The Best Time to Be Alive

Are you worried about your future?

Worse, do you even have a future?

Many—especially those born in this century—are asking themselves these questions.  

In 2021 researchers at the University of Bath in England polled 10,000 people all over the world between the ages of 16 and 25.

Seventy-five percent thought that the “future is frightening.” 

Fifty-six percent thought that “humanity” is coming to an end.  

Thirty-nine percent stated that they were “hesitant to have children” because the future was so bleak. 

Are their fears legitimate?

Or is it possible there’s another side—a brighter side—to the story?

That we are, in fact, the most fortunate human beings—ever. 

Just how lucky are we?

The late great satirist P. J. O’Rourke summed it up in one word. 

Dentistry.

One could easily add electricity, air conditioning, and—lest we forget—indoor plumbing.

Louis XIV’s magnificent palace of Versailles had no proper waste facilities. People relieved themselves where they stood: in hallways, behind curtains, and in the gardens. One contemporary observer noted that Versailles was “the receptacle of all of humanity’s horrors—the passageways, corridors, and courtyards are filled with urine and fecal matter.”

This is Louis XIV we’re talking about—maybe the richest man on earth at the time. 

Ask yourself this question: would you prefer to live in a studio apartment with electricity, a window air conditioner, and indoor plumbing or a Versailles palace with none of these things? 

In nineteenth-century London, American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that no one wore white shirts—the pollution indoors turned everything black. 

Here’s another blessing: antibiotics. 

In 1924 Calvin Coolidge, Jr., the son of the President of the United States, died from a blister from playing tennis on the White House court. “Many of the best doctors of the day were consulted, multiple diagnostic tests were run, and he was admitted to one of the top hospitals in the country,” Chelsea Follett, my colleague at the Cato Institute, has written, yet “he died within a week of infection.… Deaths from... infection of a minor cut or blister were extremely common at the time and no amount of wealth or power could save a patient.”

In almost every way life is materially better than it was in the past. 

And not just the distant past either. 

In 1997, a 42-inch TV screen cost $15,000. Today you can buy one for under $200.  

So why aren’t we more excited about the future and the new wonders that await us there? 

Because human beings are born complainers. Negative emotions are much more powerful and longer-lasting than positive ones. That’s just the way we’re wired. 

But the truth is if you are living today, you are the beneficiary of countless life enhancements. And not just in developed countries—almost everywhere. 

Consider the following global statistics.

• Between 1950 and 2020, the average inflation-adjusted income per person rose over 300 percent.

• Between 1960 and 2023, the average life expectancy rose 46 percent from 50 years to 73 years.

• Between 1961 and 2017, the daily supply of calories rose 38 percent from 2100 to 2900. Today, even in Africa, obesity is a growing concern.

• Worried about the environment? There’s plenty of good news there, too. 

• The chance of a person dying in a natural catastrophe—earthquake, flood, drought, storm, wildfire, or landslide—fell by almost 99 percent over the last century.

• Between 1982 and 2016, the global tree canopy cover increased by an area larger than Alaska and Montana combined.

• In 2017, the World Database on Protected Areas reported that 15 percent of the planet’s land surface was covered by protected areas. That’s an area almost double the size of the United States.  

With so much good news around us, why are we so gloomy? 

Part of the problem is primeval. 

We have evolved to be on the lookout for danger. That was the best way to survive when being eaten by a saber tooth tiger was a real possibility. But, while the world has changed, our genes have not. And our genes are programmed for danger. 

The media plays on our fears. Social media has it down to a science. As one study recently found, “for a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%.” And so, in a fierce competition for eyeballs, the sky is falling every day all day. 

We are literally scaring ourselves to death, with rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicide rising in some parts of the world. 

So, then, how can you maintain your mental composure and keep matters in perspective? Here’s the answer: follow the trendlines, not the headlines. 

Not only will that put you in a better frame of mind, it will put you closer to the truth. 

And the truth is, you have a lot to look forward to. 

I’m Marian Tupy, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of Superabundance, for Prager University.