The question, in the end: ‘Is the world getting better?’ I argued that it was… The others argued that the present generation was in a mess (I said, ‘What else would you expect? Would you trust them if they weren’t?’), and were soon celebrating the sixties as a time of certainty and consensus. I was saying that the sixties were flawed by a dichotomy - the contrast between the idea that, on the one hand, we could reinvent ourselves and, on the other, all the metaphysical stuff which claimed that we were fundamentally predestined beings. I said this was a paralysing collision, and that things were better now - what they were calling ‘lack of deep conviction’ I saw as a liberating pragmatism, a possibility for action that didn’t need the backing of ideology. I said that the reach of our empathy had extended - that we were willing to include more people (and other beings) in the word ‘us’ and that this constituted a change for the better.

- Brian Eno, 1995 from A Year With Swollen Appendices