I have written before that things are never as bad as they seem, once a longer perspective is viewed. I read often that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but comparisons with the recent past suggest that not a lot has gotten worse while many things have actually improved.

My life at high school was dominated by talk of an oil shock, environmental degradation, overpopulation, wars and rumours of wars, inflation, famine and the omnipresent threat of nuclear war. I know this because I have a list in my homework book in Year 9 that tells me so. More than likely, this was something I jotted down in history one day when I forgot my book.

The same notebook today might contain the following: global warming and environmental degradation, coronavirus, wars and rumours of wars, the still omnipresent threat of nuclear war, em (that's enough lists-ed.). Stubbornly, I would like to add, the attack on truth or the rise of the irrational, since what was held quite reasonably as expert opinion in the 1970's is now disputed by anyone with a mobile phone and five minutes to spend on google.

However, in the intervening years, medicine has improved, crop yields are higher, millions have been lifted from poverty, a hand-help device can give you access to vast amounts of information and so forth. So there are improvements to set against the deficits. As for billionaires jetting into space on expensive toys - I know not which side of the ledger this sits.

It could all be hell in a handbasket after all, but I am hoping that humans do muddle through and do not become the victims of a Great Filter. You know, the one whereby all technological civilisations eventually destroy themselves.