Point is, I think people have always tended to be significantly more right than wrong about how to change the world. It’s not too too hard to understand how one person’s actions might contribute to an overriding global goal. The problem is in the choice of such an overriding paradigm. The first paradigm was that the world was stagnant/repetitive/decaying and just a prelude to the afterlife. The second paradigm was that the world is progressing and things will only get steadily better via science and reason. Today we largely reject both these paradigms, and instead we have a view of precarity—that an incredibly good future is in sight but only if we proceed with caution, wisdom, good institutions and luck. And I think the deepest risk is not that we are unable to understand how to make our civilization more cautious and wise, but that this whole paradigm ends up being wrong.
I like this description of your viewpoint a lot! The entire paradigm for “good outcomes” may be wrong. And we are unlikely to be aware of our paradigm due to “fish in water” perspective problems.
I like this description of your viewpoint a lot! The entire paradigm for “good outcomes” may be wrong. And we are unlikely to be aware of our paradigm due to “fish in water” perspective problems.