What a different world

. . . re: the attitude toward human-ness.

When I was growing up it was all “wow, what achievements.” Synthetic fabrics and a moon walk.

David Watson: “History had been filled with prometheans — Sargon, Caesar, Columbus, Ford, Lenin, Einstein. It was their story … domesticating chaos, splitting the atom and the gene, all to a utopian, messianic fanfare.”

Within the span of just five or six decades the attitude has shifted dramatically:

https://wwnorton.com/books/Something-New-Under-the-Sun/

Even in the messaging to children:

https://www.candlewick.com/cat.asp?browse=Title&mode=book&isbn=1536226130

Beginning at one minute before midnight and traveling across the globe hour by hour, the book follows two children as they fly around the planet. At each stop on this fantastical journey, they learn about animal species imperiled by habitat degradation, a heating climate, human predation and the like. Miraculously, this is not a sad book. Ms. Davies takes care to explain how all is not yet lost for these creatures, that we can still save them.