With disaster in the daily news and constant talk about the problem of smart technology taking over our attention and thus our lives it can be easy to yearn for older days where facebook notifications and phone calls didn’t interrupt our lives. Days where automatic machine guns, nuclear warfare and cyber terrorism weren’t realities of life. It is easy to think of our world as a dangerous place and the past as the golden years where innovation was possible and living a fruitful life more achievable.
What is Rational Optimism?
It is easy to call something in the past a golden age or to forget what it was like when we have some distance from it. It is easy to believe that the current time is a disaster and forget that our ancestors likely felt the same but minus the central heating, running water and sewage system. 
While it is a stretch to say everything is getting better, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, challenges the idea that the world is more dangerous and a less fertile environment for change today than it was centuries past. In the ‘golden past’ the average person was subjected to more violence and had shorter lives due to disease and lack of basic health care. The distance between cities and people from various backgrounds made the mixing of ideas and possibilities farther and fewer between. Opportunities education was limited to those from the proper class, correct gender or with enough financial means. [canvakala-video src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UPatfgoNBRo"] We have challenges unique to this time to work with, but rational optimism can be a great way as a business owner to see both the opportunities and possible issues. Taking advantage of present day advantages like energy efficiency, the ability to exchange and collaborate on ideas at record speed with the help of the internet.
