Meliorist

I am a meliorist.

A meliorist is a person who believes that the world can be made better through human effort, will, and social action. Max Roser expressed a melioristic position in the mission statement for Our World in Data. He said that all three of these statements are true at the same time: "The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better."

Core Philosophy: A meliorist sits in the middle ground between optimism (the belief that the world is already the best it can be) and pessimism (the belief that the world cannot be improved). [Wikipedia points to the great American William James as the source for this distinction.]

Agency: It asserts that progress is possible, though not guaranteed, and that people have a moral responsibility to fix problems.

Origin: The word comes from the Latin word melior, meaning "better". It first appeared in English during the 1840s and was famously used and popularized by Victorian novelist George Eliot in the 1870s. [Merriam Webster]