Top Highlights

• “An era can be considered over,” said Arthur Miller, “when its basic illusions have been exhausted.”
• It’s common to wonder what sage advice an emissary from the future might bring back to help us choose the best path forward. But consider the opposite scenario. How would a time traveler from the prehistoric past assess the state and trajectory of the modern world? She would no doubt be impressed by much of what she encountered here, but once her a...
• Writing in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung couldn’t have been clearer in lamenting our species’ drift into future-fantasy: “We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, b...
• It’s technically true that measures of global wealth are up in the past few decades, but, at least in Europe and the United States, almost all the surplus wealth has gone to those who need it least, leaving the rest further behind than ever.
• If you, like Keynes, were hoping for an egalitarian world of shared plenitude and lots of free time to enjoy the company of those you love, consider that our ancestors occupied a world very much like that until the advent of agriculture and what came to be called “civilization” sprouted about ten thousand years ago, and we’ve been progressing away ...