We have climbed so high as a species in such a short time that we genuinely can’t remember where the ground was when we started.
Climate change will be devastating. But for most of human life, the fear of the future was much closer. It wasn’t about the next five or ten years, it wasn’t about the world we were leaving for our children - it was about the food we were feeding our children today. It was about making it through the next winter. It was about survival.
We didn’t have refrigeration, penicillin, HVAC, germ theory… people weren’t worried about undervaccination because there was no such thing as vaccination.
Even in recent history. In the 1920s, we had a war so huge and devastating and terrifying that they called it the war to end all wars.
Then they almost immediately did it again, but bigger.
Every adult in the early 20th century lived through the greatest horror in mankind’s history so far. The first heavy machine guns, the first aerial bombers, the first atom bomb. Then the massive, unstable world powers spent decades building up an arsenal of global annihilation, and very nearly triggered that annihilation at least twice.
All of human existence - from the daily survival of pre-industry, to The Jungle of industrialization, the still-ongoing plague of tuberculosis (“consumption”), the brutal violence of the 20th century - all of it - has been a struggle to survive.
Human existence has always been, on some level, terrifying. Disease, famine, war - these apocalyptic horsemen weren’t on the horizon, they were constant companions to historical humans. And that’s not even getting into all of the historical oppression and bigotry that always has been.
But people weren’t constantly scared by default. They made art, wrote books, told stories. Started families, had children, almost half of their children died as children, had more children anyway.
Humans just lived. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced self destruction. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced oppression, tyranny, poverty, and yes, even climate disasters. A drought could devastate nations. A harsh winter could leave no survivors. Entire settlements just… failed.
Humans are still thriving compared to one or two lifetimes ago. It feels like we plateau’d and then began to decline - because in a sense we did. We were taking massive leaps toward the future with every passing decade, and now we just feel like we’re making incremental improvements in meaningless gadgets, while social progress stalls - or worse- actively regresses.
But we live in the future. That’s why we plateau’d. We made it. Humans have effectively gained the power to make life on Earth as it is in Heaven, and we just choose not to. We choose other things, mainly because a small handful of humans have the power to make those choices for the rest of us.
That doesn’t mean we should lose faith. Humans can still make a golden age of the future, climate change or not.
We just need to fight for it. We live in unprecedented times, and we are capable of unprecedented things. We absolutely have the capability to make the future better than the past.
We have climbed so high as a species in such a short time that we genuinely can’t remember where the ground was when we started.
Climate change will be devastating. But for most of human life, the fear of the future was much closer. It wasn’t about the next five or ten years, it wasn’t about the world we were leaving for our children - it was about the food we were feeding our children today. It was about making it through the next winter. It was about survival.
We didn’t have refrigeration, penicillin, HVAC, germ theory… people weren’t worried about undervaccination because there was no such thing as vaccination.
Even in recent history. In the 1920s, we had a war so huge and devastating and terrifying that they called it the war to end all wars.
Then they almost immediately did it again, but bigger.
Every adult in the early 20th century lived through the greatest horror in mankind’s history so far. The first heavy machine guns, the first aerial bombers, the first atom bomb. Then the massive, unstable world powers spent decades building up an arsenal of global annihilation, and very nearly triggered that annihilation at least twice.
All of human existence - from the daily survival of pre-industry, to The Jungle of industrialization, the still-ongoing plague of tuberculosis (“consumption”), the brutal violence of the 20th century - all of it - has been a struggle to survive.
Human existence has always been, on some level, terrifying. Disease, famine, war - these apocalyptic horsemen weren’t on the horizon, they were constant companions to historical humans. And that’s not even getting into all of the historical oppression and bigotry that always has been.
But people weren’t constantly scared by default. They made art, wrote books, told stories. Started families, had children, almost half of their children died as children, had more children anyway.
Humans just lived. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced self destruction. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced oppression, tyranny, poverty, and yes, even climate disasters. A drought could devastate nations. A harsh winter could leave no survivors. Entire settlements just… failed.
Humans are still thriving compared to one or two lifetimes ago. It feels like we plateau’d and then began to decline - because in a sense we did. We were taking massive leaps toward the future with every passing decade, and now we just feel like we’re making incremental improvements in meaningless gadgets, while social progress stalls - or worse- actively regresses.
But we live in the future. That’s why we plateau’d. We made it. Humans have effectively gained the power to make life on Earth as it is in Heaven, and we just choose not to. We choose other things, mainly because a small handful of humans have the power to make those choices for the rest of us.
That doesn’t mean we should lose faith. Humans can still make a golden age of the future, climate change or not.
We just need to fight for it. We live in unprecedented times, and we are capable of unprecedented things. We absolutely have the capability to make the future better than the past.