It's human nature to see the future in a bleak manner. I don't know why this is - it obviously leads to doomsday cults. Perhaps it's an ego thing - people can

It's human nature to see the future in a bleak manner. I don't know why this is - it obviously leads to doomsday cults. Perhaps it's an ego thing - people can't believe that they aren't the crowning generation of the human race. They want to believe that their life is as good as anyones will get, because future people just won't be as fortunate/gifted/special as they are. The truth of the matter is that each generation has led a better quality of life than the last for a long time going back. This is both technology related but also, as slow as it happens, lessons do get learned. It's funny to see all the doom and gloom about resources running out, when that's no closer now than it was in 1987. This should be a lesson for the rank pessimists around us now. It's actually very difficult to predict the future, because of unexpected events that change history. Everyone in this group thinks Japan is going to take over the world - they were 2 years away from the bursting of their bubble, which has never re-inflated. They also think that Russia is going to continue to be the foe, when itself was only 3 or so years away from falling apart as the USSR. Nobody could see the rise of Islamic terrorism and the massive pivot that it would create.