Evidence of Abundant Progress In-Class Essay

For today’s essay, I decided to look into charts and function graphs that analysis societal happiness and equality based upon a variety of factors. Generally speaking, the graphs seem to show that as time progresses, people are becoming more happier, and equality disparities are shrinking. Rather than discussing all the graphs and being quite repetitive, I will instead discuss the 4 most important graphs and derive certain implications from them. My first graph assesses the annual hours worked per persons of the US, France, Japan, and Brazil, as expressed by the annual hours of work per a person (in 1000’s) with respect to time (1870-1978). The plotted function is a decreasing line, implying that the number of hours worked has gradually decreased as time progresses. This represents technological progress because decreased annual hours of work implies that there now is more and more technological innovation and efficient methods that allow people to work less. For example, the invention of the telephone made it so that the labor necessary to run telegraph lines went away, meaning that people work less hours. My second graph assesses the percentage of degrees awarded to woman in either Bachelor’s, Master’s, Doctoral, law, and medical as expressed by the percentage of degrees with respect to time (1920-1995). All the lines, each of which correspond with a given degree, exhibit the same functional behavior: exponential growth around 1950 that then tapers to linear growth from 1970 until 1995. This suggests that the number of degrees increases rapidly as time progresses. This represents societal progress with relation to equality because the increase in the number of degrees implies that the gap in educational competency among males and females is decreasing. My third graph assesses the number of world democracies as expressed by the # of democratic regimes with respect to time (1800-2010). The plotted function consists of 3 connected line segments, each exhibiting a different positive slope. The line of best fit is most likely an increasing line with a relatively steep positive slope. Consequently, this data suggests that the number of democracies is increasing as time progresses. Similar to the second graph, this graph also represents societal progress with relation to equality because the increase in the number of democracies implies that people have equal opportunity in the political process. The fourth graph assess the percentage of slaves or serfs in the world as expressed by the percentage of slaves and serfs with respect to time (1750-2000). The plotted graph shows a decreasing line with a relatively steep slope between 1750-1917, increasing line between 1917 and 1950, and ending with a decreasing line with a very steep slope. This suggests that the number of serfs and slaves decreases as time progresses. Ultimately, this graph represents progress in terms of Sens definition of human development because as the number of enslaved decreases the number of those independent increases, meaning that more people can make lasting change in their lives. With Sen’s view in mind, I believe that vital to societal progress in terms of equality and increased happiness is the ability for people to have social, economic, and political freedoms from which they can make choices that help them reach satisfaction. One factor that prevents people from attaining these freedoms is tyrannical governmental oppression, as countries under this state have authorities who control every single aspect of people’s lives. Another factor is war, as wars set societies back, meaning that people might have to give up certain freedoms in order to help build their society back up.