy plastic holder, that easily pops out when you get down to it.
