In place of the feeling of boundless possibility that animated many societies toward the end of the 20th century, many people around the world now increasingly see their horizons as far nearer and their range of future opportunities as far narrower than before. In this critical moment of our species’ evolution, our world views should instill in us all feelings of promise and possibility that inspire us to pull together to address our unprecedented problems. But much of humanity seems to be heading in the opposite direction — toward truly baleful or depressive attitudes that will just make our problems worse.
Global polling firms have tracked this change. Their data tell an inescapable story. And it’s worth revisiting some of the basics of this story before examining how we got to our current psychological state — bitter about our prospects and often pitted against each other — so we can gain some insight into how we might best respond. In early 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that pessimism about children’s economic future had become “widespread in most economies,” with 56 per cent of people polled in advanced economies, and 53 per cent in emerging economies, saying that today’s children in their countries would be “worse off” financially when they grow up than their parents. The Ipsos polling firm, surveying attitudes in 2016 across 23 countries — including Argentina, Brazil, Germany, India, South Africa and the United States —found that 48 per cent of those polled believed today’s youth would have a “worse life” than their parents’ generation, with only 26 per cent feeling youths’ lives would be better. Ipsos also found that just 28 per cent of people overall, when they looked ahead a year, were optimistic about prospects for the “world in general.”
There are understandably large differences in attitudes between countries though. Generally, people in emerging economies with robust growth — such as China, India and Indonesia — feel far better about the future for themselves, their children, their country and the world. For instance, while only 18 per cent of those polled in established economies were optimistic about the world in general, 42 per cent were optimistic in emerging economies. But in the West especially, the shift in social mood since the beginning of the millennium has been stark. According to an Ipsos MORI study conducted for the British newspaper The Guardian, between 2003 and 2016 the optimism-pessimism balance in Great Britain almost completely flipped. In 2003, 43 per cent of people polled thought that youth at the time would have a “higher/better” quality of life than their parents, while 12 per cent thought youth quality of life would be “lower/ worse.” But by 2016 — even before the Brexit fiasco had caused political and economic turmoil in the country — only 22 per cent thought youth quality of life would be higher than their parents, while 54 per cent thought it would be lower.
What has caused such a remarkable shift? Many factors are operating, and some are unique to each country in question. But I’m sure people are reacting, at least in part, to the early hints of the enormous social earthquakes our societies will likely undergo in coming decades, as hard-to-see, slow-moving and diffuse tectonic stresses steadily build in force, cross social boundaries and scales, and combine to multiply their effects. Four of those stresses seem to be having an outsized impact on people’s moods, especially in the West.
The first is a combination of widening economic inequality and rising economic insecurity — that is, a fear that one’s basic economic well-being could change abruptly for the worse at any time, for instance from loss of work. Both inequality and insecurity were made worse by the more sluggish pace of global economic growth after the economic flip in 2008-09, and were then dramatically exacerbated by 2020’s pandemic-catalyzed economic downturn. In many countries hard hit by the 2008-09 financial crisis, average incomes had barely returned by 2020 to where they were previously (and in some communities they never fully recovered). Meanwhile, overall economic and social inequality continued to rise relentlessly at the same time that job security declined.
The people hurt most by these trends are those who earn their living mainly through physical work in fields and factories — often outside major urban zones — or in retail service industries. Since the last century, far greater economic benefit has flowed to those who generate or manipulate ideas and information in office buildings in downtown cores. People on the losing side of this divide feel more and more that the economic system is inescapably unfair to them and that well-connected, well-healed elites can bend this system’s rules in their favor.
The second stress affecting our collective mood is the growing movement of people, chiefly economic migrants and refugees, from areas of the world where life is terribly hard and dangerous to areas where it could be better. People rarely leave their homelands or countries en masse unless something is very wrong. Today’s migrants are usually fleeing rural regions where livelihoods are undermined as soils, fresh water and forests are degraded and weather becomes more extreme; cities whose economies are in crisis and where jobs are scarce; and zones, both rural and urban, where gang, terrorist, ethnic or government-sponsored violence is rampant. Societies on the receiving end of the streams of migrants may welcome the newcomers generously at first (as Germany did in 2015), but over time, if the number of people arriving doesn’t fall sharply, the welcome mat is almost always withdrawn, usually when opportunistic politicians exploit people’s fears of outsiders.
The third stress is climate change, which is something of a stealth threat to people’s feelings of security, possibility and hope. To the extent we’re aware of the problem, we might try to help by making some changes in our everyday lives — recycling more or riding a bike to the store instead of taking a car — but as I’ve noted, the sheer size and complexity of the issue leaves many people sensing that any personal lifestyle changes are futile. Most of us also see that with a few notable exceptions, the world’s political leaders hide behind excuses. Only occasionally, as in the United States under the Obama administration, have our leaders proposed policies that really challenged the economic status quo in this regard. Meanwhile, evidence that climate change is getting steadily worse — including evidence that people can now feel and see, like wildfire smoke — continues to pile up.
The fourth and final stress that’s having a major effect on humanity’s collective mood, is called by some scholars “normative threat.” It arises partly from economic inequality and insecurity and perhaps from the arrival in one’s homeland of large numbers of migrants, but also from rapid urbanization and greater information connectivity, both of which allow ideas to propagate quickly, especially new beliefs and values about traditionally contentious issues such as sexuality, religion, and women’s status. Together, these changes can make some people feel as if their society’s essential fabric of culture, moral values, and shared beliefs, myths, and practices — the fundamental “normative order” that constitutes their society’s continuity — is being torn apart. Polls register this feeling, too: around the world, 79 per cent of people agree that “the world today is changing too fast,” according to Ipsos; 58 per cent think that “society is broken”; and 57 per cent believe their own country is “in decline.” And once again, opportunistic politicians, Donald Trump and the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson being prime examples, can capitalize on these sentiments to gain attention and power.
These four slow-process stresses — worsening economic inequality and insecurity, mass migrations, climate change and normative threat — erode our feeling that our situations are safe and fair; such stresses are also seen by many people, even if only subconsciously, as harbingers of devastating social earthquakes to come. An astonishing 82 per cent of people surveyed worldwide by Ipsos think we live in an “increasingly dangerous” world. Yet, our conventional leadership, and bureaucratic and corporate elites, seem wholly incompetent, impotent or indifferent in response; and our institutions seem largely unable to cope.
And it’s these perceived failures that are at the root of humanity’s deep shift in social mood. They encourage people to flip from what The New York Times columnist and public policy author David Brooks calls an “abundance mindset” to a “scarcity mindset.” In a scarcity mindset, “Resources are limited. The world is dangerous. Group conflict is inevitable. It’s us versus them. If they win, we’re ruined, therefore, let’s stick with our tribe. The ends justify the means.”
Techno-optimists find this mood shift utterly perplexing. Why, they ask, are so many people today so glum, when circumstances are patently so much better for most people than they were, say, 50 years ago? The answer is very simple, really: we know that people’s social mood is far less affected by where they’ve been in the past than by where they think they’re going in the future. A sour view is particularly likely when the future doesn’t appear nearly as good as the not-distant past. And that’s what many folks see now when they look forward, especially in the West: a lot of trends heading in a decidedly wrong direction. Yes, some cynical politicians exaggerate the negativity of these trends to further their narrow ends, but these exaggerations usually exploit underlying and dispiriting realities.
Ironically for techno-optimists, their vaunted information revolution has played a key role in propelling this shift. Barely 15 years ago, it was widely believed that societies wired together by the internet and the web would become progressively smarter over time — that a higher collective intelligence could emerge from rapid flows of immense amounts of information and a flattening of knowledge hierarchies as everyone gained direct access to previously inaccessible expertise. Since then, we’ve learned some harsh lessons. Instead of creating a digital environment that draws us together and makes us smarter, the companies at the core of the social media revolution — Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like — have used the vast amounts of data they harvest about our preferences and behaviors to create an emotional environment that tends to pull us apart and make us dumber. These companies get more eyeballs on their sites and clicks on their links — and so generate more revenue — by creating an addictive information environment of constant cognitive and emotional stimulus, and among the emotions that work best are outrage and (social) anxiety. Such emotions make us feel chronically insecure, encourage us to coalesce into groups of the like-minded for psychological protection, and dissolve the trust between diverse peoples that’s essential for a consensus on what’s true and untrue. They also subtly erode our faith in the future.
Already for most people in the West, the ideal of social and technological “progress,” which just 20 years ago we widely accepted without much reflection, seems oddly anachronistic; while the once-bright ideal of Western-style capitalist democracy guided by reason and science, which the scholar Francis Fukuyama boldly declared was the blissful endpoint of human political evolution, is fading fast. These changes signal that many of us are losing confidence in a positive future. If we lose it entirely, our aspirations will drastically narrow; some of us will become embittered, detached from others, resigned and morally immobilized; while others may flee into political or religious zealotry, grab-what-you-can self-interest, or, at the other extreme, live-for-today partying. And if most people lose hope in a positive future, humanity will slide into ever more bitter quarrels among groups holding what I call “Mad Max” world views — quarrels that will undermine any possibility of a shared commitment to the species’ broader commonweal, and with it the possibility of genuinely reducing the dangers we collectively face — of achieving, in other words, something resembling “enough.”
Badala ya hisia ya uwezekano usio na kikomo ambayo iliamsha jamii nyingi kuelekea mwisho wa karne ya 20, watu wengi ulimwenguni sasa wanaona upeo wao wa macho kuwa karibu zaidi na wigo wa fursa zao za baadaye kuwa nyembamba zaidi kuliko hapo awali. Katika wakati huu muhimu wa mageuzi ya spishi yetu, maoni yetu ya ulimwengu yanapaswa kutuingiza sisi sote hisia za ahadi na uwezekano ambao hutuhamasisha kuunganisha ili kushughulikia matatizo yetu yasiyo na kifani. Lakini inaonekana kwamba wanadamu wengi wanaelekea upande ule mwingine - kuelekea mitazamo yenye kuumiza au yenye kushuka moyo ambayo itafanya tu matatizo yetu yawe mabaya zaidi. Kampuni za kimataifa za uchaguzi zimefuatilia mabadiliko haya. Takwimu zao husimulia hadithi isiyoweza kuepukika. Na ni thamani ya kukagua baadhi ya misingi ya hadithi hii kabla ya kuchunguza jinsi tulivyopata hali yetu ya sasa ya kisaikolojia - uchungu juu ya matarajio yetu na mara nyingi kupingana na kila mmoja - ili tuweze kupata ufahamu wa jinsi tunaweza kujibu bora. "Kama ilivyoripotiwa na Pew Research Center, ""Uchungu kuhusu siku zijazo za kiuchumi za watoto umekuwa umeenea katika uchumi mwingi, na 56% ya watu waliohojiwa katika uchumi wa hali ya juu na 53% katika uchumi unaojitokeza wanasema watoto wa leo katika nchi zao watakuwa ""wazuri zaidi"" kifedha wanapokua kuliko wazazi wao." Kampuni ya utafiti ya Ipsos, iliyochunguza mitazamo ya vijana katika nchi 23 mnamo 2016, ikiwa ni pamoja na Argentina, Brazil, Ujerumani, India, Afrika Kusini na Marekani, iligundua kuwa asilimia 48 ya wale waliohojiwa waliamini vijana wa leo watakuwa na maisha mabaya kuliko kizazi cha wazazi wao, na asilimia 26 tu walihisi maisha ya vijana yatakuwa bora. Ipsos pia iligundua kuwa asilimia 28 tu ya watu kwa ujumla, wakati walionekana mbele ya mwaka, walikuwa na matumaini juu ya matarajio ya ulimwengu kwa ujumla, ingawa kuna tofauti kubwa katika mitazamo kati ya nchi. Kwa ujumla, watu katika uchumi unaojitokeza na ukuaji thabiti - kama vile China, India na Indonesia - wanahisi vizuri zaidi kuhusu siku zijazo kwa wao wenyewe, watoto wao, nchi yao na ulimwengu. Kwa mfano, wakati asilimia 18 tu ya wale waliohojiwa katika uchumi uliositawi walikuwa na matumaini juu ya ulimwengu kwa ujumla, asilimia 42 walikuwa na matumaini katika uchumi unaojitokeza. Lakini hasa katika nchi za Magharibi, mabadiliko katika hali ya kijamii tangu mwanzo wa milenia imekuwa kali. Kulingana na utafiti wa Ipsos Mori uliofanywa na gazeti la Uingereza The Guardian, kati ya 2003 na 2016, usawa wa matumaini na kutarajia mabaya nchini Uingereza ulibadilika kabisa. "Wakati wa utafiti wa mwaka 2003, asilimia 43 ya vijana waliofanyiwa utafiti walifikiri kuwa maisha yao yalikuwa ""ya hali ya juu"" kuliko ya wazazi wao, na asilimia 12 walifikiri maisha yao yalikuwa ""ya hali ya chini"" kuliko ya wazazi wao, lakini kufikia mwaka 2016 - hata kabla ya Brexit kusababisha msukosuko wa kisiasa na kiuchumi nchini humo - asilimia 22 tu walifikiri maisha yao yalikuwa ""ya hali ya juu"" kuliko ya wazazi wao." Ni nini kilichosababisha badiliko hilo la ajabu? Kuna mambo mengi yanayofanya kazi, na baadhi yake ni ya pekee kwa kila nchi inayohusika. Lakini nina hakika watu wanaitikia, angalau kwa sehemu, dalili za mapema za matetemeko makubwa ya kijamii ambayo jamii zetu zinaweza kukabili katika miongo ijayo, kama shida ya kuona, harakati ya polepole na mtiririko wa mkazo wa tectonic unaongezeka kwa nguvu, kuvuka mipaka ya kijamii na mizani, na kuchanganya kuzidisha athari zao. Miongoni mwa mambo hayo, kuna mambo manne yanayoonekana kuwa na uvutano mkubwa sana juu ya hali ya moyo ya watu, hasa katika nchi za Magharibi. Kwanza ni mchanganyiko wa kuongezeka kwa usawa wa kiuchumi na kuongezeka kwa ukosefu wa usalama wa kiuchumi - yaani, hofu kwamba ustawi wa msingi wa kiuchumi wa mtu unaweza kubadilika ghafla kuwa mbaya wakati wowote, kwa mfano kutokana na kupoteza kazi. "Ukosefu wa usawa na ukosefu wa usalama ulizidi kuwa mbaya zaidi na kasi ya kupungua kwa ukuaji wa uchumi wa ulimwengu baada ya mabadiliko ya kiuchumi ya 2008-2009 na kisha ulizidi kuwa mbaya zaidi na kushuka kwa uchumi kwa sababu ya janga la 2020 "","" alisema." Katika nchi nyingi zilizokumbwa na mgogoro wa kifedha wa mwaka 2008-2009, mapato ya wastani yalikuwa yamerudi kwa urahisi kufikia kiwango cha awali (na katika baadhi ya jamii hayakuweza kupona kabisa). Wakati huohuo, ukosefu wa usawa wa kiuchumi na kijamii uliendelea kuongezeka bila kukoma wakati huohuo usalama wa kazi ulipopungua. Watu walioathiriwa zaidi na mwenendo huu ni wale ambao hupata riziki yao hasa kupitia kazi ya mwili katika mashamba na viwanda - mara nyingi nje ya maeneo makubwa ya mijini - au katika viwanda vya huduma za rejareja. Tangu karne iliyopita, faida kubwa zaidi ya kiuchumi imefika kwa wale wanaozalisha au kudhibiti mawazo na habari katika majengo ya ofisi katika vituo vya katikati mwa jiji. Watu walio upande wa kushindwa wa mgawanyiko huu wanahisi zaidi na zaidi kwamba mfumo wa kiuchumi ni usio wa haki kwao na kwamba wasomi wenye uhusiano mzuri, wenye afya nzuri wanaweza kupotosha sheria za mfumo huu kwa faida yao. "Mkazo wa pili unaoathiri hali yetu ya pamoja ni kuongezeka kwa harakati za watu, hasa wahamiaji wa kiuchumi na wakimbizi, kutoka maeneo ya ulimwengu ambapo maisha ni magumu na hatari sana kwenda maeneo ambapo inaweza kuwa bora. """ Watu hawawezi kuondoka katika nchi zao kwa wingi isipokuwa kuna tatizo fulani. Wahamiaji wa leo kwa kawaida wanakimbia maeneo ya vijijini ambapo njia za kuishi zinadhoofika kama udongo, maji safi na misitu inadhoofika na hali ya hewa inakuwa kali zaidi; miji ambayo uchumi wake uko katika mgogoro na ambapo kazi ni chache; na maeneo, vijijini na mijini, ambapo genge, kigaidi, ukabila au serikali-kupendekezwa vurugu ni rampant. Jamii zinazopokea wingi wa wahamiaji zinaweza kuwapokea wageni kwa ukarimu mwanzoni (kama ilivyokuwa na Ujerumani mwaka 2015) lakini baada ya muda, ikiwa idadi ya watu wanaowasili haipunguki kwa kasi, karibu kila wakati kitambaa cha kukaribisha huondolewa, kwa kawaida wakati wanasiasa wa fursa wanapotumia hofu ya watu wa nje. Mkazo wa tatu ni mabadiliko ya hali ya hewa, ambayo ni kitu cha tishio la siri kwa hisia za watu za usalama, uwezekano na matumaini. """Kwa kiwango tunachojua tatizo, tunaweza kujaribu kusaidia kwa kufanya mabadiliko katika maisha yetu ya kila siku - kuchakata zaidi au kuendesha baiskeli kwenda dukani badala ya kuchukua gari - lakini kama nilivyosema, ukubwa na utata wa suala hilo unawafanya watu wengi kuhisi kuwa mabadiliko yoyote ya mtindo wa maisha ni bure." Wengi wetu pia huona kwamba isipokuwa wachache mashuhuri, viongozi wa kisiasa wa ulimwengu hujificha nyuma ya visingizio. Ni mara chache tu, kama ilivyo nchini Marekani chini ya utawala wa Obama, viongozi wetu wamependekeza sera ambazo zinapinga hali ya kiuchumi katika suala hili. Wakati huo huo, uthibitisho kwamba mabadiliko ya hali ya hewa ni kupata kasi zaidi - ikiwa ni pamoja na uthibitisho kwamba watu sasa wanaweza kuhisi na kuona, kama moshi moto - inaendelea kukusanya. "Mfadhaiko wa nne na wa mwisho una athari kubwa kwa hali ya binadamu, unaitwa na wasomi wengine ""tisho la kawaida"" - inatokana na ukosefu wa usawa wa kiuchumi na ukosefu wa usalama, na labda kutoka kwa kuwasili kwa idadi kubwa ya wahamiaji katika nchi ya asili, lakini pia kutoka kwa mijini ya haraka na uhusiano mkubwa wa habari, ambayo yote mawili huruhusu mawazo kueneza haraka, haswa imani mpya na maadili juu ya masuala ya jadi kama vile ngono, dini, na hali ya wanawake." Pamoja, mabadiliko haya yanaweza kuwafanya watu wengine kuhisi kana kwamba muundo muhimu wa jamii yao wa utamaduni, maadili, na imani, hadithi, na mazoea yaliyoshirikiwa - utaratibu wa msingi wa kanuni ambao unaunda mwendelezo wa jamii yao - unararuliwa. "Ipsos inasema kuwa ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana,"" ""kiwango cha watu duniani ni cha juu sana.""" "Mafadhaiko haya manne ya mchakato wa polepole - kuongezeka kwa ukosefu wa usawa wa kiuchumi na ukosefu wa usalama, uhamiaji wa wingi, mabadiliko ya hali ya hewa na tishio la kanuni - huondoa hisia yetu kwamba hali zetu ni salama na za haki; mafadhaiko kama hayo pia yanaonekana na watu wengi, hata kama ni ya subconscious, kama harbingers ya matetemeko ya kijamii ya kuharibu kuja. """ Kwa mujibu wa utafiti uliofanywa na Ipsos, asilimia 82 ya watu duniani kote wanaamini kwamba tunaishi katika ulimwengu unaozidi kuwa hatari. Hata hivyo, uongozi wetu wa kawaida, na wasomi wa serikali na wa ushirika, wanaonekana kuwa hawana uwezo kabisa, hawana uwezo au hawajali; na taasisi zetu zinaonekana kuwa haziwezi kukabiliana. Na ni kushindwa haya kuonekana kwamba ni katika mizizi ya ubinadamu ya mabadiliko ya kina katika hali ya kijamii. "Wanawatia moyo watu kugeuka kutoka kile ambacho mwandishi wa The New York Times na mwandishi wa sera za umma David Brooks anaita ""akili ya wingi"" hadi ""akili ya upungufu.""" Ulimwengu ni hatari. Mgogoro wa kikundi ni wa kuepukika. Ni sisi dhidi yao. Ikiwa watashinda, tutaharibiwa, kwa hiyo, hebu tuendelee na kabila letu. Mwisho huhakikishia njia. <unk> Techno-optimists kupata mabadiliko haya ya hisia kabisa perplexing. "Wanauliza, ""Kwa nini watu wengi leo ni wenye huzuni sana, wakati hali ni wazi sana kwa watu wengi kuliko zilivyokuwa, tuseme, miaka 50 iliyopita?""" Jibu ni rahisi sana, kweli: tunajua kwamba hali ya kijamii ya watu huathiriwa kidogo na mahali walipokuwa zamani kuliko mahali wanafikiri wanaenda katika siku zijazo. Maoni ya uchungu ni uwezekano hasa wakati wakati ujao haionekani karibu kama nzuri kama zamani si mbali. Na hiyo ni nini watu wengi kuona sasa wakati wao kuangalia mbele, hasa katika Magharibi: mengi ya mwenendo kuelekea katika mwelekeo dhahiri makosa. Ndiyo, baadhi ya wanasiasa wenye kuchukizwa huongeza uzito wa mambo mabaya yanayotokea ili kuendeleza malengo yao madogo, lakini kwa kawaida mambo hayo ya kupita kiasi hutumia mambo halisi yenye kuhuzunisha. Kwa kushangaza kwa techno-optimists, mapinduzi yao ya habari ya kujulikana imecheza jukumu muhimu katika kuendesha mabadiliko haya. Miaka 15 iliyopita, ilidhaniwa sana kwamba jamii zilizounganishwa na mtandao na mtandao zingekuwa na akili zaidi kwa muda - kwamba akili ya pamoja ya juu ingeweza kutokea kutoka kwa mtiririko wa haraka wa kiasi kikubwa cha habari na upana wa safu ya maarifa wakati kila mtu alipata upatikanaji wa moja kwa moja wa utaalam ambao haujawahi kupatikana. Tangu wakati huo, tumejifunza mambo mazito. Badala ya kuunda mazingira ya dijiti ambayo yanatuunganisha na kutufanya tuwe na akili zaidi, kampuni zilizo katika kiini cha mapinduzi ya media ya kijamii - Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter na kadhalika - zimetumia kiasi kikubwa cha data wanayoikusanya juu ya upendeleo wetu na tabia ili kuunda mazingira ya kihemko ambayo huwa na kututofautisha na kutufanya tuwe wapumbavu. Kampuni hizi hupata macho zaidi kwenye tovuti zao na bonyeza viungo vyao - na hivyo kuzalisha mapato zaidi - kwa kuunda mazingira ya habari ya kulevya ya kichocheo cha utambuzi na kihisia cha mara kwa mara, na kati ya hisia ambazo hufanya kazi bora ni hasira na wasiwasi wa kijamii. Hisia kama hizo hutufanya tujisikie hatuna usalama, zinatutia moyo kuungana katika vikundi vya watu wenye mawazo sawa kwa ulinzi wa kisaikolojia, na kuharibu uaminifu kati ya watu tofauti ambao ni muhimu kwa makubaliano juu ya nini ni kweli na sio kweli. Pia kwa njia isiyoonekana, zinaharibu imani yetu katika wakati ujao. "Kwa watu wengi wa Magharibi, ""maendeleo"" ya kijamii na ya kiteknolojia, ambayo miaka 20 iliyopita tulikubaliana nayo bila kufikiria sana, inaonekana kuwa ya kipekee, wakati ""mawazo ya zamani ya demokrasia ya ubepari ya mtindo wa Magharibi iliyoongozwa na sababu na sayansi, ambayo msomi Francis Fukuyama alitangaza kwa ujasiri kuwa mwisho wa furaha ya mageuzi ya kisiasa ya binadamu, inazidi kufifia.""" Mabadiliko hayo yanaonyesha kwamba wengi wetu tunapoteza tumaini katika wakati ujao mzuri. Kama tukipoteza kabisa, matarajio yetu yatapungua sana; baadhi yetu tutakuwa na uchungu, tutakuwa mbali na wengine, tutakuwa na hatia na hatutakuwa na uwezo wa kufanya mambo; wakati wengine wanaweza kukimbilia katika uchochezi wa kisiasa au wa kidini, kufurahia kile wanachoweza, au, katika hali ya juu, kuishi kwa ajili ya leo. "Na ikiwa watu wengi watapoteza matumaini katika siku zijazo nzuri, ubinadamu utaingia katika ugomvi mkali zaidi kati ya vikundi vinavyoendelea na kile ninachokiita ""Mad Max"" maoni ya ulimwengu, ugomvi ambao utapunguza uwezekano wowote wa kujitolea kwa jamii, faida ya jumla, na pamoja na uwezekano wa kupunguza hatari ambazo tunakabiliwa na pamoja, kufikia, kwa maneno mengine, kitu kinachofanana na ""kutosha."""