People across the world’s richest countries no longer think the future will be better than the present. Progress has stalled, most now believe, and our descendants will be worse off than we are today.
The idea of progress as an inevitable historical force was born in the Western world. Is it drawing its last breath there, too? Belief in progress has never gone unchallenged. A strain of declininsm has always accompanied it, even in eras of confidence and expansion. For every enlightened rationalist, a romantic pessimist; for every techno-utopian, a climate-doomer. Still, the degree to which the contemporary West is steeped in a mood of decline is striking. Pessimists seem to have crowded out the optimists.
Is this situation merely a blip – a reaction to turbulent times – or is it becoming a semi-permanent condition? In this issue, we explore how our hopes and fears shape our ability to imagine future utopias, collapse, and dystopias in an age of pessimism.