If you read social media, all you will hear is gloom, anger, and outrage bait because, unfortunately, our primitive brains LOVE THAT STUFF. We may think we want to see sweet little puppies and hear good news, but every time that gets tested in the real world against “It’s over for us,” and “Can you believe that guy you don’t like said this outrageous thing?” the puppies are not the ones getting all the clicks.
But is all this sea of negative, black-pilled, “We have no hope,” spin you hear in so many places realistic… or not?
If we’re being honest, there’s never a simple answer to that. Every person, group, and country has some dark days.
The Roman Empire was the greatest empire in all of recorded history, but imagine being them when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC, when Hannibal killed more than 50,000 Roman soldiers on their own soil at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, or even in 476 AD, when the western half of the Roman Empire fell.
Yet, despite all that, Italy still exists today, and Rome is still a pretty nice place to take a vacation (so, I’ve heard – I haven’t gone there – yet).
We could even take this out a little further and look at all of humanity.
Our species sacrificed people to the Gods, has slavery, abortion, put whole cities to the sword, used rape as a tactic of war, killed millions of each other in wars, starved millions to death under Chinese communism, and survived at least a couple of plagues that may have killed as much as 20% of the WHOLE HUMAN RACE. Wars, poverty, and injustice are real. Whole civilizations collapse, sometimes never to rise again.
All of this is real, and guess what? We’re not immune to that in America.
Could I imagine a situation where we lose our Republic or descend into a Civil War, part 2? Absolutely. Is it possible nukes, out-of-control AI, or some AI-developed bioweapon kills all of us? We all know that could happen. Could we end up in a smothering, totalitarian surveillance state driven by AI where we can’t even spend money without the government’s permission? Yes, we could. Is the Left just as damaged and crazy as you think they are? Absolutely. Does Generation Z look like the peak of “weak men” that always seem to result from “good times” eventually? Yes, they do. Could our terrible immigration policies lead to our downfall? Yes, and we wouldn’t be the first nation to experience it. Is our debt genuinely a big problem that’s likely not just to lead to an economic collapse here, but create a WORLDWIDE depression that could last for a decade or two? Uh-huh.
Our problems are real, the dangers are real, and it genuinely could go very badly for us.
But “could” isn’t the same as “will,” and going “very badly” doesn’t necessarily mean “over.” It just means change.
As we speak, if you’re a Republican, you’ve got a president who has done more to get the country back on track in less than two years than most presidents do in eight. Furthermore, for the first time in a long time, the cultural and political winds have genuinely shifted back to the Right. That doesn’t mean it will stay that way or that all our problems are solved, but Trump hasn’t just been a political force; he’s created a roadmap that other conservative politicians can continue to follow even after he’s gone. This should be encouraging.
Furthermore, keep in mind that if America is screwed, pretty much everybody is screwed. After all, we’re the world’s only superpower. We have the best military, the largest economy, the most advanced tech, and Americans have more disposable income than people in any other country. In all of human history, it really does not get much better than living right here, right now.
So, why doesn’t it feel like it?
Well, aside from the fact that we’re deluged with nihilistic black pill thinking (“everything is terrible and it’s all downhill from here”) and endless harping on differences between people because that’s what makes the most money for the media, human beings tend to take things for granted.
In reality, we live in an Age of Wonders where poor Americans have better food, entertainment, educational opportunities, and lifestyles than past kings and emperors, yet we don’t appreciate it.
I’m not really a big Louis CK fan, but his classic bit about how much things have advanced and how we take so many amazing things we have for granted (cell phones, ATMs, international flights that can take you to the other side of the world in 20 hours, Internet on planes) is worth watching:
I’ve even experienced this myself: I went to San Francisco and Phoenix this year, and in both places I rode in driverless Waymo taxis.
At first, I was like, “Holy sh*t, this car is actually DRIVING ITSELF. I never thought I’d live to see the day. This is FREAKING INCREDIBLE.” By about the 5th or 6th time I had taken a ride in a Waymo, I was like, “Yeah, this thing’s okay. I guess it’s a decent Uber alternative.”
We now have GLP-1 drugs that will, as they develop, make obesity a thing of the past. Elon Musk is supposed to release honest-to-goodness robots that can cook and do your laundry next year:
Yesterday, I was listening to David Sinclair, the Harvard scientist and the world’s pre-eminent anti-aging researcher, in an interview with Joe Rogan. It was a pretty amazing podcast because he noted that AI had completed tasks for his lab in 2 months that would have normally taken them 160 years. He also noted that they have successfully de-aged rats and monkeys. Now they’re conducting human trials, and yes, he believes we’re not that far away from being able to live for hundreds of years and grow new arms if they’re lost. This is not some clown on Reddit saying that, this is the best scientist in his field talking about things they’re already starting to try out with human beings.
Things could indeed go bad, but they could also go very, very good. The best AI scenarios project it becoming so productive that the debt will become irrelevant, people won’t need to work, and we’ll have abundance on a wide scale. Is this the most likely outcome? I would say “No,” but it could genuinely happen, and it sounds like something pretty amazing.
Of course, even if it does, people will still be complaining because that’s how people are:
Human beings have always had to deal with threats and frightening scenarios. Still, the difference today is that the possibility of those things happening are constantly fed to people by the news and social media, in a way designed to hook them into a never-ending doom loop about the future.
The flip side of that is that there are an awful lot of reasons to be optimistic about our future as well, and you don’t get a prize for fretting endlessly about your life and the future. Modern humans have been around for 300,000 years and slowly (sometimes very slowly), but surely, things have gotten better. Odds are that’s going to continue, and even if it doesn’t, embracing nihilism and despair until it does will only make the ride worse for everyone.
Hmm... well after the collapse of the Roman Empire, didn't the world enter the dark ages where cities shrank, trade slowed down, and fewer written records survived? There was a lot of human misery, suffering and death that happened between the 5th and 10th centuries. Things did not really improve much until the high middle ages and late middle ages (1000 - 1500 AD), and then of course the Renaissance.
I am not prone to being negative focus. I always seek out the evidence of good for perspective. However, I think failing to take what is real justified civilization risk alarmism serious is the highest level threat to civilization... and thus the overall human condition.
We have a much larger cancer in the system that needs to be eradicated, or else the body will die.
Frank is right about the cancer, but I remain bullish on America’s future.