I have a new column this week on OnlySky. It’s about an enduring consolation from the golden age of philosophy.
As the story goes, an ancient king asked his sages for wisdom that would be true and helpful in both good times and bad. The sages’ reply was: “This too shall pass.”
Like the Golden Rule, this is a maxim that doesn’t originate from just one culture. It’s been independently invented by people in various times and places. And like the Golden Rule, it’s stood the test of time because it’s a sound principle. It’s still relevant to us today, and it can bear us up in dark times if we let it. Remembering the transience of our circumstances is a valuable antidote both to hubris and to despair.
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column is free to read, but paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter:
In the depths of darkness, in times of ascendant fascism and societal disintegration, present bias leads us to despair. It seduces us into believing that that humans are inherently corrupt and evil and that the cause of progress is hopeless. It tells us that things will never change, so belief in a better tomorrow is foolish naivete.
In good times, too, present bias leads us astray. It’s one of the reasons why people don’t save for rainy days, why they’re not prepared for a layoff, a health crisis or any other unexpected blow. It’s why lottery winners blow through their fortunes, because they believe they’ll have limitless money forever.
On a larger scale, present bias is the reason liberal voters’ hopes end up dashed time and time again. We have a habit of getting too excited, hailing every progressive victory as the dawning of a new era of enlightenment. But history tends to move in cycles of advance and retrenchment. When the inevitable backlash appears and undoes some or all of what was achieved, it comes as a crushing disappointment, all the more so because it was unexpected.
Quote from the linked article;
Those of us who have been around a bit can remember when John Galbraith offered the same vision in the late 1950’s (obviously not with the AI part). There are today enough resources to feed, cloth, house, provide medical care, sanitation, electricity and internet access to everyone on the planet. The reasons we can’t, and don’t, are largely due to greed, pride, nationalism, bigotry, ignorance, a lack of empathy, a desire for power, and unregulated capitalism.
Thirty years ago I was optimistic that the increased ability to communicate with other people, nations, cultures, via the internet would reduce nationalism, bigotry, and ignorance while increasing empathy. Now I’m not so certain. If the internet is responsible for increases in intolerance and hate, it would be due to algorithms being used by unregulated capitalism to increase the number of clicks. Social bubbles existed prior to the algorithms which try to present a viewer topics which may be of interest to them, but they were not as hard to penetrate.
A completely post-scarcity society is not possible as there are absolute limits on some goods and resources. But we could be a lot closer if we could start looking at money as a means to facilitate the transfer of goods/services and not as a representation of power.
I’m reminded of a slogan that some of my Quaker friends say:
The point is that we should not judge the worthiness of what we are doing by whether we believe it will succeed in what we want, least of all whether it willl succeed in the near future. If it’s worthwhile, it’s worth doing. Moreover, we never really know what the ultimate effect will be.