"Are you optimistic about the future?" . . .

many years ago I had the privilege of meeting Pete Seeger and hanging around with him in the very early days of the Hudson River Sloop CLEARWATER project . . .

I vividly recall being with him one day when he was being interviewed by a reporter from some newspaper or other . . . the topic was the environment and, more generally, the future of humanity . . . one of the reporter's questions was "Are you optimistic about the future?" . . .

"Nope," said Pete. "But I'm hopeful." . . .

I thought that was a great answer, and I sort of adopted it as my own philosophical approach to things over the decades . . . but today I'm beginning to seriously doubt the "hopeful" part . . . very, very seriously beginning to doubt the "hopeful" part . . .

I was sitting around not doing much of anything last night when another question just popped into my head, right out of the blue . . . "Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of life on Earth?", I thought . . . and the only answer I could give myself was "Maybe so." . . .

the nuclear clock is now at five minutes to midnight . . . we're amassing huge naval and military forces in the Gulf and seem ready to strike Iran and ignite a conflagration that will envelope the entire Middle East and beyond . . . every day we hear news of global warming, melting glaciers, dying oceans, and species on the brink of extinction . . . food supplies are becoming ever more precarious, a major American city sits in ruins, and governmental agencies are re-locating to Virginia to be outside the "blast zone" . . .

we have a thoroughly corrupt government that's robbing us blind while imposing America's military might on other nation's across the globe -- in OUR name . . . the "Little Red Button" is under the finger of a psychopath who believes that Armageddon is imminent, and that he's doing God's work in helping bring it about . . . our jobs are disappearing, our benefits and pensions are disappearing, our educational and healthcare systems continue to deteriorate, and most Americans couldn't find Iraq on a map if their life depended on it . . . we are living in the most dangerous time in the history of the human race, yet the vast majority of our countrymen and women wile away their lives watching "American Idol," playing video games, and rooting for a bunch of multi-millionaires playing a variety of kids games on television . . .

whether they have the latest cell phone or the newest designer fashions are more important to our young people than educating themselves about the world in which they live . . . and their parents are more interested showing off their new Hummers and SUVs than in addressing the blatant corruption so evident in our elections, in our corporations, in our government, in all of our institutions . . . all around me I see blank faces of despair, resignation, and hopelessness seemingly waiting for some saviour who will magically appear and make it all right again . . . and knowing deep in their hearts that he or she isn't coming . . .

if someone were to ask me today "Are you optimistic about the future?", I think that my answer might be "Nope . . . but I'm trying to stay hopeful." . . . and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep that up . . .

I'd be optimistic if I could be sure there would be one.

we will reach our true level.

I read your entire post and I must say I feel much the same way .

I find it now almost impossible to even vision a future .

There are so very many things or issues that have been torn to pieces that just trying to keep them all in my head at once is impossible .

I may find a small bit of hope in one area but then once I beging to pull in the entire picture as you have then I must say I have no hope at all .

I am not just comparing the present to the better days in the past but the present as the reality of the madness that has bleed out of this time period in history .

I can't recall a more dangerous time other than the cuban missile crisis but we had some faith our president Kennedy would prevail . This was a scary time but nothing like now .

To me the time to save the planet has passed us by as the attention of most people is contained in nothingness or the objects of distraction .


Just to get a job you are forced to give away your rights and allow a big brother sort access to your entire life history , something is really wrong here .

and DOING something about all of it . . . but where I see a world collapsing faster than its individual parts rot, others apparently see nothing wrong with allowing corporations to overfish the oceans while turning them into sewers, defile the air we breath, pour all manner of new cancer-causing chemical compounds into the environment, screw around with the seeds that grow the food that nourishes us, put a 35,000% markup on a pill, pays CEOs 400 times the wages of workers, cut workers' benefits and steal their pensions, send our jobs overseas and devastate our manufacturing base, and on, and on, and on . . . as you so eloquently noted, "just trying to keep them all in my head at once is impossible" . . .

no one in government is willing to acknowledge the enormity of the crises we face, the REAL emergency confronting us, and no one in government is willing to stand up to those most at fault -- the corporations . . . because that's where they get their campaign funds . . . it's a system that must be torn down and replaced by something much, much better, because it will NEVER even approach solving any of these problems or the hundreds of others on our collective plate . . .

I fear for our future as a species, and for the future of the planet . . . and I certainly don't see the kind of public outrage and commitment that will be needed to even try to ensure the survival of either . . .

yeah . . . same generation . . .

Especially the corporations feeding the government system , this is the main reason why all our problems exist . Both the dems and repubs are fed from the same machine and we are the ones providing the road surface to support the wheels of both from sinking in the mud .

I don;t see the rage of the public either , I get the impression that as long as they can buy what they need they will continue to sit back , that is until they are hit with the same shovel across the face .

From the view of ever greater control over every aspect and second of life? Very optimistic.

That is, if we have the energy required to keep growing. If not, then we'll have enough trouble just in the present.