When everything looks pretty bleak I like to remind myself that in the grand scheme of things, the world really is better off than it was only 200 or so years ago, which is such a small amount of time in terms of the human story.

In that time child labor, (most forms of) child abuse, and the selling of children has gone from widely accepted to largely illegal and widely reviled. These kinds of protections for this vulnerable class of people ultimately stemmed from decreases in mortality for the ages of 0-15 so I see our modern concept of childhood to be a monument to human compassion and progress.

In the past two centuries all sort of liberation movements have sprung up and gained traction all over the world, many of which have rendered real progess and are on the path to accomplish more. More and more people genuinely care about what happens to people in countries on the other side of the planet, the global outpouring of support for the Palestinian liberation movement is a testament to that.

We have the concept of “war crimes” now. Even amidst the horrors of war there are limits to what people can and cannot do to eachother. I think that suggests that “might makes right” is a dying concept and there may come a day (far in the future tbh) where the institution of war may be abolished entirely. (I realize that the concept of human rights and war crime is unevenly applied but the fact that it exists at all says something about our ideals)

I have like a zillion examples that I think about to remind myself that people are largely good and it is reasonable to hope for the future. However I gotta skedaddle so I’ll leave you with this:

You care, and you’re not special, that means that other people care too and you’ll never be alone in that. The first step towards making things better is to give a fuck so yeah thats the post.