So that's one way to give an account of the world: tell stories that paint a picture of a world that works, a world where there are at least islands of achievement, a fundamentally encouraging and hopeful view in which individuals and their actions matter. More commonly told is another set of stories that leave us with very different images: failed states, collapse, disaster, impending doom.
If Frederick Polak was right, our choice to tell one set of stories or another is much more than a simple judgment about which set is more "accurate" or "reality-based." It's a choice that can actually influence what will happen and how things will turn out. It just might be the most important choice we can make if we care about the future of people and the planet.
Rather than hold the world as dismal and oppressive, we can allow promising stories to crowd out the others. One narrative that I find especially exhilarating is the story of how powerful we have become because so many of us are freer than ever before. I hope you'll indulge me for a few moments and perhaps see what this account suggests to you.
Human freedom is greater now than at any other point in history. The progress has been swift. Little more than 200 years ago, "the bulk of mankind, over 95 percent, were miserable slaves or tyrants," according to economic historian Stanley Engerman.
Another measure: At the beginning of the 20th century, not one nation could be described as democratic, if judged by the standard of universal free elections. Today, 121 of 192 nations can be called democracies by the same standard.
Freedom has taken giant steps with the spread of literacy and education, as well as the dramatic improvements in human health that have given many of us much longer lives (a development so profound that we'll return to it in the final pages). And in just the last decade, the Internet has changed the distribution of power and enhanced human freedom in ways we have yet to fully grasp.
Individuals are freer than ever before to effect social change by acting on their personal passions, increasingly trusting themselves rather than solely trusting authority.
We can already see this freedom taking shape as a groundswell of voluntary action. Here's the tip of the iceberg from just one sector: A global network of volunteers develops open-source software (including most of the software that runs the World Wide Web) and gives it away for free, putting increasingly powerful communications tools into the hands of billions of people. Politics, journalism, and publishing are being reshaped as amateur bloggers and self-published authors take advantage of these new means of influencing the world, while repressive governments find it increasingly difficult to keep a lid on free speech.
Such leaps have astounding and exciting potential for human liberation. Even more important, it seems to me, the developments are themselves proof of the human desire and capacity to achieve, to grow, to collaborate, to create, and to take charge of our lives. If we have more freedom, more options, and more opportunities than ever before, it is because we've made a series of choices.
Together we have created the new beliefs and ideals, new institutions and infrastructure that support both our individual potentials and the evolution of society as a whole.