You gotta wonder what's wrong with our society...

[mousme]

You have wonder what's wrong with our society when so many people envision a brutal apocalypse as the only solution to our troubles. After Armaggedon, people seem to believe, we're going to settle into some sort of agrarian utopia (after we shoot all the zombies starving looters/suburbanites, that is) and live happily ever after in a world without yuppies, SUVs, or water shortages.

Have things become so bleak that we can't envision things getting any better without most of the world dying off?

Comments

[swestrup]

I'm totally voting against Armageddon. I do fear that, just as the atomic era ushered in all new existential threats, that the nanotech era we are now entering will expose us to existential threats that most folks have never conceived of.

The risk of things going catastrophically wrong in the next 50 years is very real, but the chance of things going unbelievably right is also there. Whats more for the first time ever it seems that some folks in positions of power are actually starting to worry about these issues. Thus the current ongoing conference in Oxford on existential risks.

So, put me down for a hopeful optimist. I know the future can be scary, but it can also be good, and I KNOW how messed up the past was.