I am on a mission to focus on reading more books this year and as a side note to attempt to adopt a more optimistic mindset. In that vein, I just finished a book that I think would interesting to many users on Steemit.

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley

Ridley's main premise is that human beings have been on a steady progression to more and more prosperity. Ridley hypotheses that this unparalleled progress has been due to 2 main drivers 1) Specialization of work and 2) Trade. The author argues that humankind was essentially stuck in a lateral pattern for a large majority of history. This pattern started breaking when humans began specializing in certain areas. When specialization allowed humans to work in other areas other than pure self-sufficiency (i.e. grow your own food, sew your own clothes etc) the living conditions of people began to rapidly improve. As the result of the specialization, people began trade which allowed for a more open exchange of ideas between people's that never would have occurred had the human race remained in the self-sufficiency mode. In turn the exchange of ideas caused and is still causing a massive growth of knowledge and technological improvements.

The book not only argues that the cause of humankind's prosperity was due to specialization and trade, he also wields convincing arguments that there is no reason why this unparalleled prosperity should not continue to expand exponentially and that the current negativism and doom and gloom modern-day arguments are more about selling a story than actual evidence. With wit and convincing statistics such as infant mortality rates, and a fascinating comparison of the number of hours of labor required for basic necessities now and in the past, Ridley strikes hard at the traditional "conservative" view that life was "better back in my day."

The fantastic thing about this book is that Ridley takes the reader on a history of mankind through this lens. Ridley weaves between pre-historic societies, Medieval societies and the modern-day. While on the ride many deep and thought-provoking insights are brought forward and one is left with a truly rational and optimistic view of the future. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.