Environmentally, geopolitically, militarily, and in the struggles for better education, refugee status, health care, immigration policy, vocational opportunity, and climate, it is easy to find negative commentary. Yet often under the radar is an increasing flood of hopeful developments. Will progress sufficiently make up for the risks and setbacks? Too early to say. A Pollyannaish attitude is unfounded. Yet it is worthwhile from time to time to point out how our species is making forward strides. Examples include:

1. Awesome results are coming in from a multitude of outer space missions generated by the United States, Russia, China, Japan, France, Great Britain, India, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, North Korea, and the European Space Agency, at times even in cooperation with one another. As of 5/11/2018, Bangladesh has now joined the growing club of space explorer nations. Not only is our knowledge of the Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, and the greater universe expanding by leaps and bounds, but advances in this realm could well lead to the discovery of at least primitive life on another world within a generation. Several moons or planets in our sun's array have conditions considered promising for the development of early microbial forms.

2. Renewable energy is taking the world by storm, so to speak. Not far behind it, we are told, fusion energy may finally become a practical reality before long. Meanwhile, advances in wind and solar technology often make them competitive with traditional sources of power. Accordingly, coal and other carbon fuel based plants are less financially viable and are being closed even without directives by government.

3. Racism and other forms of discrimination are dramatically reduced. When I was growing up, there were signs throughout the South, particularly, mandating that African Americans (not the term used then) must not shop here or there or use the front entrance in other places or go to the same toilet areas as the Caucasian cultural majority. Often no facilities at all were provided for non-Caucasians. Lynching was still going on and had already been responsible for the murder of thousands of African Americans. Many a family tree was thus deprived of natural longevity. African Americans were typically deprived of the right to vote. If on a public bus, non-Caucasians were required to ride at the back. Vocational, housing, and educational discrimination were rampant. Today, racism in America is hardly dead, but, for all the problems which still exist and that it may seem we are at times taking backward steps, we are beyond the level of apartheid that prevailed in that era.

4. Since, in 1736, Benjamin Franklin founded a volunteer fire brigade, volunteerism and benevolent giving are major themes in our country's facing of a wide variety of personal, local, and national challenges. By this measure too there have been rises and falls, yet the total annual contribution (in volunteer hours or in billions of dollars contributed for religious charities, foundations, and other non-profits) continues to be substantial. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alone oversees a promised or already realized endowment of over $100 billion and gives away $4-5 billion of it annually. Via its help in recent years, major progress is being made in global health, agriculture, and education.

5. Weather prediction has seen a few advances since I was in the Cub Scouts and later Boy Scouts and learning to make my own backyard weather stations. These days, notwithstanding jokes about how forecasts are never accurate, we get amazingly on target specifics about the next day's and even the next few days' highs and lows or the chances of rain or other precipitation, with a bit of gravy about possible tornados, wall clouds, hail, or wind-shear thrown in besides. Today experts can forecast long-term La Niña or El Niño trends or track hurricanes (also variously called typhoons or severe tropical cyclones) across the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Oceans and gauge with some reliability if people need to begin to evacuate. Yes, we still have a ways to go with weather information, but it is still so much better than 70 years ago.

6. Population growth is slowing. Yes, while there are now over 7 billion of us on the planet and our numbers are as yet projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050 and over 11 billion by 2100, nonetheless, this suggests reduced growth. In the late 1960s, population grew at a frenetic 2.0% annual rate. Currently, it is only about half that. By 2050, it is expected to be down to a 0.52% yearly rate, and by 2100 reduced to only 0.09%. After 2100, our global human population is likely to decline. Even without thermonuclear warfare or natural disasters, factors affecting the change in population rates include: lower levels of poverty, higher education, better infant survival, improved standards of living, and better medical care for mothers, all of which are correlated with lower numbers of births.

7. Poverty is down. Defined then as living on $1.25 per person or less per day, extreme poverty around the world has been reduced from 60% of us in 1970 to 9% in 2017. The lowered extreme poverty level is despite a 2015 revision in the standard, to living on $1.90 per person or less per day. Poverty by other definitions has been reduced in a major way as well. In addition, the proportion of humans who have entered the middle class has leaped dramatically. Yes, there has been some recent lowering of the percentage of middle class income in the U.S., but part of this is because many have been doing well and have ascended to upper-income levels. Worldwide, economic growth of about 4% annually is boosting billions into middle-income status and assuring both market demand and further personal earning increases going forward.

8. Physics and other sciences, plus mathematics, are coming along so splendidly that even non-nerds now think we have big brains. New species are being identified by the hour. Fresh secrets of the universe are being revealed on a regular basis. We may be on the cusp of learning a "theory of everything," a revelation that would explain the very small and the very large (quantum mechanics and the cosmos) combined. Through DNA analyses, researchers are discovering the places on a phylogenetic tree of life of hundreds of thousands of creatures and their distant evolutionary cousins. Smarter than average folks are investigating relationships between funguses and plants that in certain ways mimic communications between our own gray matter cells. People are mapping the changes wrought in the world by global warming. New technologies are being born. Shoes are being made from recycled chewing gum. Plastic garbage is being pressed and molded into furniture. Experimenters have recently confirmed a phenomenon apparently at variance with Einstein theories, linked particles that can interact at a distance faster than the speed of light.

Cassini-Huygens mission 2013 image of Saturn, its rings, and moons (NASA.gov)

9. Around the world, the numbers of autocratic governments are down; democracies are up. In 1976, only 26% of nations were democratic. Today, nearly six in ten countries (58%) hold free elections and have democratically chosen governments. Complacency is not appropriate, for in several areas demagogic trends are on the upswing or aggressive regimes are seeking to expand their influence at the expense of democratic rule of law. Nonetheless, this remains another way in which the circumstances for the average citizen have been markedly improved over the last several decades.

10. From Aristophanes to "Hamilton," the "Noh Theater, The Brothers Karamazov, As I Lay Dying, Leaves of Grass, cave painting, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Shakespeare, "West Side Story," Jane Austen, tango dance and songs, thatch roofs or stitched skins on sticks, cathedrals, elegant skyscrapers, jazz, "Singin' in the Rain," whirling dervishes, Ginger Rogers, Wu dances performed by men and Xi (Hsi) dances performed by women, modern and Lindy Hop moves, "Fiddler on the Roof," John Williams scores, Richard Pryor comedy, Annie Leibovitz and Ansel Adams photography, and "Moby Dick," noting but a few, the realm of arts, architecture, and entertainment has been a thriving, brilliant one down through the millennia, hardly less so today.

11. Education is another area of terrific advancement, though there is, of course, much room for further growth in literacy, fine universities, and better, transformative means of transmitting learning in ways widely available to youth and older, returning students alike. In 1820, only 12% of the world population was literate. Today, only 26% of us are illiterate. Among young people aged 15-24, only 9% around the globe now lack basic reading and writing abilities. Even in the worst countries for girls getting an education, 60% of young women are acquiring basic literacy skills. Though higher education in the U.S. is frequently expensive, today there are many initial opportunities online and through two-year degree programs to pursue learning beyond the secondary education level. Access to bachelor degree programs is up, and, perhaps surprisingly, roughly half of four-year college degrees go to students from the lower half of the income spectrum. Globally, about 37% of young people enroll in four-year colleges now vs. 10% in 1970, per UN stats.

12. Health, nutrition, and good medical care are all on the uptick globally. Starvation is way down. The risk for the average person of dying from malnutrition is now, despite big hunger scares in isolated countries, less than one-tenth of one percent of what it was in the 1960s. And it appears a good diet is the best medicine. Life expectancies are going up, on average 36% higher worldwide than several decades ago, 72 now vs. 53 in 1960. Meanwhile, diseases are being better countered. Tuberculosis (TB) has killed over a billion people and around one-third of humans in poorer countries are infected with it in its dormant form. What is more, strains of TB are often resistant to most treatment. However, with this and the other diseases mentioned here, great progress has occurred in ways to care for patients with the malady, especially when caught early. Smallpox used to be a horrific killer but now has been eradicated. Polio has been almost completely eliminated. Like TB, malaria is extremely hard to drive out entirely. However, thanks to a multi-prong approach, it's global incidence and lethality have been dramatically lowered. Influenza in its various forms is an ongoing scourge, yet vaccines are frequently helpful, and medical care once a person is infected is highly beneficial. Provision of such support has been increased except in war zones. Modern medicine has also been responsible for a big drop in both maternal and infant mortality. Medical advances have as well been key in more successful treatments for cancers, heart disease, and stroke.

13. Digital computing and its many applications have reshaped civilization in the past few decades. One of the more intriguing ways is via artificial intelligence (AI). Already people are making and buying AI companions for the elderly. Some have more consistent relationships with their operating systems than their boyfriends, girlfriends, or spouses. Children soon will be learning manners from Amazon's Alexa. And where would my wife, Valerie, be without her digital camera, websites, or Photoshop? Our GPS devices are becoming an essential part of modern travel. Music is now essentially free and instantly available via the Internet, as is a wealth of information beyond the physical capacities of our largest libraries. The frictional costs and time required for investing have been reduced to a fraction of pre-computing levels, while the choices and convenience for folks preparing for their financial futures have been exponentially increased. It is a "Brave New World" many old fogies like me once resisted, one which we cannot now do without. Meanwhile, what happens when the world's largest, fastest, highly efficient and powerful supercomputers go to work on our most vexing problems? One way or another, as Bob Dylan sang, "The times they are a-changin'."

If any of the above has come as a surprise, or if interested in why Bill Gates these days is optimistic despite most of the daily headlines, one might enjoy reading:

1. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, by Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling; or

2. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker.