Last night, my teenage son recited the famous first paragraph from A Tale of Two Cities. He’s reading it for class. I chuckled while he said the words with flourish, but it also it struck me that the paragraph captures much of today’s discussion of the economy, society, and globe.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
— Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”