Environmental issues and the additional pressures and strains that modern life brings, not to mention our great dependence on technology. We seem to idle our time with non productive work (Like anything that doesn’t contribute directly to survival). We seem to think that more tech will just solve our issues but will it? Was it mistake to advance this far?
The link makes some mention of it. Here is one of the comments on the matter:
"You should do some more research. I think you’ll find that most of the beliefs about history you express in this comment are actually myths created to defend industrial civilization from valid critiques.
For example, medieval peasants had more freedom and autonomy in their day-to-day life than modern office workers. They set their own hours and since their diet was almost entirely vegetarian they were mostly pretty healthy, saving for absolutely atrocious oral hygiene. By contrast, the early industrial revolution was probably the worst time to be a human being. Read some descriptions of factory towns circa the turn of the 20th century. The Jungle is a fine example. 16 hour workdays, 6 day weeks, no benefits and no provisions for worker safety. Few provisions for sanitation. Until the labor movement, the industrial revolution made life for the majority of human beings subject to it much worse.
So called “primitive” hunter-gatherer/gardener societies with very limited contact with modern civilization (sometimes intentional, as in the case of some sea nomads) are almost always the happiest groups of people despite a state of existence that doesn’t even qualify as “poverty.” Living in the moment as part of a community of human beings, hunting when you’re hungry and doing what you want otherwise is apparently much more fulfilling to the human organism than existing as an alienated individual relating to life mostly through bureaucratic machinery.
As far as education and social mobility go, try comparing Tocqueville’s account of American life in the 19th century to conditions in the 20th century. Before the modern state bureaucracy, much of it a legacy of the New Deal, Americans had more social mobility and education, despite not being compulsory and not lasting 12 years, was more successful. The vocabularies of 14 year olds in the 19th century were better than many of today’s college grads. Many high school grads can’t even read.
Technology solving problems. Vacuum cleaners are supposed to be time and labor saving devices. But are they? Before vacuum cleaners, people cleaned rugs by taking them outside and beating them with a stick. This takes less time than vacuuming. And since vacuum cleaners are usually very poorly constructed, they actually recirculate more dust and dirt than they pick up. So this time and labor saving device costs us more time and labor than its predecessor AND lowers the quality of the air in the home. So why do people use them at all? At first, effective marketing. And that had the effect of making vacuum cleaning the default means of cleaning carpets for the next generation.
You’re part of that next generation in a more general sense. Your life is so interwoven with technology that you can’t see clearly how the technology uses you as much as you use it. This is exactly why Kaczynski’s critiques of technology are important. You can’t see the whale when you’re in its belly. I don’t think Kaczynski’s revolution is possible; you can’t go back again. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be honest with ourselves about what we’ve lost."
And only on the Dope would you find formal footnotes citing sources. LOVE IT.
In my defense it was very late at night and I was tired. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.