Not necessarily. Smart people don't comprehend the big picture in its entirety: they just grasp more, on average, than less intelligent people.
There are plenty of smart people who don't abuse substances. Plenty of those people are actively pushing to move the world ahead, and they're succeeding. Things are better now than ever. The people who see the bad in the world are going to be brighter and less oblivious, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of good and better things happening.
I don't think it's constantly ascending. I think that over any lengthy period of time, things are getting better. Every century we understand more about the universe and about ourselves than we did just a little while ago. That's a good sign.
I know humanity is capable of ridiculous evils. At the same time, though, it's capable of breathtaking goods. When I think about the future, those goods are what I focus on. Yes, the evils will happen - but why bother worrying about them too much? They'll pass.
That's a reason why you ought to be cautious for your own sake: why you should always be aware of your surroundings and of the things happening around you and even around your country. But you can't live your life in constant fear. Even if that helps you survive, that's a miserable life to live.
I think it helps to admit that you might die at any minute, and then throw that into a small, survival-geared part of your mind and go about living your life anyway. Fact of the matter is, a great deal of people live long and happy lives, and for most people live is pretty good. Too many bright people throw out the evidence of happiness to dwell on the bad.
I might trade living in the 90's for right now but there is not other time in the history of the US which I would prefer than right now. There are plenty of country's which are worse off now than they where 5 years ago but in the US with some minor variations the further back you go the worse things get.
This is what we call optimism. Just as having both risk-loving and risk-averse people creates a more stable species, so does having optimists and pessimists.
Its a perfectly reasonable thing to believe--just like its opposite--and depends solely on how you're measuring. All in all, I think it depends on the reduce function. If it was reduce(lambda a,b: a+b,[ x.happiness for x in humanity ]), then maybe there is the most happy the world has ever seen. If you took that number and divided it by the population, than maybe the average happy per person has gotten lower. And so on and so on.
> If it was reduce(lambda a,b: a+b,[ x.happiness for x in humanity ])
Well, when you put it that way, Batman...
I'm very optimistic for my own life and for things that I can manage. I'm not optimistic for humanity as a whole at any given time, nor am I pessimistic. History is history, and we are all victims of human nature. Good will happen, bad will happen, the lot of some will improve as the lot of others worsens.
There are plenty of smart people who don't abuse substances. Plenty of those people are actively pushing to move the world ahead, and they're succeeding. Things are better now than ever. The people who see the bad in the world are going to be brighter and less oblivious, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of good and better things happening.