Scenario 1: Condition on a future world that is somehow livable and sane, in mental and environmental equilibrium. Work backwards and find that "being good" is

Scenario 1: Condition on a future world that is somehow livable and sane, in mental and environmental equilibrium. Work backwards and find that "being good" is not a choice but an inescapable requirement Scenario 2: Posit that the above conditioning is unattainable, we have reached "peak humanity" and its all now terminally downhill Call me naive but I think our main problem is that people have never really been forced to make up their minds "en masse", not just on "local" problems where cynicism, free-riders, aggression, exploitation, abuse (+ name your favorite pathology here) may be "rational", but in our "global" problem. Universal principles and rights (as those put together by the UN) start becoming the mental and emotional guides to come to grips with the important global constraints. Cynics dismiss those as ludicrous, bureaucratic, vacuities. Think again. In other words, we can be local cynics (and that might even be a breath of fresh air) but we cannot be global cynics.