WSI: Conclusion

We began this series looking at what the prophet Isaiah recorded concerning the "new creation" in Isaiah 65:17-25. This passage directly references long lives, no infant mortality, and a society full of peace and justice. These circumstances are characteristic of what the Hebrews called shalom. I made the case that as Christians bearing witness to Jesus Christ, our mission is to seek the greatest shalom possible in the world, always cognizant that shalom in its fullness will only be recognized at the consummation of the new creation after Christ's return. So has the trajectory of the world been toward shalom?

Let's look at the world through the lenses of longevity, infant mortality (surrogate indicators of other societal health variables), and economic prosperity. I think the answer must be yes. As we look at technophysio evolution and the Demographic Transition Model, we see unprecedented improvement in the lives of everyday people beginning in England and the Anglo colonies. Eventually, it became Europe, which had advanced, and the rest of the world was poor. Now it has become a world where there is a complete continuum of nations from rich to poor, with most moving in the direction of greater prosperity but with a significant minority of nations, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, which have stagnated or are even deteriorating. The improving state of more than five billion people on the face of the planet is unprecedented and needs to be celebrated. But we cannot close our eyes and ears to the one billion people trapped in poverty.

When I began this series, I intended to review world trends, offer some analysis of what had propelled those trends, and then investigate the challenge of the remaining poor by reviewing Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion. I've changed my plans here a little. I've given an overview of world trends and briefly mentioned what led to unprecedented changes in the past couple of centuries. I will now end this series and begin a new series on Cycles of Prosperity.

I will say more in the introduction of that series, but my basic aim will be twofold. First, can we model the essential components of a prosperous economic system based on the unprecedented change we have encountered? I believe we can come up with a basic model. Second, with a model of health, can we then examine the situation for the bottom one billion? I will review Collier's book as the primary source for answering that question. I believe we will see that while there is great reason for optimism, there is also no inevitable march of history leading us to the final resolution of human suffering and the achievement of eternal shalom.

With that in mind, this post concludes the series on World Social Indicators.

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