Can you think of any reason to be optimistic about mankinds future besides technology?

Question

If you have an optimistic view of the future, what will be better in the future aside from technological improvemnets? Do you feel these forces will prevail? What will save us?

Answer 1

oh now this isn't a very feel good kind/ warm fuzzy kind of question to end my night with, so I'll answer but then I've got to find something mindless and light to answer okay?
Answer: and maybe this is because I'm an optimist but...I do believe were becoming more educated and therefore able to save ourselves as you say.
Hey we have cars that run on electricity, we are at least in the talking stages of "alternative energy" (ethanol)
I think most people, at least more than ever in our past, have started to think Globally. We are even looking into expanding to other planets, though I hope we have to prove that we wont screw the next one up.
Idk...in a nutshell...i'd say we're more intelligent, so given that we should be able to figure out our own survival! Namaste'

Answer 2

Well, technology is behind, and as well the humankind, we humans have been on earth for millions of years, and yet we have not a common ground, nor had agreed upon a single common sense of what reality really is, and when there is found something that could be use for the better, others who are in power of the weaker minds, will see it as evil and ironically destroy it, by using mass destruction. What will save us is to focus on mental health, to heal delusion from the micro idealists.

Answer 3

Insofar as the major problems of mankind are technologically resolvable, we already have everything we need. We can solve world hunger, we can contain the HIV epidemic and treat its victims, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a sustainable level, etc. Our problems aren't technological at this point; rather, they are the deeply ingrained patterns of behavior that drive us to behave in ways that will ultimately destroy us.

The difficulty is this: behaviors that we've evolved over untold millenia are still with us, even though their utility has long passed. We are still fighting tribal wars, albeit with helicopters and missiles. We still value short-term comfort over long-term survival (we're not prepared, in an evolutionary sense, to deal with threats that don't come with pointy teeth and such). We are stuck with a biological drive to reproduce even though overpopulation is a serious problem in some parts of the world. We are, for all our cars and computers and cell phones and complicated clothing, basically just monkeys. We're still driven by these relatively primitive urges that can't help but weigh us down.

To be an optimist about the future, you have to believe in the essential redeemability of humankind from this state. Although it's easy, at the moment, to picture a dystopian future dominated by global religious warfare, religion is one of only two likely candidates to save the world -- you know, world peace, etc. You either pin your hopes on religion or education, basically. Neither of them are that attractive. Religion tends to produce fundamentalism, which is antithetical to the preservation of human life as it tends to posit an imminent eschaton, and mass education tends towards Orwellian propagandizing and abuses of power.

Still, I'd take religion. One can hope for the rise of something like Buddhism or educated, liberal Christianity to increasing prominence (they turn out to be quite similar). That alone would solve most of the world's problems.

The issue you raise is an intractable and long-standing difficulty. See, for example, Thomas Moore's "Utopia." People have been thinking about this for centuries (millenia?). You might also look at Plato's "Republic." Or Hobbes' "Leviathan."

Answer 4

Mankind has evolved toward increasing intelligence, as that is an enormous plus with respect to survival. Although we are not seeing much evolution of the race today, we can probably apply intelligence to most any problem that arises. Technology is an obvious result of this, but certainly not the only possible result.

Answer 5

Some believe that every civilization eventually colapses and hits the restart button. The Eygyptians, Romans, Aztecs. If that happens to us it will be painful, but humanity will survive.

Answer 6

Because thoughts manifest into reality. I've read that Einstein once said, "Imagination is the preview of life's coming attractions."