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Last week I had my annual physical check-up. I respect my doctor very much! Quite frankly for me, he is perfect. And yet, this last check-up left me feeling sad. I was happy to visit with an intelligent friendly guy, but he didn’t give me what I wanted. I asked him for some happy pills because I have been feeling morose lately.

My problem isn’t so much with myself, it’s with the world at large as seen through the eyes of the authors I’ve been reading. Most of the modern authors are dealing with current problems and the disasters we are living within at the moment. In almost every dimension the immediate situation is wonderful for almost everyone, and the single measure of that seemingly absurd statement is that a smaller percentage of people are presently starving than at any time in history. The natural state is a starving margin as is demonstrated by the fact that the human population has grown at a tiny rate through most of its history, but the current world population has doubled twice during my lifetime.

The current problems we face are created and mediated by human beings. The book The Perfect Weapon by David E. Sanger probably gives as accurate a report on the top level of human society as is available and it’s disgusting. The lying and cheating are bad enough, but the saddening part is the efforts of the various leaders to undermine competing leaders’ power base and cause confusion, pain, and death among the common people in the opposing countries. It seems crazy to me that their efforts to help their own people result in destroying foreign people.

In the long run, that kind of behavior is boringly repetitive, at least according to The Next Million Years by Charles Galton Darwin. In that time frame, the ugliness we see is an ugly constant to the human condition.

Am I living a fantasy when I propose kinder ways for people to live longer and healthier and much happier lives? On August 11, 2019, I compared the selfish and kind paths. Perhaps that statement was accurate in the sense that for dictatorial leaders life style #28 is best, but for almost everyone else #27 is better. 

I also recently read another emotional downer of a book, The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells. It is a must-read, but when reading any of those books be prepared to experience ennui for the human condition.

I asked my doctor for some happy pills, but he thought I needed to get some counseling, or stop reading these kinds of books.