Just to repeat the general question, “Are we better off now than we were in the past?”
I know the answer to this question varies with how we define our terms.
Does ‘we’ mean the U.S.? The world?
Does ‘the past’ mean 20 years ago? 200 years ago?
Does ‘better off’ mean in terms of health? Morality? General standard of living?
Define your terms as you like, though I’ll give a general answer that I believe most parts of the world are better off in almost all ways than they ever were in the past.
(By the way, this question came to me when a religious person came to my door to try to convert me and began the conversation with a comment to the effect that the world is obviously in terrible shape now in terms of wars, public morality etc. and this was a sign of the end of the world. I disagreed with her premise that the world is in any worse shape than it ever has been.)
It would be hard to argue that health, wealth, safety, nutrition, affordability and availability of goods and services, and social conditions have not steadily improved over the course of human existence. Science and technology are primarily responsible for this increase in the standard of living. However, even though more of us are free, healthy, and well fed today than a 100, 1000, or 10,000 years ago, that doesn’t necessarily mean we are happier. Happiness is too subjective a condition to make that assumption. For example I frequently hear people say things like, I remember when children respected their elders, or when a decent meal didn’t cost and arm and a leg. Case in point:
Not to knock Socrates, but I think these people are just kidding themselves. I would wager that the great philosopher’s own parents made similar comments about their son and his generation. Happiness may be subjective, but quality of life isn’t. There are empirical factors that we can look at like infant mortality, lifespan, prevalence of disease and malnutrition, etc. that allow us to see quite clearly that things are better now for more people than ever before. What’s more, many people think the rate of change is increasing as well, that is things are getting better faster. Ray Kurzweil, a professor at MIT wrote a book called “The Age of Spiritual Machines” where he argues that this is the result of what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns:
To use a very basic example, there have been three major epochs in human technological advancement, the agricultural age, the industrial age, and the information age. If you look at the time frame of these events, we see an exponential increase in the quickness of progress; farming was developed 30,000 years ago, machinery 350 years ago, and computers 50 years ago. Kurzweil has postulated that within the next 20 to 100 years the rate of new development is going to cross a threshold where progress is increasing at an infinite or near infinite rate. This threshold has been called the Singularity:
At some point in surprisingly recent history, I think we regained the material quality-of-life ground we gave up when we put aside hunter/gathering in favor of agriculture. Well, OK, a few Pharoahs and Caesars and Lords of Various Realms were doing pretty good for quite a while back, but for the proverbial commoner I daresay it’s been pretty recent. The overall trend for the last half-millennium seems to be at least gently upwards.
That’s just materially, though. The complexity and confusion of modern life makes this debatable, probably more so if you happen to be a teenager.
(I think we treat our teenagers like shit and I’m amazed that they don’t more often hold their elders for blame for this situation)
We are modern sorcerers who have tamed the lightning bolt and even bigger things, and now we are increasingly enmeshed in a world defined by our sorcery, and our societal-designing brilliance is lagging way behind the glitz of our physical-science sorcery; we are idiot-savants, babes with bombs that explode with the light of a hundred thousand suns (apparent, not absolute magnitude, you idiot).
On the optimistic other hand, we have this growing phenomenon of interconnectedness. Those who called the internet “anarchy” knew not the wisdom they spoke, but our ability to come together with no authority beyond our ability to get here in the first place is increasingly allowing us to shape more of our world than we could before. That’s still elitist (hundreds of millions of people without electricity, let alone internet access and a computer to hook to it), but it is a move in the right direction.
One day when I was a surly teenager (I would have been a Goth, but I hated the music), I told my father that the world was a far crappier place than it used to be.
He looked at me and said, “I remember when there wasn’t a Disneyland. Your grandfather remembers when there wasn’t a polio vaccine.”
And then he leaned forward and looked right into my eyes.
“And your great-grandfather remembered when he could legally be owned by another human being.”
It’s sort of like reading the arguments between hikers about whether cell-phones belong in “Wilderness”; some say it ruins the experience.
I offer that perhaps they should ditch the nylon sleeping bags, aluminum frame backpacks, gasoline stoves, flashlights, GPS, gore tex rain gear, titanium nesting cooksets, lanterns, sunglasses, barometer, waterproof tent, boots, socks, freeze dried honey-nut tofu rice pilaf, etc etc and commune with nature wearing their birthday suit and a pointy stick.
At least we don’t chain them to their factory machines like we did in the 1800s. If you ask me, teenagers these days are spoiled. Or at least they were spoiled when I was one ten years ago, and I assume things haven’t changed that much. It’s like once Beverly Hills 90210 and MTV came out, it was naturally assumed that every teenager should drive a BMW, wear gold chains and roll like Puffy. I may be getting old, but I remember a time when teenagers were expected to work in McDonalds and drive a Gremlin.
How much of the world really gets shaped online? None. The interconnectedness of the Internet is an illusion. In reality, people are less connected than ever before. over the years, suburbs, the automobile, a highly mobile population, and TV and the Internet have reduced peoples connectivity with each other. People have little interaction with their neighbors. There is little sense of community in most places in the country.
U[ until the nineteenth century, impacted wisdom teeth were often fatal. For my money, almost any amount of modern ennui is worth not having to die of a festering abcess deep in your jaw. And nothing could be worth watching your child die of a festering abcess.
The community on this Board mourned for Wally like family. But the Internet doesn’t help people connect.
And my Father is running for the City Council of my community as an Independent. He cares about his community. He is trying to improve our community, & he is backed many other people who care.
Methinks, msmith537, thou dost protest too much. A case of sour grapes, perchance?
And, oh yeah! The kids are OK. But their elders are kind of “wound too tight”.
I recall once hiking with a friend from Glacier Point in Yosemite down to the valley below. At one point during the hike, we could hear a roar off in the distance. We were unable to determine if the roar was from a waterfall or from a jet high overhead. If we had been able to make that determination, then our appreciation of the sound would have been made based on that determination. Troubled and intruded upon if caused by a jet, soothed and renewed if caused by water falling.
By lifespan and health, a great number of us are better off than people were a few hundred years ago. By what we are able to cure and/or adapt to, a great many of us are better off than people just a few decades ago. By general outlook though, life varies in quality from day to day, sometimes far worse then simpler times, sometimes far better. I can’t cite this, but I suspect 'twas ever thus.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Sour grapes over what?
I’m not making this stuff up. Do a Yahoo! search. There is plenty of information out there about how our modern lifestyle can be isolating.
Now, I live in NYC and I lived an another big city before I lived here. There is always plenty of stuff to do and plenty of people to do it with. The area of the city I live even has a neighborhood feel to it. There are people walking around and hanging out. As a matter of fact, when I am done with this post, I think I’ll head out to Starbucks. I would imagine I would feel a lot more isolated if I lived in the suburbs where I could conceivable go back and forth to work or the mall and sit in my house and not interact with another person unless I went looking for them.
As for this being better or worse than in the past. I suspect it was just as isolating living on a farm in the 1800s 20 miles from your neighbor.
I can remember not having TV, automatic transmissions, power steering, air conditioning (cars, homes, offices, schools), faxes, CD’s, cell phones, interstate highways, most medicines we have today and many other things. There is not one thing that I remember we had when I was a kid that disappearred for any other reason than there was something better that replaced it.
