About 10 percent of infants die in their first year of life in Africa — still shockingly high, but considerably lower than the European average less than 100 years ago, let alone 800 years past. And about two thirds of Africans are literate — a level achieved in Spain only in the 1920s.

This reminded me of a most hopeful and wonderful clip by Hans Rosling at TED. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Rosling’s work, watch his lectures, you’ll be simply blown away:

And if you want to consider how there needs to be a complex interaction between markets, government aide, and micro-finance (if you’re not on Kiva.org, it’s the best $25 you’ll spend) to further grow Africa, wind this clip about 60 seconds and you’ll get a great visual from Hans.

This map represents the percentage of land area needed to completely power the world using solar energy in 2030. As it notes, obviously is wouldn’t be in one large chunk as depicted but could be broken up if placed in comparable areas.

This makes me think of a recent Ted talk (if you haven’t checked out Ted talks, you’re missing out big time) from Ray Kurzweil where he talks about our inability to think exponentially as humans prevents us from seeing the reasonable growth of technology, including growth in solar and other green forms of technology:

This recent NY Time article talks about falling prices of home solar panels because of: 1) the economy 2) increased production coming online around the world and 3) President Obama’s dropping of the $2,000 cap on the federal governments 30% tax rebate on solar panels purchases.

Any of you out there thinking about going solar any time soon?

If we would all work just a little bit harder (myself most of all) at moving out of our default way of being and thinking and choose to consider others we would have made a huge step towards the kind of society we are seeking.

Alex Tabarrok asks, in a recent Ted talk, “How many Ramanujan’s are there in India today, toiling in the fields, barely able to feed themselves, when they could be feeding the world?”

He goes on to explain that globalization is not something we should fear, but embrace, as one good idea will lift all of us, and lifting the world out of poverty will great millions upon millions of new college graduates, scientists, scholars, and thinkers. And that will change the world for all of us.

Enjoy this clip (starts at the pertinent point, though the whole video is highly recommended):

But, one of the strains in this neo-atheism advancing the maxim that religion is behind the wars of the world. I have heard other members of my church say this with a measure of embarrassed confession.

Below I have video clips from two of the pre-eminent voices and researchers in religion today: Karen Armstrong and Robert Wright addressing this issue and why that maxim is erroneous (they argue that religion often exacerbates political conflict, entrenches is, but is rarely the cause. In fact modern day Islamic-terrorists groups were responding to political grievances, not religious ones, and the conflict has taken religious overtones, but has political solutions).

In fact, here are many models of private, universal health care around the world, one of which is Taiwan. Taiwan has experienced incredible growth, moving from poverty to a growing economy very quickly. They conducted research about the best and worst of the varied health care systems around the world and have tried to make the best system to date.

Let’s just say their model of universal, private health care not only lays to rest the “socialized wait time” specter, but even puts America’s “premium” care to shame. Watch:

One of my graduate classes I had little hope for going in and did not want to end coming out was a multiculturalism class. We discussed a lot of things, and as most good teaching involves he did not give out pre-chewed answers but let use stew in the issues. ¬†We talked about meritocracy, which, if you’re not familiar with that term, is a fancy word, in many respects for the American dream: work hard enough, put in enough elbow grease, and you too can be Bill Gates, Donald Trump, etc. It is an inspiring promise that has produced the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.

But, like its Puritanical cousin of yester-centuries, it also has implications if you swing it the opposite way: if you do not succeed, if you are on the bottom, it is because you belong to be there, you’ve earned it by being so unexceptional. Finding the balance between those two poles: the agency and freedom of “you can be anything you want to be if you work hard enough” while not “grinding upon the face of the poor” (Isa 3:15, 2 Ne 13:15, 2 Ne 26:20)¬†is one of the timeless challenges that our society is facing.

I am hopeful because I believe as we become aware of some of the ideology that underlies our assumptions we can find the right balance within our own psyches (so avoid some of the depression and anxiety connected with imbalanced world views) and our communities as a whole.