Slow learning: Martin Schweiger & Peter Nias’s Thought for the week

‘Our hopes of human utopias fell well short.’

by Martin Schweiger & Peter Nias 4th September 2026

Human existence, let alone advancement, is a continual work in progress. The Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ is a jagged graph, never a smooth line. Positive achievements on the one hand can be offset by intense distress on the other. Pestilence, famine, war (hot and cold), poverty, exploitation, and climate, all limit the size and health of the population, of the economy and of its politics.