Abundance

Abundance shows you the key technological trends being developed today, to give you a glimpse of a future that’s a lot brighter than you think and help you embrace the optimism we need to make it happen.

If you’re convinced we’re in a permanent, downward spiral and everything’s going to get worse, all the time, no matter what we do, you’re what Peter Thiel calls an indefinite pessimist in Zero to One.

At least this state is curable, and you’re most likely in it for the two following reasons:

Your lizard brain dominates your behavior. You look at the news a lot.

The first factor describes the ancient structure of our brain, which isn’t all too suited for the modern world. What Seth Godin describes as the hungry, scared, angry and horny lizard brain, which must be quieted, is truly your amygdala, your fear radar, which puts you in fight or flight mode every time it sees even the slightest threat. Most of the things that trigger it today, aren’t real threads, however, because neither a yelling boss, nor a ringing phone or pressing the publish button on a blog post will kill you.

The second part is about the news blowing everything out of proportion and focusing on the bad headlines, because shock, horror and fear get the most clicks.

Calm down, cut the news chord and look at some statistics: you’ll see the world has never been a better, safer place to live a long, healthy, wealthy and abundant life.

It’s right that we face many complex problems today, but looking at them individually is a mistake. The future will sure seem hopeless if you think of our increasing need of energy, climate change, environmental pollution, population growth and world hunger as separate problems.

But they’re not.

For example, eradicating Malaria will not only mean better health for African people, it’ll also improve their economic situation, because less people will be unable to work and more tourists will flock to the continent, because it is now safer. Also, since most cases affect children, as mortality rates go down, so will birth rates. There’s no need for African mothers to bear seven children, when they can be sure that their first two kids will actually survive.

Similarly, generating high-density energy from algae, which can be grown in salt water, will not only solve the need for more energy, but also lessen the environmental burden, because less crop has to be farmed for the same purpose.

You see, the world’s most complex problems all relate to each other, which means we never solve just one of them – progress always means progress in several areas.