The world is awful, the world is much better, the world can be much better

We're in a similar boat. The winners (survivors) of the climate change disaster will be better off. But if we're to be good Rawlsians [1] then we shouldn't assume that we will be among the survivors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

Perhaps the tiny surface of the world you interact with now has more conveniences than before, but that is very distant from a reality where things are getting better.

Your perception depends on taking many factors for granted, not acknowledging we depend on multiple concurrent progress traps.

If you go to the supermarket and the shelves are empty, if there's no water running through your pipes, if there's no power coming from your outlets, if there's no internet connectivity, and so on, your reality bubble will be popped.

Overusing topsoil, overusing fresh water, killing all the pollinators, pumping aquifers dry, overfishing, using fossil fuels, having pollution festivals like halloween, air travel for trivial reasons, etc. We live our lives thinking the natural world will adapt to our stupid wasteful lifestyle which gets more wasteful every day. But that won't do. Everyone will have to adapt and have a lifestyle that is more sustainable, and that lifestyle will be very different to the one we have now.

Every society is 3 meals away from revolution, and that revolution is coming in our lifetimes when we finish ruining the planet for ourselves. Terraforming mars won't do shit for the political instability that will unfold as a consequence of failed harvests, water exhaustion, topsoil death, etc. War for the resources that are left is inevitable as resources become scarce.

Toxic optimism won't make things better. Only acknowledging problems instead of hiding them behind layers of abstraction will.

We grow food on topsoil.

Topsoil is soil with microorganisms, worms and insects in it. You cannot grow food on sterile soil.

Topsoil takes a long time to form, and very short time to be consumed.

We are using topsoil at a higher rate than it is replenished. The rate at which we use topsoil increases over time.

We are very wasteful with our use of topsoil. We discard ugly vegetables, or vegetables outside certain arbitrary parameters despite them being perfectly edible, or simply to keep prices down.

The reality is: over time, that statement is false. Topsoil is dying, and so are we.

...and as a result of that, the world's population has been growing and growing (and the standard of living of this population has also on average improved), which leads to more CO2 emissions, a higher consumption of finite natural resources etc. etc. Now there are two possible theories:

(1) things will continue to get better, if any problems will come up along the way we will surely be able to solve them.

(2) we are accelerating towards a brick wall which we can't see yet, but when we see it it will be too late to avoid the crash.

Perhaps a different way to look at things is that while people are causing no end of trouble for each other, the planet they live on, etc. they also have a knack for just continually figuring out how to do things better and differently. People don't get exponentials so they get caught by surprise by them even when they shouldn't.

People can be fatalistic when faced with big problems. But when faced with smaller problems, they just start solving them. And lots of big problems can be broken down into lots of small problems. A big problem may seem insurmountable. A small problem is just work that needs to be done. Lots of people working on lots of small problems, means a lot of those problems simply get solved and melt away.

I don't have all the answers when it comes to world peace, clean energy, hunger, child mortality, sea level rises, etc. These are really big challenges. But I'm an engineer and solve problems for a living. A can-do attitude goes a long way to just getting stuff done.

A wise lesson that I picked up in some communication training is to try to steer workplace discussions towards being constructive rather than being dismissive, argumentative, and negative. By simply talking about challenges rather than problems you can rephrase things such that people start thinking about how they can make things better rather than how hopelessly bad they are. They get excited instead of angry. Using a "yes and .." instead of a "yes, but .." is a very subtle way to say the same thing in a way that is constructive.

In a workplace, prolonging a bad thing serves no purpose so getting people to talk about how to improve a thing is more productive than having them provide endless reasons why a thing cannot, should not, or must not be done. Get people to think about how they can do it better rather than talking each other out of doing constructive things. I can't fix everyone around me but I can fix how I voice my own criticism. That little lesson has served me well over the years.

As a startup CTO I have to be constantly mindful about the epic amount of shit I cannot possibly deal with while still making sure things get better month to month. For any twenty problems, pick two to solve right now. Ignore the rest. I can't afford apathy or fatalism. Neither is constructive. But I can park one thing and focus on a feasible thing. Once I solve that, we can see about the other thing.

My attitude to all the big problems in this world is the same. Yes they are big but there is progress and plenty of opportunities for more progress. Don't tell me how royally screwed we all are, tell me how things could be better and I might be able to do my little part to get us there.