Between utopian and dystopian extremes: humanity as a candle in the dark

[image: candle in the dark, freeimages.com]

We live in troubled times. Though an argument can be made that humanity has never gone through times that were not troubled, at least in one place or another. The current wave of problems, however, seem to be planetary in scale.

There is, of course, an ongoing pan-demic. And there is the increasingly undeniable horror of climate change unfolding under our very eyes, day by day. There are also plenty of political crises: chances are the United States will descend into semi-authoritarian rule with the 2024 elections; Russia may invade Ukraine tomorrow; and China may do the same thing to Taiwan, after having gingerly wreaked havoc with Hong Kong. And that’s without mentioning migrant crises the world over, the debacle in Afghanistan, the other debacle in Syria. And that buffoon of Boris Johnson.

Simplifying a bit, there are essentially three major classes of reactions to this state of affairs: apathy, utopianism, and dystopianism. I suspect apathy affects, eventually, the overwhelming majority of people. When things seem to be completely outside of our control we just shrug and adopt a “que sera sera” attitude, if nothing else for the sake of our ow psychological welfare.

Here I want to talk a bit about the other two, more extreme and diametrically opposite, responses. And…