Optimism

When did we stop being optimistic? I suspect it was a some point in the 1980s so, like many of my generation, I blame Thatcher. But I digress; when I was a kid, I read a lot of science fiction and, by and large, it told me that the future was going to be better. Reinforcing that view was a wonderful TV programme called Tomorrow's World, which basically showed you all the different ways in which life would be better in just a few years' time.

Robots would do our work; we would live on the moon; gradually we would work our way into space, settling on Mars, mining the asteroids. Technology would eradicate disease and suffering; hypersonic jets would cross the Atlantic in a couple of hours; better communications would usher in a new era of global peace.

Life, in short, would be better.

So, what happened? Sure, there were a few dystopian stories, a few Maltheusian nay-sayers, but we were optimistic, we were hopeful. I'm not saying that all those predictions were realistic or that they should have come true by now (although I am still impatiently awaiting my flying car) but the attitude nowadays has changed.

Now it's all doom and gloom; all we seem to have to look forward to is an overpopulated, overheated planet, with a devastated economy, where the poor have little option but to eat each other while the rich live on in splendid luxury and isolation. That's if the terrorists haven't blown us all to kingdom come, of course.

I miss the old, optimistic, days. They may not have been realistic but it was an awful lot more fun and I could sleep at night.