Life is suffering.
This is a truth known by anybody who isn’t completely naïve.
But how to act in light of this?
The right approach, I believe, is to try and reduce such suffering. To accept the terrifying nature of reality fully, and to move forward anyway.
But there are two common pitfalls on this path.
First, fear of progress. The belief that everything would be better if it went back to the “way it was”, whatever that is.
Such an attitude may seem humble or wise on the surface, but in reality, it’s the rejection of responsibility. And, to add to that, it gives its proponents permission to be needlessly cynical about genuine, forward-striving achievement.
This is the person who believes that “there are too many people on the planet”, or that “nature will take care of us”.
(If you believe the latter, I invite you to try and survive, alone, without food or clothes, in a snowy forest for a year.)
The second pitfall is technological hubris.
This is the belief that technology should solve all our problems, alongside the refusal to create the knowledge needed to bring about such discoveries (and refusal to expose these ideas to real-world error correction).
This is the full-time academic who sits in his comfy office, teaching a pre-defined course on “innovation” while collecting his steady monthly salary.
Instead, I believe the answer lies between these two extremes.
It lies in the acceptance of current limitations, gratitude for past discoveries, and commitment to forthrightly attack the problems on the horizon.
Optimism isn’t a luxury. It’s a responsibility.