We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.
I know my strengths. Painfully aware of the weaknesses. There's many. I love sports. So working towards a common goal, that's exciting to me.
Globalisation has made us more vulnerable. It creates a world without borders, and makes us painfully aware of the limitations of our present instruments, and of politics, to meet its challenges.
Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else.