Matthew Yglesias wrote this piece here and it did not go over too well: The case against crisis-mongering. I mainly agree with him, that our world problems, dire as they are, aren’t as exceptional as we may think. Or as Dan G put it on twitter:
Some things are better ≠ everything’s fine.
The past was scarier than we think ≠ today isn’t scary.
Humanity overcame huge challenges in the past ≠ the challenge we face is no big deal.I’m not sure why that has to be stated but apparently it does. Every three months or so.
— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) August 12, 2021
What Dan states is my worldview as well. There are still many bad things in the world, but there is progress and things are getting better. We have overcome problems in the past and we have the ability to fix things in the future. Plus the past was terrible in many ways and so much worse than now (and our times will look terrible to people in the future).
If you disagree with this, I strongly recommend two books:
They make the case stronger than I can for how the world is getting better and how we should be optimistic despite our difficulties.
People will say: what about global warming? The pandemic? Nuclear weapons? All I can say is read Matt’s piece and then read those books. I think that will help alot.
(Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash )
Smart People I Know 