Paradise Regained: An Optimistic Future

Abstract

“Gloom and doom” is easy to sell. Simply watching the evening news fills one with a sense of what is bad in the world: murder, child abuse, an increase in the price of gasoline, water rationing due to drought, tension among nation states arising over a religious or economic disagreement, and so on. Listening to the prognostication of the coming age of scarcity and environmental disaster makes for great drama and feeds what seems like an increasing sense of global pessimism.

Oh yesterday the cutting edge drank thirstily and deep, The upland outlaws ringed us and herded us like sheep, They drove us from the stricken field and bayed us into keep; But tomorrow, By the living God, we’ll try the game again!

John Masefield, from “Tomorrow”