Seeking the extraordinary

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Winston Churchill

What if we could have reasonable confidence in the future and the faith that our children will know a world better than ours? To be fair, the current era, rocked by a series violent and unpredictable shocks, would be enough to prove the opposite.

The fact remains that the doom and gloom narrative perpetuated by the media and social media, announcing the decline and collapse of our civilisations, holds more sway than the voice of the rationalists. A will to take action and succeed needs to replace the fear and the guilt.

Overcoming our fears to sustain hope

We can use data to demonstrate the overestimation of the dangers. Extreme poverty is in the process of being eradicated. In 1990, according to the World Bank, 36% of the population lived in conditions of complete destitution. This rate has now fallen to 9%. What’s more, almost all of humanity is now literate; human health is improving, especially in the poorest countries, and the world is moving towards ever greater egalitarianism, especially in terms of income and human rights, thanks to the vigilance of the major international institutions.

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