Best of Times, Worst of Times

I'm going to try to turn a pet peeve into beauty; let me know how well I do.

I get very annoyed whenever I hear (or read) about the "unprecedented" violence, unrest and precariousness we face "in the world today."

There is nothing "unprecedented" about it. Instead, there is a constant voice, in each age that cries out that we are on the brink of total disaster. (At least since people began writing down their ideas, about five thousand years ago. Maybe writing is the trouble...)

I do not deny that we face serious problems and danger, and that these take new forms than they did before. But, we survived the Ice Age, the Dark Ages, and at least the beginning of the Atomic Age. The unthinkable happened – events no one had thought to worry about – and here we are.

More than this, for the first time in recorded history, we have structures such as child labor laws, and domestic violence laws, and the UN – that often fail, yes, but that exist to protect the vulnerable, that we now take for granted, and that never existed before on such a scale.

Maybe there is a function in human perception that causes some to insist that we are on the brink of total unprecedented disaster.

Where are the voices that celebrate how we are evolving ever-more into peace-, justice- and kindness-loving creatures?

Here’s mine: we are so screwed up, we fail, and yet we keep creating beauty.

How’d I do?