A Light Amidst The Dark AN IAM Group Ltd Reflection

The picture of our world today, still having light no matter what happen.

Although it is true that there is still plenty of suffering around the world, you cannot deny all the progress humans have done to improve their condition.

Due to our success in food production and medicine, the total number of humans on the planet has increased a lot. This skews the statistics and makes you think something is on the rise, when it actually isn't. For example, when you read about slavery, you'll see staggering numbers. But when you consider there are about 7 billion humans now, that means only ~0.3% of the world population are actually slaves. This is nothing compared to the 50%+ that we've seen 3-4 centuries earlier. There are a few bad countries where it still happens a lot (mostly in Asia), but for the most part slavery has been rapidly declining and is on its last breath. Something you would not consider if you just hear the 21 million number.

Same goes for a lot of the issues people worry about. Natural disasters still cause damage, but we are now better at preparing for them, mitigating damage, rebuilding afterwards and aiding the suffering. Wars still happen, but they are much rarer and less severe. Fewer humans have died in war in the last decade than any other decade in the last 100 years.

Our medicine/medical science has become a lot better. Vaccines have successfully eliminated entire diseases, antibiotics have saved billions. Not just in the developed world, but everywhere.

Education is on the rise and humans are more intelligent than ever. Average IQ of the human population is rapidly rising - both in the developed and in the 3rd world. And it will only get better as we keep developing and implementing information technologies everywhere. Just take a look at what we've accomplished with the web in just about 2 decades.

It is true that medical science is still bad at treating complex psychological problems - like severe depression and so on. But here again we see progress, as neuroscience is rapidly advancing and our knowledge of the human brain increases every day. It is only a matter of time before we find better ways to help people.

Suffering is relative to the sufferer.

When I was a very small child, I saw another child on TV drop an ice-cream cone and a bunch of dogs came by and licked his ice-cream right up.

I was struck with overwhelming empathy and began to cry. Because I knew exactly what it was like to have a nice treat like an ice-cream cone and to drop it in a soul-crushing moment of despair. To my child's mind, this was the pinnacle of suffering. This was the worst possible thing in the world, to lose your ice-cream cone.

I was limited in perspective. I simply didn't know better and could not possibly envision the myriad levels of suffering available as part of the human existence.

Children in third world Asia would have thought I was being ridiculous because even at an early age, their threshold for suffering was already much higher than mine. Their perspective on suffering is more informed and less naive.

Even now you see this shift in the suffering threshold play out in modern society. A family two centuries ago would balk that I think I'm suffering because I can't pay my light bill and have been eating ramen for a month. At least I have a house and some ramen.

I listened to the stories of our fellow members from IAM Group Ltd Yokohama Japan and surely, they can confirm that life in the lower part of Asia is very hard with so many problems out and about. I have joined IAM Group Ltd Seoul, Korea to ease their sufferings and somehow even in just a little, I will be part of the change that will shift us a world with fewer problems and sufferings �" the light amidst the dark.