The Tip of an Iceberg

Recently I have been spending some spare time reading responses to The Edge's latest question for 2007. "What are you optimistic about? Why?" The Edge collects responses from a series of thought leaders and innovative thinkers. Included in this list are the co-founder of Wikipedia, Nobel Prize winners in physics, and many other people with more impressive qualifications than me.

Today I took the time to read Brian Eno's response. For those of who don't know him, he's an artist, composer and music producer for bands like U2 and Paul Simon. Despite finding some typos in the response (odd), I found the following quotes pretty interesting (either in their original context, or in the case of the first one, when the context was eliminated).

"The future may be a bit more like Sweden and a bit less like America."

"...the ever-accelerating empowerment of people. The world is on the move, communicating and connecting and coalescing into influential blocks which will move power away from national governments with their short time horizons and out into vaguer, more global consensual groups."

"...that you don't need centralized top-down control to produce intelligent results."

I have, of course, asked myself what I am optimistic about and why. One of the things I have noticed is that the vast majority of the answers I have to this question instinctually occur on a personal level. As a result, I am wondering if that is a reflection of my perceived sphere of influence or simply a reflection of the fact that I am self absorbed.

When I expand my frame of reference to a local community level, I think I maintain an optimistic outlook. When I expand my frame of reference to a national level, I start to find it difficult to identify optimistic themes and in general, feel pessimistic. Approaching the question from a global perspective I drift a little back towards positive thinking but it is heavily tempered with doubt.

In general, I am struggling with my responses and reaction to this question. I am not sure why I feel that my most relevant optimistic answers cannot extend past a local level without feeling contrived or becoming crowded by some pessimism. I believe that I may be thinking about the question from a "current event" perspective as my frame of reference expands....and perhaps that is short sighted.

I need to keep thinking about this some more.