I must confess that I have always had a bit of a pessimistic streak running through most of my worldview. The world was in trouble, and getting worse. Now, thanks to the appropriately titled work by Matt Ridley, I have started thinking that maybe things won’t turn out so bad, after all.

Is there a time in history when you would have rather been born? Fifty years ago? Five hundred years ago? Five thousand? I had always held in the back of my mind the notion that there must have been some point in the past where civilization took a wrong turn, and that if we could only return to that simpler, kinder time and place, our current problems would melt away. But no such time exists. The best time to be alive, in terms of health, lifespan, freedom and prosperity, is today.

Matt Ridley goes to great lengths to show why that is the case. At the core of his argument is the idea that once humans figured out how to specialize production and trade with each other, our course towards ever-increasing prosperity was set. Starting in pre-history, he traces the origins of tool-making and trade, arguing that it was technological advances that enabled the agricultural revolution and the rise of cities, not the other way round. Once the ball of progress got rolling, it has just kept going, and shows no sign of slowing down.

The combination and re-combination of ideas, or as Ridley calls it, “ideas having sex”, has produced an unending stream of technology and innovation that has made the food supply stable and abundant (even with exponentially growing population), freed millions from the yoke of slavery (thanks to fossil fuels) and brought us to a world where countless producers daily meet the needs of countless consumers, all at the lowest possible price. And the price keeps dropping.

Of course, that is not to say that things are perfect. Ridley is careful to point out that there are challenges and threats. He explores why Africa seems to have stagnated when the rest of the developing world has made astonishing gains. He addresses climate change by arguing, not that it isn’t happening, but that the probability that global warming will have a large impact (at least in the next century) on the planet is small. If we are to be concerned about climate change, our best strategy is to move forward, full steam ahead, with economic development, to better mitigate its effects.

The book makes no mention of issues of justice, which left me wondering what the author might say about the distribution of our ever-increasing wealth. (See my review of The Spirit Level for more on inequality.) I suspect he would claim that the rising tide of progress will lift all boats, and that much of what continues to afflict humanity is humanity itself: our nature continues to be aggressive and possessive. People starve, now, because of political failures, and not because there is not enough food.

Reading The Rational Optimist, I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Odds are good that, in the long run, the world (and humanity) will be just fine. We are engaged in a march of progress, and not a race against time. But there is still much important work than needs doing: wrongs that need to be righted, suffering that needs alleviation and needs that want to be met. Rational optimism is not an invitation to relax and enjoy the gains we have accumulated, but rather a call to push forward into a future that, with effort (and specialization and trade), will surpass even what we can presently imagine.