The world is good

We are living in a time of unprecedented and unalloyed good.  Did you know, that in the entire history of earth, there have never been more submarines than there are today?  It's true.  They're everywhere, looking at kelp and fish and such.  So when people complain about the problems of today's world, whether it's inequality or health care or what have you, I just have you laugh and say, you selfish shit, have you even considered how many submarines are out there, zipping around right now, even as you complain?  How circumscribed and blinkered and pathetic is your world view that you're unable to see the link between human progress and the number of submarines out there?

Do we face challenges today?  Most likely.  But we've faced challenges in the past and we've continued to ignore them and construct submarines.  Roman society had just as much inequality and violence as us, or more even, with no ability to climb aboard an underwater vessel and cruise around underneath boats.  Let me repeat that -- THE ANCIENT ROMANS HAD ZERO SUBMARINES.  Is that the world you'd like to return to?  A world where the surface of the water was as far as you could go?  I didn't think so.

And progress is only speeding up.  In 1900, we had almost zero submarines.  By 1950 -- many.  Today -- even more.  At this rate of change, we can expect, within our lifetimes, a number of submarines that is even larger than the current number.  Imagine it: a paradise, oceans heaving with submarines, and perhaps submarines in lakes as well, or even on land.  As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, the arc of history is long, but it bends towards [more submarines].

When I was a boy, I dreamed of stepping onto a submarine and taking it out into the ocean and sinking and sinking until I arrived at Hell, where my cruel brother's soul toiled.  As submarines proliferate, I now understand Hell to be just a kind of metaphor.