A magnificent time to be alive.........

     Human nature will not change.  The same old drama of aggression and addiction, of infatuation and indoctrination, of charm and harm, will play out, but in an ever more prosperous world.  In Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of Our Teeth, the Antrobus family (representing humankind) just manages to survive the ice age, the flood and a world war, but their natures do not change.  History repeats itself as a spiral not a circle, Wilder implied, with an ever-growing capacity for both good and bad, played out through unchanging individual character.  So the human race will continue to expand and enrich its culture, despite setbacks and despite individual people having much the same evolved, unchanging nature.  The twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive.
      Dare to be an optimist.

-Matt Ridley,  The Rational Optimist:  How Prosperity Evolves