Hope

I was home December 26th, my first day of vacations after a troublesome year, which felt more like a roller-coaster ride. I used my free time to hear again old vinyl records I still have and, among them, I heard again the "Live at Budokan" double album by Bob Dylan. The record, as in the live appearances by the musician, ends with the incredibly optimistic anthem "The times, they are a-Changin'" .

This song seems to scream "no matter how hard are present times, tomorrow it will be better". An idea crossed my mind, would Robert Zimmerman still maintain his optimism in the present days? Of course, this took only seconds and I concluded easily he much probably would answer "yes!" to this question.

We have a tendency to look only for the bad this happening, and are quick to consider that the past times were better, nothing is as far from reality as this statement.

Fact is that Mankind already reached incredible achievements, we managed to eradicate smallpox, we broke the gravitational limits of our own sun sending two automated probes to the Galaxy (and sending our message, the image I chose to illustrate this article), we wrote the "Universal declaration of human rights".

Of course, we have also negative achievements to report, the antivax movement, practically the same since Jenner's time, still cast doubt about the tool that help us curb mortality rates. Poverty and famine are still growing and this is inconsistent with the technological achievements we have. Finally the fascists are back, criticizing human rights as something that would help bandits, and of course, we all are watching passively the incredible suffering of fellow humans in the Gaza strip without doing something to stop.

It seems that humanity gives two steps forward and one step backwards. The fact is that progress is slow. If we consider that a typical human being takes about 20 years to procreate, we could consider this is the size of one generation. What we know as "civilization" has at most 6000 years of existence, this means that we are talking about 300 generations, and this only if your ancestors come from old cultures like China, India, the fertile crescent, or Mesoamerica. If your ancestors come form less developed regions of the world, like Europe, North America or Japan, what separates you from the uncivilized times are perhaps 100 or 150 generations. In any case, this is too few.

Therefore we should not abandon hope that we are moving forward, tomorrow will indeed be better and it is our duty to work in this direction.