"The Second Coming"

Will the center hold? Good question. Ever since Yeats posed that question in his great poem, “The Second Coming,” I have felt that, yes, despite there being so many reasons for pessimism, the argument in favor of optimism held greater sway. That is still the only reasonable alternative. The competing choice leads down too dark a road to contemplate. Stephen Pinker argues that we have the intellectual and technological skills we need to solve even the most urgent problems that…