More Youthful Optimism

I have been sharing my theory of an optimistic future with others. I believe that the macro story today is pretty dire, with wars, hate and dysfunction everywhere you look, but that the micro story is more important in the long term. The micro story is that more and more people around the world are living more serene lives, at peace with themselves and their neighbours. Especially the young are healthier and more balanced than previous generations. In the end this augers well for humanity.

Well, the reception for this theory has not been overwhelmingly positive by any stretch. People don’t buy it. My dentist was typical. “You should see some of the kids that come in here”, she says, “they are distracted, unruly and morose.” When I quote my joyful experience at Princeton, people remind me that Princeton is the number one college in the land, nay the world, and that this does not represent any more general reality.

So I thought I’d take a step back. Might I just be deluding myself based on some isolated experiences and wishful thinking?

There is evidence to infer that younger generations can have a better chance than we had. Think of a typical family. Forty years ago Dad would go out to work, maybe at something physical, and would play little part in raising kids. This week’s NFL scandals have been harrowing, but for me the most telling quote came from Adrian Petersen. He regrets injuring his child with physical punishment, but claims that when he was growing up as a black in the South, everyone did it. This rings true, and I am not sure it didn’t apply to whites in the North as well. Dad’s role as head of the household didn’t add up to much more than chief disciplinarian.

Meanwhile Mum probably did not go out to work, so didn’t get to see much of society to stretch her brain. Her education had a lot of “home economics” and not much real economics. She spent much of her week doing housework. She would nurture the kids, but probably struggled to relate with them once they reached puberty. Dad and Mum stayed together, but would they show much intimacy in front of the kids?

The house was smaller and less well heated, and the kids might have had to share a bedroom. The family had perhaps just acquired a TV, but there was nothing on except at night when Dad chose what to watch. The family and friends were all very much like us, and we were hardly exposed to anyone very different, beyond the drunken groping uncle we saw at weddings and Christmas.

Many of the things we see in modern society and complain about are actually vast improvements on what came before. True, kids spend far too much time on their computers and mobiles today, but is that worse than crushing family boredom or hanging around street corners with mates? True, family units have become more complex, with divorce and diversity more common, and Mums are working now when before some were at home with the kids, but is that worse than the sterile monoculture we had before, fully of undiscussable items, and is a less available, but interesting and liberated Mum worse than the narrow woman who made us sit and play with rubbish jigsaws while she did endless household chores?

Now look at the classroom. We berate modern kids for low attention spans and lack of basic knowledge and grammar. I am not sure our attention span was any longer, we simply had fewer worthwhile distractions and were cowed by fear of bullying teachers. Nowadays, basic knowledge and grammar comes from Wikipedia and spellcheck, and educators have respond with challenging kids how to solve problems and to see nuanced arguments. When I see some of the homework assignments of the kids, I can only admire these changes.

The two great trends of our era, technology and globalization, have only helped our kids. We may hate mindless texting and endless cat videos, but we forget the good content that is there as well, and the fact that social media has made this generation more communicative and curious than ours, more able to find successful friendships, and able to take most of the fear from sex and relationships. Globalisation has offered more people the benefits of diversity and fed tolerance and curiosity.

Add in some other factors. Obesity has worsened, but that is about quantity, for quality has improved. We keep changing our minds on the details and many people don’t yet follow good practice, but at least we know now that fish and fruits are good for us, and these are widely available. Smoking has reduced as a curse. Even removing lead from petrol and some pesticides from fields have contributed to stronger mental health. Finally, psychology and sociology have progressed, so diagnoses and remedies for mental health have improved immeasurably.

So the micro story has every reason to be a happy one, and I firmly believe that the evidence I see with my own eyes is significant. I am supported by the excellent trends in crime figures and reducing mental disorders, and even by such things as reductions in teenage pregnancy across much of the world. I believe most of us make the timeless mistake of judging by our outdated standards and condemning things we don’t really understand. I reckon I was pretty unruly at the dentist as well, even though I was more likely to be bored stupid by “Country Life” and scared of a cuffing from Mum than distracted by “Minecraft”.

I am also not fully convinced that the macro story is so bad either, horrific though this summer has been. I think we are misled by the ubiquity of information. Those of us who would rather see news than celebrity gossip now have much more international news available than we used to. There used to be just as many wars and just as much hatred before, it is just that most of it was outside our earshot. Consider, we did not even know there were Sunnis and Shias. Further, establishment bias was even worse than that it is now. All the horrible proxy wars the US and USSR fought in Africa and Asia were largely kept from our view, or portrayed in hopelessly biased ways.

I was struck when I read the book “Jerusalem” by Simon Sebag Montefiore last year. We all think the Arab Israeli conflict is horrific and that the twentieth century was the most violent in history, but it seems that there have been pogroms and destruction pretty well every century there. We read about Ukraine, but it pales in comparison with the Cultural Revolution or Pol Pot, about which we read little and understood less.

What is different now is that we can clearly see the potential for humanity, and we are frustrated by our inability to realize that full potential, especially when that is through wanton acts by people and governments that should know better. When all it was we learned in history was a list of kings of England, and all we saw on TV was establishment sponsored drivel, we did not have that privilege. We can celebrate it, and try to also celebrate how far we have come as well as bemoaning how far we still have to travel.

And travel we will, ever faster, though with bumps in the road, thanks to our more educated and smarter youth, and the even smarter youth that will follow them. What seems normal now in the West will soon be normal in Asia and even much of Africa, while the West will look back on this age as ill-informed and barbaric. I believe. I even think I am right, and not just delusional. Even if I am wrong, the thought helps me stay cheerful – something else I recommend heartily.