There is also a sort of blindness to the same sort of processes Hyde is quite reasonably (and evocatively) gobsmacked by: if Darwin could be said to have invent

There is also a sort of blindness to the same sort of processes Hyde is quite reasonably (and evocatively) gobsmacked by: if Darwin could be said to have invented a sort of integral Calculus to grapple with deep time, a differential version is just as needed to look at changes in the rate at which the rate at which changes are changing, and perhaps on to even higher derivatives. Too many of these melancholy (or as you say, nihilistic) takes are rooted in a model of the form "we are here, now, and if things go on as they have been will inevitably wind up there, by then" and fail to acknowledge that things are not going to "go on like they have been". Things are changing, but the rate, manner and even direction of changes are also changing, and we need to recognize that as well.