Alain de Botton: For the last 200 years, despite occasional shocks, the Western world has been dominated by a belief in progress, based on its extraordinary scientific and entrepreneurial achievements. But from a broader historical perspective, this optimism is an anomaly. We find ourselves divided between a plausible expectation that tomorrow will be much like today and the possibility that we will meet with an appalling event after which nothing will ever be the same. It isn’t that love and work are invariably incapable of delivering fulfillment—only that they almost never do for too long.
Recently: It seems very important as an adult to have a good relationship to your own envy.
Also: The strangest thing about the world of work is the widespread expectation that our work should make us happy.
Eric G. Wilson: What drives this rage for complacency, this desperate contentment? Are some people lying, or are they simply afraid to be honest in a culture in which the status quo is nothing short of manic bliss?
From the archive: This is a paradox common to technological existence: everything gets a little easier and a little less real.
Peter Schiff: I think things are going to get very bad.
The Consolations of Pessimism | 
