Edge.org question of the year: what are you optimistic about?

[natedogg]

Every year, Edge.org asks a question of its contributors and the answers are compiled into some of the most fascinating reading you can find on the web.

This year's question is "what are you optimistic about?" and the answers as usual are broad-ranging and compelling.

You can read more at the world question center

Personally, I am optimistic about today's youth.

It seems every generation sees only the faults of the youth and fears for the future because of the upcoming generation of uneducated, amoral, spoiled, lazy idiots who obviously have no capacity for hard work, imagination, and responsibility.

I particularly enjoy the irony of listening to aging baby boomers complain about the miserable state of the youth, since baby boomers may have caused more fear and alarm in their elders than any generation before them.

And look what they did. They transformed the world unquestionably for the better in just about any area you can imagine: science, morality, the arts, everything. The American baby boomer generation may have transformed their world more radically (and beneficially) than any modern generation before them short of the Enlightenment generation.

Today's youth will do the same.

I think the new generation of youth that came of age post-internet will be truly remarkable. It's hard to predict where they'll take us but it will be an amazing ride.



On a related note, my favorite answer at Edge.org so far comes from a psychology professor named Jonathan Haidt. He is optimistic because Baby Boomers will soon retire.

excerpt:
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Imagine an industry in which 90% of the people are men, male values and maleness are extolled publicly while feminine values are ridiculed, and men routinely make jokes, publicly and privately, about how dumb women are, even when women are present. Sounds like a definition of hostile climate” run wild? Now replace the words male” and female” with liberal” and conservative,” and we have a pretty good description of my field —social psychology—and, I suspect, many other areas of the social sciences. I have no particular fondness for conservatives. But I do have a need for them. I study morality, and I have found that conservative ideas (about authority, respect, order, loyalty, purity, and sanctity) illuminate vast territories of moral psychology, territories that have hardly been noticed by psychologists who define morality as consisting exclusively of matters of harm, rights, and justice.


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natedogg