Why am I so gloomy about the future of the human species? Is it me? Is it my advancing age? Is it the idiocy of my immediate environment? Is it the spirit of the times, dominated by so many aging babyboomers such as myself? Is it the rapid accumulation of dire facts: the collapse of international economic order, the extinction of so many animal species, the relentless advance of climate change? Is it the demise of the dream of space colonization that would open untold possibilities for the advancement of our species? Or is it some unfathomable combination of all the above, which will forever hinder me from coming to grips with any meaningful answers to these simple questions?

Addendum (October 3, 2016)

Indeed, it is the combination of all these simple questions that makes me so gloomy about the future of the human species. Besides, there are ever more questions of this ilk. When will the international economic order collapse again exposing quantitative easing as yet another unsustainable bubble? When will galloping environmental degradation lead to widespread hunger in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? When will the growing migration from these impoverished continents toward Europe and North America lead to another conflagration of international proportions? And when will several such conflagrations result in World War III? One more time, it is the unfathomable combination of these simple questions that makes me ever gloomier. In fact, the future of the human species strikes me as a contradiction in terms. Future, what future?