An Illustrated Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

An Illustrated Short History of Progress examines human civilization as a whole, past present and future. Most modern humans lack the discretion for introspection at the civilization level. The importance placed on past and future generations pales in comparison to immediate needs. What we don’t realize as a whole is that satisfying our immediate desires with limited resources steals from our future generations. Unfortunately now more than ever a politician who plans too far ahead will swiftly be shunned in favor of those promising instant gratification.

This book points out how past civilizations rose quickly and fell just as quick. Each past civilization that has fallen thought of themselves as immune to what demolished previous attempts. The book explains how we too are simply replaying what occurred in the past, only on a much larger scale.

I do not believe it is too late to take action to avoid a similar fate. In contrary, though I could be naive, I think we have ample time. But I am disheartened at the lack of awareness of the issues. If we continue procrastinating, we may have missed our last chance to figure out this civilization thing.