Three things true at once

At the end of a year there are usually two moods on offer, and both of them are lazy.

One says things are fine and getting finer. Look how much has improved: the roads, the hospitals, the medicine our grandparents never had, the cousin who gets to study what she likes. The other says things are broken. Look at the news, the prices, the wars, the heat, the friend who cannot find work.

Each mood keeps half the evidence and drops the rest.

The harder position is to hold three facts in one hand. Life for most people is far better than it was a few generations ago. A great deal is still dreadful. And it could get much better than it is. None of these cancels the others. The progress does not make the suffering acceptable, and the suffering does not make the progress fake.

Holding all three is not a midpoint between hope and despair. It is a stance of its own, and it has an old name, meliorism: the belief that the human condition can be improved by effort, a little at a time. Not perfected. Not rescued in one move. Improved.

It is an unglamorous idea, which may be why so few people argue for it. It promises no arrival. It asks only that today leave things slightly better than yesterday did, and that tomorrow do the same again.

It is slow, and it is how most of what got better actually got better.