Human Development Index

In fact, the theocracies in general lead to worse outcomes.

In fact, I sat there and I did a statistical analysis on the Human Development Index as to theocracies.

It turns out, in terms of the Human Development Index, they do worse.

It turns out secular societies do better.

Secular humanism leads to better outcome, and this is mathematically true.

I looked throughout historically many different societies and what has been considered, okay, these are moments of suffering and these are moments of where things were good or things were better.

And I think that there is a pattern of when people have reduced their unnecessary suffering and people are more prosperous in general.

And so I realized that the best societies, the ones that have the highest human development, at least if you look at the Human Development Index, they are all secular societies.

Let's see.

I want to look at the South African Human Development Index over time.

Okay, here's the South African Human Development Index over time.

0.63. It's now 0.71, actually.

How about HDI ranking? It's actually...

No, no, I have it wrong.

It's actually been declining steadily over time.

It actually looks like in 1990, pre-apartheid, the Human Development Index, it peaked in 94.

And I concluded that main indicators, things like health, crime, all sorts of things, they'd started plateauing or even going down in the majority of countries on all continents in the world since 2015.

And I use the Human Development Index, I use Numbio quality of life indices.

And so, although we kind of assume the narrative of our times and in the media and all around us is of sort of perpetual human progress and any setbacks are just like mistakes or misfortunes that will be overcome, whether it's the 2008 financial crisis or the COVID pandemic, there's this narrative of we then get back to progress.

The data says otherwise.

So we should be looking at all of the comprehensive input or work we've done over the years rather than boiling it down to a couple of numbers and a ranking on a screen.

I think in general, we need to stop focusing on the GDP and start focusing on the HDI.

Because in my experience, the country's GDP, or the economy, has a lot less of an impact on me than the societal metrics, the things that measure our human development, our happiness, and our health.

So when we make the measure the goal, when the metrics become the operational target rather than the metrics becoming a tool to help us get better, these systems will inevitably decay.

But if we're talking about development, we could argue that there is a more holistic definition.

And if we look at the United Nations, right, the United Nations Human Development Index considers development across multiple dimensions.

It looks at income, but it also looks at life expectancy, and it looks at education.

Last year, the United Nations Human Development Index ranked China at 78th.

So according to that ranking, China sits at a, quote, high human development level, but below the top category of very high human development.

So it's such a tricky question and really depends on what you mean and which dimension you're looking at.