There Has To Be A Way: A Primer on Human Progress

I want to make people's lives better. As an undergraduate, I studied Neuroscience because I thought I could one day help save lives in the ER. But a few years into my college experience, and a few service trips later, I had seen enough socioeconomic injustice and learned about enough racial disparity to realize that the problems of our great country extended far beyond the margins I had grown up noticing in the white, middle class suburbiaplex of my adolescence, and in the pristine, insular community of my sprawling college campus. So every so often I wonder to myself, "What will it take to make people's lives better on a massive scale? There has to be a way."

A few weeks ago, Europe dazzled the world (and scared a few misinformed concern trolls) with the biggest and most advanced science project ever: the Large Hadron Collider. I figured this technological behemoth--what with its 17-mile circumference, 1600 magnets capable of accelerating protons to 99.99% the speed of light, and 6000 scientists from 80-something nations working together to uncover the mystery of mass--I figured this thing would be freaking expensive.

It cost less than $10 billion USD. That's less than the cost of a month in the Iraq war. Pittance.

Now, I know this stuff doesn't move headlines, but it does make me think: what is it that society values, and what costs would it incur if it decided to really push the envelope in the name of progress? I mean, there has to be a way, right?

From an old New York Times article on perspective:

For starters, $1.2 trillion [one estimate of the final cost of the war in Iraq] would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

Wow, you mean we could save millions of lives around the world; put a serious dent in the #1 and #7 leading causes of death in the U.S.; insure every American with quality healthcare; virtually eradicate poverty in U.S. cities; provide every lil' tike with a headstart on their intellectual development; and even throw in a nice do-over/fiscal prize to rebuild the honorable city of our brothers and sisters from New Orleans--all for the price of one Iraq War that was predicated on falsities (read: should never have happened to begin with), has worsened our moral standing in the world, and has arguably lowered, not heightened, our long-term safety?

I believe in the fundamental good in human beings. I respect the sanctity of life, and as such believe human beings (not necessarily zygotes, mind you) have a fundamental right to it. I believe humans have a fundamental right to have their health secured when they cannot secure it for themselves, and I'm not just talking about Americans. I believe human beings have a fundamental right to intellectual development and opportunities for self-actualization as furthered by equitable access to literacy and a just education system. I believe human beings should have a fundamental right to freedoms of choice, freedoms that improve the quality of their lives without morally infringing on their fellow human beings. And I believe--fully, irretrievably believe--that humanity will not reach its global potential until the larger sociopolitical engine works for it, and puts into place the infrastructure needed to bring about that potential. That, in a grand, expensive nutshell, is what it will take.

And to me, this is what this election is really about: Who among our candidates for this land's highest office can bridge the nowheres, and excite and motivate the masses to make the hard decisions, the sacrifices needed to make people's lives better in the long run? Who has the vision to look into the past in order to oversee and implement the progress of the future? Maybe we do need a big government guy like Senator Obama. And a big government gal like Senator Clinton.

Because I'm not happy with where we are. I want us to change. We have a real need. And I want to believe that we can achieve what large hadron colliders never could: use our minds to build the infrastructure needed to improve people's lives.

There has to be a way.