Peak-Less Path Up The Hill Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

Should world a fitter place is to live,
And better gets by the passing day;
If we keep earning more, eat better,
Live haply much longer than before;
If rich get richer and poor push still,
Its graph’s paced faster for five decades
Than in five hundred that preceded;
Healthier are we and taller nigh,
Freer ever in all history;
And consume ever more calories,
Watts horsepower, gigabytes and square feet,
Megahertz, air mileage, miles per lit;
We get best of things from distant shore
Anywhere, global trade at each door;
Luckiest lot ever born are we,
Freedom, peace, or leisure time let be,
Or learning, Medicare, travel clime,
Yet grumbling in gloom, why’s there no rhyme?

Prosper more, pathetic more, still get,
Invent more, e’er more enabled still,
Becoming better off than e’er yet,
Where’s the catch? Where still is the evil?
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At the end of the first stanza the piece asks, ‘Why’s there no rhyme?
And still, around the point it introduces the rhymes in the lines. The
progress the world has made is beyond doubt. Yet, something is
amiss.

In his book, The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley argues that the world
has become a better place to live than ever before. This peace takes
off from him.
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- Reflections | 11.07.14 |