Faith in humanity

I’m reading the popular science fiction novel Three Body Problem and it’s been fantastic so far. It’s a good fiction novel that does an excellent job tying in humanity and our progress with an impending alien invasion.

I’m about 75% of the way through the book and there’s two more in the series afterwards so I’ll keep things high level for now. But the premise of the book is that there’s another civilization in a galaxy far away that is looking for a more stable solar system. They’ve made contact with Earth and will arrive in 450 years.

Meanwhile, earth is preparing for the upcoming “invasion” and a group called the ETO has different views on how we should view this looming visit. About half of the group is lead by Adventists who have lost faith in humanity and believe that this new civilization should eradicate humanity.

Of course, this is a fiction novel, but the potential realism of a scenario like this is probably what’s most fascinating to me. I doubt anyone has taken a NPS of humanity on a global scale, but my guess is that it’s at a fairly low point and has been trending downwards.

As humans, we seem unhappier by the day despite the fact that the world has indeed gotten better. The advent of social media and the internet has made us much more connected, but at the same time, we’re also more privy to all the bad things happening in real-time.

In reality, the world has progressed in many ways over the last 100 years. We’re wealthier than we have been. We’ve had the most sustained peace at a global scale perhaps in human history. We have a long ways to go still as a race, but I wouldn’t bet against us for solving some of the world’s problems.

I have faith in humanity and hope that in a future alien invasion, we’ll be much more optimistic in ourselves.