We are all creatures of our times, but it’s important to remember that someone like Montaigne was as well. As scary as our current moment seems, how does it compare to France during religious wars of the 16th century?

It is estimated that 2-4 million people died during the multi-decade French civil wars, this in a country of around 20 million people. That would be the equivalent of 35-70 million Americans dying today. If this sounds impossibly high, keep in mind that the total excess deaths from the Stalin era in the Soviet Union likely reached 20 million.

Wars, famine, disease — all were rampant. Montaigne notes in several places how easy it was to be mistaken for the wrong side in any conflict and how he had to use his wits to stay out of trouble frequently.

There is nothing new under the sun, certainly as it involves the potential brutality of human beings. Everything negative we see and can anticipate has a far darker shadow through history. There is no golden age to return to, just a slow arc of progress we have to struggle to continue.

I write this as some perspective on what is going on in the world and as a continued embrace of what I wrote in my On Experience essay last year. We have at our disposal incredible gifts, if only we would use them. We have access to see and enjoy the world like never before. All the world’s music, literature, film, theater is easily accessible to us now.

The paradox is that most of the greatness we have in our reach is counter cultural. We are not experiencing a renaissance in these treasures, we have to pursue many of them alone. The popular culture, by contrast, is increasingly strange and bad for our mental health.

So we have to put in greater work than ever before to find the right people who will permit us to enjoy the world as it is possible. The people you’ve known since high school aren’t necessarily your people anymore. It takes some work to uncover the right niches.

Being an individual in 2025 is not all that difficult. It’s being social and sane that is increasingly challenging. We have to be able to filter out the toxic, while remaining aware of it. We have to be selective in who we let in, but not too rigid that we shut out only those who exist easiest in an echo chamber.

All of this is to say, for my 2025 update of my On Experience journey, is that I have no great profound deviation from last year’s essay this time. I largely embrace everything I wrote and I continue to believe that Montaigne’s embodied, experiential stance in life is the correct one. It’s still useful to read Montaigne, but even more importantly, it’s essential to keep his open minded approach to life.

One year later, I find myself more convinced of the things I’ve believed in strongly throughout my life, perhaps most prominently in the necessity of non-violence. It’s always possible for humanity to revert back to a might-makes-right past. But the tools we have at our disposal makes these instincts too dangerous.

Our technological progress has made moral progress a necessity, otherwise those horrific death tolls from the past will return. By not seeing how much beauty and potential we have around us, we can easily throw it all away.