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Which country is the best? is the wrong question
Policy advisor Simon Anholt believes the question we should ask is, which country is the "goodest"?

- The popularity of Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan shows many Americas fear their country has fallen from greatness.
- The Good Country Index measures how much good countries do for the world, not themselves.
- Being viewed as a good country, not a great one, improves a country's national brand, in turn helping them grow and improve internally.
Make America Great Again. The campaign slogan of then-candidate Donald Trump resonated fiercely with many Americans. They put it on hats;, they chanted it at rallies, and they erected giant billboards to proclaim its gospel to any passersby. Joy Villa even wore a transforming dress dedicated to it.
Underlining the sentiment is the belief that at some point in its history, America was the best country in the world. But it's fallen from its former glory, and the new imperative is to reclaim that title. Recent events have shown that the idea still holds sway over right-leaning voters, and while toxic to left-leaning voters today, it wasn't long ago that the message stirred their hearts as well.
While Trump trademarked the phrase in 2012, American candidates have been using it for decades. It was cultivated during the fervid isolationism of the 1930s. Ronald Reagan resuscitated it for his 1980 bid. Bill Clinton, who claimed the phrase was a racist dog whistle in 2016, used it frequently in his 1991 stump speeches. Even if not those exact words, the promise has been made on both sides of the aisle by many hoping to obtain office.
But Simon Anholt, who has advised heads of state and government in more than 50 countries, argues that striving to be the best or greatest country is the wrong solution to our problems, both domestic and aboard. He believes we should strive to be the "goodest country."
No country is an island unto itself (even the island countries)

As a political adviser, Anholt has thought a lot about countries and government. In his musings, he noticed two particular trends shaping today's world.
First, globalization has benefited us nearly worldwide, but created problems at that same scale. A world linked by highways and air travel allows diseases to move abroad as efficiently as goods and services. The multitudinous roots of global finance mean that if a key American bank fails, the effects are felt the world over. And greenhouse gases produced by one country inflame the climate crisis facing us all.
We have connected the world and humanity in ways never before conceivable, but this leads Anholt to his second point. Our governments continue to interact as they did in the centuries before globalization.
"The politicians that we elect and the politicians we don't elect, on the whole, have minds that microscope. They don't have minds that telescope," Anholt said during a Ted talk. "They look in. They pretend, they behave, as if they believed that every country was an island that existed quite happily, independently of all the others on its own little planet in its own little solar system."
Anholt dubs governments that think about being the best at the expense of others "cultural psychopaths." Like psychopaths, these governments view other countries with a lack of empathy and conscience.
In a globalized world, however, such tribalism exacerbates problems. States that fight in needless trade wars may reap short-term rewards, but they can't maximize those rewards in the long-term. A tribal mindset further prevents us from collaborating effectively on global-scale problems such as nutrition, finance, immigration, and climate change, all of which leak through porous borders.
Pickin' up good vibrations
The United States Air Force delivers food, provisions, and humanitarian aid to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, to help victims of the 2016 hurricane strike. (Photo: Staff Sgt. Robert Waggoner/Defense Logistics Agency)
To combat tribalism, Anholt created the Good Country Index. His goal was to measure countries' contributions to the world — not their own population but humanity as a whole.
To be clear, "good" in this context is defined as the opposite of "selfish" or "cultural psychopathy." It is not a moral judgment but a calculation drawn from 35 reliable datasets gathered by the United Nations, international agencies, and non-government organizations.
From this data, the Good Country Index scores nations based on their contributions to seven categories: Culture, World Order, Planet and Climate, Health and Wellbeing, Science and Technology, Prosperity and Equality, and International Peace and Security. The scores are then divided by gross domestic product to prevent larger, richer countries from having an unfair advantage.
The index tries to be comprehensive, sporting 153 of the world's countries; however, countries such as Cuba, Bhutan, and Ethiopia are absent due to a lack of data.
When the Good Country Index began in 2014, Ireland was number one and the United States ranked 21st. In the index's fourth iteration, the Emerald Isle is now the third "goodest" country in the world. Finland and the Netherlands have taken first and second, respectively.
Finland is particularly interesting. Not only has the country scored highly on every iteration of the Good Country Index, but it ranks well on other global evaluations, including those measuring education, happiness, and health and wellness. Clearly, the Finns have something that other countries should be taking note of (and it's not salmiakki).
But again, the Good Country Index isn't design to be an instrument of judgement or competition. It is a tool for elucidation and improvement. Finland may rank first overall, but it doesn't hold first place in any one category. While scoring highly in prosperity and environmentalism, the country dithers in international peace and security. Finland scores particularly low in arms exports, which measures the circulation of weapons and ammunition relative to the country's economy.
As such, Finland can enhance its humanitarian efforts by improving its contributions to international security. For inspiration its leaders may want to look to Georgia, which ranked number one in that category despite coming in 38th overall.
As for the United States, its position was reduced from 21st to 40th between 2014 and 2018. The U.S. brackets highest in health (11th), thanks to its contributes to worldwide food aid, pharmaceutical exports, and donations to humanitarian organizations and the World Health Organization.
The country stumbles, however, in international peace (101st). This is due to the its endowment of arms and organized violence across the world, of which the U.S. bombs used to kill civilians in the Yemen Crisis is but the latest of many devastating example.
Is being the best country bad branding?

To many politicians and voters, domestic and international agendas seem incompatible. Through a zero-sum lens, it appears that one country's gain is another's loss, and the goal of a country's government should be to compete in the global system to net as many gains as possible for its people.
But Anholt and the Good Country Index want to show that the altruism and self-interest aren't necessarily antonyms. Domestic and international agendas can be compatible and harmonized to the benefit of all. This is shown by another pet project of Anholt's, the National Brands Index.
In collaboration with Ipsos, a global market research and consulting firm, the National Brands Index measures and compares countries' reputations in areas including culture, exports, tourism, and governance. Germany won the top spot in 2008, 2014, 2017, and 2018. The country is also well-recognized for its humanitarian efforts, placing highly on the Good Country Index.
Like companies, a country's brand is important for its stability and access to cooperative relationships. Anholt explains: "If a country has a great, positive image, like Germany has or Sweden or Switzerland, everything is easy and everything is cheap. You get more tourists. You get more investors. You sell your products more expensively. If, on the other hand, you have a country with a very weak or a very negative image, everything is difficult and everything is expensive."
The United States' brand has remained strong in current years, though it has slipped in tandem with its Good Country Index ranking. In a press release, Ipsos notes that the U.S. saw the greatest overall drop in its brand approval in 2018. This was due largely in part to negative perceptions in China, Canada, and Mexico.
Pew Research Center concurs. Its surveys have shown that the U.S.'s brand remains favorable, but there are worrisome trends in the data. Western Europeans overwhelmingly lack confidence in President Trump. They don't believe the United States protects personal freedoms — the first time a majority of respondents have answered in the negative since Pew began asking the question in 2008. And people from several nations believe the United States doesn't consider other countries in its international policy.
At home, Americans don't believe their leaders are up to the challenge.
Keep America Good
Trump wears a Make America Great Again hat during his 2016 campaign. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
"Today, leaders must realise that they're responsible not only for their own people, but for every man, woman, child and animal on the planet; not just responsible for their own slice of territory, but for every square inch of the earth's surface and the atmosphere above it," the Good Country Index's website states.
To Anholt's point, there are many inspiring examples of what can happen when countries look outside their boundaries to collaborate on humanitarian goals. Historically, we can look to the European Recovery Program. Today, we have the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals — 17 directives aimed at improving the quality of life for all people in the world.
The U.N.'s goals are lofty and include ending extreme poverty and undernourishment the world over. But it is only thanks to the collaborative effort of many countries that such goals can even be considered possibilities. For the first time in world history, extreme poverty has fallen to under 10 percent. There is still much to do, and issues that may still arise, it is only through collaboration that we've made the progress we have.
Looking forward to 2020, President Trump appears to be upgrading his slogan to "Keep America Great." Perhaps we would all be better served if we decided to Keep America Good, instead.
- Top 10 world's most corrupt countries - Big Think ›
- 10 reasons Finland's education system is the best - Big Think ›
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Here’s how you know when someone’s lying to your face
When someone is lying to you personally, you may be able to see what they're doing.
