{"id":84485,"date":"2025-08-15T05:55:37","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T09:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=84485"},"modified":"2025-08-10T17:46:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T21:46:01","slug":"discuss-pessimism-about-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/08\/discuss-pessimism-about-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"DISCUSS: Pessimism About the Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Michael Brendan Dougherty has written a piece for National Review<\/em> entitled No Hope for a NASA Revival<\/a>\u00a0with the deck, \u201cIt\u2019s not just red tape holding back government-funded exploration and innovation. It\u2019s a new cultural pessimism about the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He argues that the reason space initiatives are in the doldrums is that Americans have become pessimistic about the future.\u00a0 This is in contrast to NASA\u2019s golden years that culminated in the moon landing, when America was confident, forward-looking, and excited about new technology.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t just technology and space travel.\u00a0 We had high hopes about the government, education, and society as a whole. We were excited about what the future will bring.<\/p>\n

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I remember that feeling well.\u00a0 Today, though, our new technology\u2013read, AI\u2013is more likely to fill us with dread.\u00a0 Today, we have much of what we thought back then that the future will bring. And more:\u00a0 no one in the 1960s anticipated such wonders as personal computers, the internet, streaming television, or (my favorite) global positioning devices.\u00a0 And yet, we are dismayed, depressed, and cynical.<\/p>\n

And are even progressives optimistic about government, education, society?<\/p>\n

Do you share that \u201ccultural pessimism about the future\u201d?\u00a0 Is there a sense, though, in which pessimism about the future is better than excessive optimism about the future?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A writer says that trying to revive the space program is futile because of our current “cultural pessimism about the future.” Do you share that pessimism?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":59751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,20,40,44],"tags":[10898,1704,16886,9536,16721],"class_list":["post-84485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-science","category-technology","tag-optimism","tag-pessimism","tag-progress","tag-sixties","tag-space-program"],"yoast_head":"\nDISCUSS: Pessimism About the Future?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A writer says that trying to revive the space program is futile because of our current "cultural pessimism about the future." 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