Roger Ebert's bleak assessment of the next 100 years

He was with me until he started bringing earthquakes and volcanoes into the mix. What's bringing that about? Too many fat people pressing on the Earth?

Sure, there's a lot of crap going on right now but sometimes it comes in bunches. When that happens, folks start noticing the old plaster crack over the sofa and the basement sink that's leaked for years, and everything starts looking like a disaster.

It sounds like Roger just sat down to write on an 'off' day. That would have been me about a week ago. Things are bad (they're _always_ bad to someone) but they're not '100 years' bad.

Pour yourself another eggnog and add a bit more rum to it than usual. We'll resume tackling our difficulties tomorrow.

For now, we could all use a moment's pause to collect our wits. Let's pull our way out of this in 2009.

I've always been a fan of of John Stossel and a while back he had a special on "10 foolish myths". The number one myth was "Life just keeps getting worse". Here's a summary I found on-line, written by Mr Stossel(here:http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_28_05_JS....)...

"Life getting worse is myth No.1 because in TV newsrooms, I hear a constant whine about life getting worse: avian flu will kill us if terrorism doesn't get us first; crime and pollution keep increasing, and the poor are suffering. But in truth, life keeps getting better. We live longer than ever, and with less pain (think about dental care in the 1960s). Crime is down. In America, even poor people have homes, cars, and access to music and other entertainment that was once only available to royalty. Pollution? The air and water keep getting cleaner. I jumped in the Hudson River not long ago to illustrate the point. There I was, swimming away and looking up at the Empire State building. Despite eight million people flushing nearby, the health department says swimming in the Hudson is now perfectly safe."

To me that pretty much says it all. Desepite the nay-sayers the world has gotten better and better. In no small part thanks to technology.

In fact, I think it's oddly appropriate that this shows up on Hacker News because Mr. Ebert's outlook is exactly what technological minded people should be fighting against.

Only through optimism can we realize all the good we are capable of doing.

That article wasn't Ebert's bleak assessment of the next 100 years. It was his review of the new Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man."

How come everyone in the media is reporting such dire consequences? Do they plan to scare people? Why can't they just motivate people. Suggest things that need to be done, what changes need to be made, instead of criticizing everything? I think it's not the time to go over the same things over and over again, it's time to try and get back on our feet again. And the media should be ashamed of not playing an integral part in it.

There is a rising cynicism today that reminds me of growing up in post-watergate America (I was born in 1967). We survived that previous wave of downspirit and this wave will also pass. There's no guarantees in life that our world will survive a 100 years but there's no reason to give up hope either.

Still, I'm a big fan of Ebert and appreciate his essays. As always, I take his opinions as food for thought.

I like Ebert's writings on movies a lot. But in this case, I get the sense that old age is a factor. Or more precisely, a certain rather distinctive kind of pessimism that sometimes afflicts old people. It happened to a professor of mine that I love. And earlier this year I heard an NPR piece about the 100th birthday of Claude Lévi-Strauss that talked about how he had lost all hope for humanity. As I said, there's a kind of distinctive quality to this that makes me think it isn't really about the state of the human race... it's rather more self-centered than that (which sounds more judgmental than I'd like).

And maybe aliens will invade and enslave us all. That sounds about as likely as anything else he's saying.

I can't stand things like this. Instead of analyzing potential problems, looking for solutions, and encouraging people to work toward them, why do people proceed to assume the absolute worst case scenario for everything simultaneously and then sit back and say "it's so bad that there's nothing we can do to stop it"?

I hate it. It does nothing but depress you and make things worse, instead of making anything better.

Let's turn to someone with (possibly) more credibility than Roger Ebert. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, thinks number one issue facing us on this time scale is population growth:

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/land...

"Today what I’d like to do is spend a little time with you not on the close fight, but on the deep fight, and to look at three global trends that point to a 21st century that will undoubtedly be quite different from the century just ended. ... In thinking about the future, one of the most important things that our analysts brought to ... my attention was world demographics. ... Today, there are 6.7 billion people sharing the planet. By mid-century—by mid-century, the best estimates point to a world population of more than 9 billion. That’s a 40 to 45 percent increase—striking enough—but most of that growth is almost certain to occur in countries least able to sustain it, and that will create a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism—not just in those areas, but beyond them as well."

He goes on to talk about demographics in different regions of the world and how this will affect Americans.

I kind of buy it.

I know it's human to turn these issues into stories, but:

One partner has been laid off, the other fears the same.

This implies an unemployment rate that is, at a minimum, twice that of the Great Depression at its worst. If we hit 10% unemployment, we're still at 90% employment -- the majority of us will have jobs (that don't pay as well as we'd hoped, that don't move along as fast as we'd like).

What a depressing bit of hang-wringing.

As a movie aficionado, I've been watching Ebert for a long time. Ebert makes a great point to somebody else's counterpoint when it comes to movie reviews.I like him, and I like watching him.

I don't share his view of reality, and I'll put a hundred bucks down that his vision of the next 100 years is wildly pessimistic. That's not saying that bad things won't happpen -- it wouldn't surprise me to see a nuke used in terrorism within the next 30 years -- but overall the next 100 years will be as great as the last 100.

People have lamented the dismal and rapidly decaying state of society since the beginning of time and yet here we sit.

I share his politics, but not his outlook.

Not Hacker News? Well, more so than some of the other political stuff here: Ebert is probably one of the best "blog" writers working today, and it's been fascinating watching him acclimate over the last year.

Typical case of watching too many news on TV. Cure: stop watching (or reading) the news.

Although I admit I also feel a bit uneasy about living so far removed from food production.

Well it was nice knowing y'all. I'll be in my underground bunker until all this blows over...

He brought up every "doom and gloom" scenario except the feared and scarce-mentioned-aloud "man-bear-pig".

Neither the Pakistan-India nor the Israel-Palestine situation is beyond hope of being solved.

The planet is resilient, and with proper policy making, the Arctic ice will return.

The economy is in recession to be sure, but recessions have happened before, and a good Keynesian approach to it should work - as Nixon said, "we are all Keynesians now".

So while Mr. Ebert continues to warn us about the perils of man-bear-pig and the like, I think the rest of us should think about good, practical solutions, to real, solvable problems. Hysteria doesn't get us anywhere. Smart policy does, and frankly I think the President-elect is on the right track so far.