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Did you read the article? "I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population live somew

Did you read the article? "I call it the overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population live somewhere in the middle of the income scale. Perhaps they are not what we think of as middle class, but they are not living in extreme poverty. Their girls go to school, their children get vaccinated. Perhaps not on every single measure, or every single year, but step by step, year by year, the world is improving. In the past two centuries, life expectancy has more than doubled. Although the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress."

KozmoNau7 9y ago
Yes, I did. Sure, a lot of people lead reasonably comfortable lives and we have never had the quality of medicine or convenience that we enjoy today (in most of the world). But there are still massive problems, such as the rapid (and rabid) rise of the far-right in Eastern Europe, as well as deteriorating USA/Russia/China relations, which could very well escalate to armed conflict if they're not careful. I'm sure there were plenty of optimists during the cold war as well, but the simple fact is that some high-powered people are currently playing a very dangerous game. Not to mention the rapidly increasing stress levels in modern society, the complete erosion of privacy and rising levels of mental health issues, partly due to our "busybusybusy must be busy!" culture. And that's before we get into things like accelerating climate change, which has the potential to go into a complete runaway that we cannot stop, potentially leading to a situation similar to the Permian-Triassic extinction event, within just a few hundred years.
- adventured 9y ago
  You said it's much worse. Saying that there "are still massive problems," is a language structure admission that in fact things are obviously better. What you're describing is a paradise compared to any number of well known periods of time in the past, including as recently as the 1950s or 1970s, much less the WW1 or WW2 time frames. The far right in Eastern Europe, in terms of fasicsm concerns, is a trivial joke compared to the recent past in all regards. Spain as one example of real political problems in Europe, had a four decade fascist dictatorship as recently as 1975. Ceausescu ruled Romania as a brutal dictator for decades. The worst of free Eastern Europe today is a bastion of liberalism by comparison to the recent past. Eastern Europe was almost entirely under the authoritarian boot of the USSR just 30 years ago. The people there were not only hyper poor, but they also had few rights at all. Today Romania has a higher GDP per capita than Russia and is one of the fastest growing economies on earth. Czech and Slovakia now have the economic per capita output of Portugal. Their economies are solidly five times larger than they were in 1991. Deteriorating relations with Russia? See ~1948-1990. China? See: Korean War, Mao era in general. The West is getting along extraordinarily well with China compared to the past. The dispute today is trade, not who is going to nuke each other or when the next war begins. Things have gotten dramatically better.
  - eli_gottlieb 9y ago
    You're ignoring the part about the Anthropocene mass extinction.

KozmoNau7 9y ago

Yes, I did. Sure, a lot of people lead reasonably comfortable lives and we have never had the quality of medicine or convenience that we enjoy today (in most of the world). But there are still massive problems, such as the rapid (and rabid) rise of the far-right in Eastern Europe, as well as deteriorating USA/Russia/China relations, which could very well escalate to armed conflict if they're not careful. I'm sure there were plenty of optimists during the cold war as well, but the simple fact is that some high-powered people are currently playing a very dangerous game. Not to mention the rapidly increasing stress levels in modern society, the complete erosion of privacy and rising levels of mental health issues, partly due to our "busybusybusy must be busy!" culture. And that's before we get into things like accelerating climate change, which has the potential to go into a complete runaway that we cannot stop, potentially leading to a situation similar to the Permian-Triassic extinction event, within just a few hundred years.

adventured 9y ago
You said it's much worse. Saying that there "are still massive problems," is a language structure admission that in fact things are obviously better. What you're describing is a paradise compared to any number of well known periods of time in the past, including as recently as the 1950s or 1970s, much less the WW1 or WW2 time frames. The far right in Eastern Europe, in terms of fasicsm concerns, is a trivial joke compared to the recent past in all regards. Spain as one example of real political problems in Europe, had a four decade fascist dictatorship as recently as 1975. Ceausescu ruled Romania as a brutal dictator for decades. The worst of free Eastern Europe today is a bastion of liberalism by comparison to the recent past. Eastern Europe was almost entirely under the authoritarian boot of the USSR just 30 years ago. The people there were not only hyper poor, but they also had few rights at all. Today Romania has a higher GDP per capita than Russia and is one of the fastest growing economies on earth. Czech and Slovakia now have the economic per capita output of Portugal. Their economies are solidly five times larger than they were in 1991. Deteriorating relations with Russia? See ~1948-1990. China? See: Korean War, Mao era in general. The West is getting along extraordinarily well with China compared to the past. The dispute today is trade, not who is going to nuke each other or when the next war begins. Things have gotten dramatically better.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago
  You're ignoring the part about the Anthropocene mass extinction.