One of my favorite questions is whether the world is getting better or getting worse. Personally, I can remember almost the day when I started to think that things might actually be getting better. I've felt much better about things and my place in the world since then. It made a real difference.
In order of easy accessibility:
1- This video from The Rational Optimist is 2 minutes, and gives the basic idea behind his book, which is a bit polemical, but it's very worth the read to hear some clear-headed arguments against a lot of what I'd call conscientious citizen standards (organic food for one.
2- Louis CK nails it, this is hilarious, and it's 4 minutes.
3- This video is fun, it's 8 min, but it makes you think a bit differently. Plus it hails from my man, Ken Wilber world.
4- The 1900's House- It's on youtube! A documentary chronicling an experiment where a modern family lives in a 1900 replica house in London. It's a nice watch. Fast forward to episode 8 to see them get started. Nothing is more compelling about how much better things are than this show.
5- Watch Hans Rosling's TEDTalk. You've probably seen it, but the stats visuals are less impressive to me than the fact that poverty is going down, life expectancy up!
6- Bjorn Lomborg's TEDTalk is also awesome. Basically, climate change is not as big of a deal because in the future, we'll be so much better off, it'll be so much easier to deal.
7- This article about the bet between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich (Population Bomb guy) is what actually swayed me to the optimist side. And I was a huge Ehrlich fan at the time.
8- I think everything Eric Drexler says is true, and his book/lecture Radical Abundance is optimistic about nanotech.
9- Ray Kurzweil. Big bite.
10- The ultimate is Ken Wilber. But that's a huge, huge bite.
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