The end and rebirth of optimism

If you had asked me and my Boomer/Gen-X cohort, back in the day, whether we thought the world could ever possibly be in the shape it’s in right now, we would have laughed in disbelief. We would have scoffed.

Russia threatening to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine? Belarus doing the same to Poland? North Korea launching missiles near Japan and flying warplanes toward South Korea?

Surely no one has ever had any illusions about North Korea’s murderous regime, but my generation truly believed that Russia and the old Soviet satellites had joined the ranks of civilized nations. We cheered “glasnost” and celebrated as the Berlin Wall fell.

How could we have gotten it so wrong? You could argue that a naive optimism was at work back then — but if so, then any optimism today is not naive but willfully blind.

My cohort was in kindergarten when Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Cold War, Vietnam War and antiwar protests formed the backdrop of our childhoods, punctuated by Watergate, a catastrophic oil embargo, the collapse of American industry, “stagflation” and the Iranian hostage crisis.

Oh, and the sexual revolution, the drug culture and disco. All in about 12 years.

So when the 1980s and young adulthood arrived, with relative calm and promises of “Morning in America,” we were hungry for it. We thought our nation, and therefore the world, was on an endless march toward peace and prosperity. Despite some sizable hiccups, we’d reached “the end of history.”

This new millennium has proven us tragically wrong. From the World Trade Center to them ass graves of Mariupol, is there any optimism now?

Almost as an aside, I apologized to one of my grown sons recently, saying, “My generation has really messed things up.” I was shocked by his reaction. This wasn’t an “aside” to him. He thanked me and said, “You’re the only adult I’ve ever heard admit this.”

Yay me? No, it’s more important and more complicated than that.

Whatever moment in which we come to awareness of the world outside our homes, it is but a blip in human history. Nonetheless it feels powerful — more powerful than it should, and erroneously predictive. My generation saw sudden progress and became blithely optimistic. My children’s generation is already quite pessimistic. In fact, the modern plague is not COVID-19 but deaths of despair.

Ten years after the appalling crimes of 9/11, Steven

Whatever moment in which we come to awareness of the world outside our homes, it is but a blip in human history. Nonetheless it feels powerful — more powerful than it should, and erroneously predictive.

Pinker published “The Better Angels of Our Natures.” Its title was drawn from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address (which was, of course, quickly followed by the catastrophic Civil War).

Mr. Pinker’s excellent, provocative book identifies various historical forces that have combined, he asserts, to make this the least violent time in human history. These forces include the modern nation-state’s “monopoly on the legitimate use of force,” the growth of international commerce and increasing rationality in human affairs.

Well. Here we are. Ten years later we have nucleararmed nation-states that use force illegitimately, vast corporations that actively squash us “little guys” and our free speech, and mindboggling irrationality governing human affairs.

This is what makes Americans’ overwhelming unity behind Ukraine so fascinating. Russia’s aggression brings the vast majority of us together because we crave moral clarity. Life is rarely so clear.

My parents were infants when the Great Depression began and teenagers through World War II. They have never stopped seeing the world through the prism of hunger, scarcity and impending calamity.

My children’s lives have unfolded through 9/11, the Iraq War, Wall Street’s role in the housing bust, the Trump Era and now the brink of nuclear war.

Like my parents, they may be better prepared than I for a world in which the one thing that does not change is human nature. It seems “the better angels of our nature” are often outgunned by the demons.

Last week, though, in the Sea of Japan, ships from the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group joined South Korean and Japanese destroyers to practice shooting down missiles.

No matter what circumstances we are born in, the better angels of our nature demand that, when faced with evil, we fight. If we do, there’s hope.