What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

by Tim Urban

It’s natural to assume that the world we grew up in is normal. But nothing about our current world is normal.

As the times get better, they also get more dangerous. More technology makes our species more powerful, which increases risk.

if the good and bad keep exponentially growing, it doesn’t matter how great the good times become. If the bad gets to a certain level of bad, it’s all over for us.

a thinking lens—a pair of glasses for the brain to help us better understand the world and ourselves.

In a lot of ways, modern humans are like modern moths, running on a well-intentioned Primitive Mind that’s constantly misinterpreting the weird world we’ve built for ourselves.

what’s our problem?—I believe this concept offers us our first clue: Our environment has been changing at breakneck speed.

The first part of our solution is awareness, and the gateway to awareness is humility.