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I felt drowned in pessimism from media, culture, and family for most of my life up to that point, and this book opened up an optimistic perspective on global pr
by schizoidboy 9y ago
I felt drowned in pessimism from media, culture, and family for most of my life up to that point, and this book opened up an optimistic perspective on global prosperity, health, violence, education, work, inequality, environment, etc. It makes rational arguments for this general optimism rather than hand-wavey optimism. I think it can be summarized as: "Things aren't so bad for the average human and are improving in most of the important ways. We've hit on patterns (science, markets, etc.) that seem to work, and we should continue to work at making things even better."
- adjkant 9y agoThanks, appreciate the detail :) I very much agree with that philosophy and would consider myself a rational optimist if I had to label, hence the intrigue. While optimism is good, I think it needs to be paired with equally important perspective. As that review points out, the general trend doesn't mean we can't go backward for long periods of time in multiple areas. That optimism needs to be paired with a push for improvement over complacency, which I think is the easy comfort optimism can give. Sorry if this is preaching to the choir, but hopefully someone gains value out of this. Edited because I just trailed off in the middle of a thought on my first go round.
- schizoidboy 9y agoJust responded with a separate reply on the critique. I agree we have to be careful with excessive optimism.