I can't think of a single moment in human history in which the overall picture was rosier than it is today.
We're dumb and violent and wasteful, but we've had to figure everything out on our own. If you take a group of children, place them in total isolation and make it so that they learn only what direct experience teaches them, what kind of result do you think you're going to get?
That's what humanity got, essentially. There was no guidebook or cheat codes or external help of any kind. That we've accomplished what we have is pretty astounding, and slowly. I think it was Hitchens who repeatedly described the drift away from superstition and religion as the human species growing out of its own adolescence. It's apt. Our species is still relatively very young and immature, but I does seem obvious to me that the overall trend is away from that.
And that's why I don't hate it, warts and all.
We're dumb and violent and wasteful, but we've had to figure everything out on our own. If you take a group of children, place them in total isolation and make it so that they learn only what direct experience teaches them, what kind of result do you think you're going to get?
That's what humanity got, essentially. There was no guidebook or cheat codes or external help of any kind. That we've accomplished what we have is pretty astounding, and slowly. I think it was Hitchens who repeatedly described the drift away from superstition and religion as the human species growing out of its own adolescence. It's apt. Our species is still relatively very young and immature, but I does seem obvious to me that the overall trend is away from that.
And that's why I don't hate it, warts and all.
