# What do you think about the argument that we’re living in the best time in history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 6, 2025, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205 "2025-03-06T14:07:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/41 "2025-03-06T21:52:06Z")
To look at it the other way - for those who’d argue that today isn’t the best time in history (on a century basis, not decades or year) - which century do you think _is_ better than ours today? ---
**Author:** ![Jay\_Z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/42 "2025-03-06T22:00:49Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Incidentally, this is the same sort of reasoning that makes people pine for the past, despite the many ways the past was measurably worse than today. The people who had it worse in the past are usually _different people_ than those alive today. And even if they’re not, our past troubles went away. We got through them. We survived. Which is more than we can say about the troubles facing us today. You can’t die yesterday. You know why World War II was the Good War? At the end of the war, they did a poll of everyone alive, How many of those people died in the war? Not a single one! Some war that was! 😆 ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/43 "2025-03-06T22:23:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I feel many people don’t know enough history to understand how bad things were in the not so distant past. If you go back less than two hundred years, a majority of people were agricultural peasants. You spent your life working hard to produce a small amount of food on a small piece of land. That was your entire existence. It was your ancestors’ existence and you expected it would be your descendants’ existence. > > Here’s what broke up the monotony. Sometimes the crops would fail and you’d starve. Sometimes you’d get sick and you’d die because there was no medicine. Sometimes you’d have an accident and you’d die because there was no medicine. Sometimes you’d be living in the wrong place and you’d be killed by some passing army. Or maybe you would experience a non-lethal version of one or more of these events and you’d suffer for a while but you’d survive until the next time. But are we really better off than medieval peasants? Of course, I think we are, since it seems we’re hardwired to consider longer and healthier lives “better”. But consider the counterarguments: As a peasant, you worked from home and set your own hours. You got large portions of the year off. You had much more security in your social position than modern people do. You couldn’t be fired from your peasanting job. Everyone you knew was just as poor as you, so there’s nobody to be envious of. You might starve, but only if everyone else you knew was starving at the same time. You might die of disease or accident, but it would be because the medicine to save your life didn’t exist, not because your HMO wouldn’t pay for it. History shows clearly that the revealed preference of almost all peasants was to remain peasants, so clearly it didn’t seem so terrible to them at the time. When the “opportunity” to become urban workers arose, everywhere in the world we see that people had to be coerced into taking advantage of those opportunities with Enclosure Acts and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/44 "2025-03-06T22:53:01Z")
Ummm…I **far** prefer the current life with dishwashers, Internet, AI, laundry machines, plentiful food, movies, airplanes, trains, antibiotics, anesthesia, a thousand other things, than any peasant life from 600 years ago. HMO or no HMO. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/45 "2025-03-06T23:14:00Z")
Steven Pinker’s book is usefully and accurately criticized on the “If Books Could Kill” podcast. The episode is titled “The Better Angels of Our Nature” Part 1: You’re Not Wrong, Pinker. You’re Just An \*sshole," and the blurb in Apple Podcasts has a very helpful bibliography. Pinker is 'way out of his depth when he tries to be a political theorist and historian; he is a propagandist. I admit, he has great hair. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/46 "2025-03-06T23:45:17Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > But are we really better off than medieval peasants? Of course, I think we are, since it seems we’re hardwired to consider longer and healthier lives “better”. But consider the counterarguments: > > As a peasant, you worked from home and set your own hours. You got large portions of the year off. > > You had much more security in your social position than modern people do. > You couldn’t be fired from your peasanting job. Everyone you knew was just as poor as you, so there’s nobody to be envious of. You might starve, but only if everyone else you knew was starving at the same time. You might die of disease or accident, but it would be because the medicine to save your life didn’t exist, not because your HMO wouldn’t pay for it. > > History shows clearly that the revealed preference of almost all peasants was to remain peasants, so clearly it didn’t seem so terrible to them at the time. When the “opportunity” to become urban workers arose, everywhere in the world we see that people had to be coerced into taking advantage of those opportunities with Enclosure Acts and the like. I think your counterarguments are very weak. Having “job security” is not a benefit when you’re not allowed to leave your job. It means you’re a slave of one form or another. Saying that things like poverty or disease or starvation are better if everyone around you is suffering them also is questionable at best. I think most people would prefer to be in a situation where they could see these things as escapable. It’s true that medicines didn’t exist in the time I describe. Which is one of the reasons I say our times are better. It’s better to live in a society where your illnesses can be treated than in a society where they cannot. And I dispute your claim that history shows almost all peasants preferred to be peasants. History shows that as soon as there was an opportunity to do something else, plenty of peasants ran away to take that opportunity. I will also point out the almost complete absence of any examples of history of non-peasants seeking to become peasants. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/47 "2025-03-06T23:48:28Z")
So why, in your opinion, were the Enclosure Acts necessary, if everyone was voluntarily flocking to the cities? ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/48 "2025-03-06T23:51:49Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Saying that things like poverty or disease or starvation are better if everyone around you is suffering them also is questionable at best. I think most people would prefer to be in a situation where they could see these things as escapable. But if you see them as escapable, yet you yourself are failing to escape them, that creates great emotional stress, even if in fact _almost_ everybody else is also failing. As the Buddhists say, suffering arises from unmet expectations. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2025, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/49 "2025-03-06T23:56:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I will also point out the almost complete absence of any examples of history of non-peasants seeking to become peasants. This is in part because the conditions necessary for peasant life had been forcibly extinguished; there was no ‘peasant life’ to return to. Another part of the problem is those few who benefit greatly from the ‘new world order’ spend a lot of effort convincing everyone that the new world order is infinitely superior to the old one in every way. The rest of us have no way to properly evaluate and pick and choose; it’s all or nothing and the memory of other ways of doing things is punished and lost. To use a simple example: communities are broken up in various ways, then we’re sold cell phones to create ersatz communities. That puts tons of money into a few hands, wreaks havoc on the environment, and leaves us with broken communities. To a worm in horseradish, the horseradish seems sweet–that is, the next generation, having no knowledge of what benefits existed earlier and being taught from birth that “newer is better” takes it all as a given that cannot be challenged or criticized. If you grow up in shit, the notion of “enshittification” is practically meaningless. And I say this as someone tapping this out on my iPad. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/50 "2025-03-07T00:01:01Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > So why, in your opinion, were the Enclosure Acts necessary, if everyone was voluntarily flocking to the cities? In my opinion, the Enclosure Acts weren’t necessary. They were an example of powerful people taking land away from powerless peasants. Which you can add to my list of why it sucked to be a peasant. I’ll also point out that the Enclosure Acts undermines your previous argument that peasants could count on “job security”. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/51 "2025-03-07T00:05:48Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > But if you see them as escapable, yet you yourself are failing to escape them, that creates great emotional stress, even if in fact _almost_ everybody else is also failing. > > As the Buddhists say, suffering arises from unmet expectations. I think most people, given a choice between being sick and being healthy, would prefer to be healthy. I think that most people, given a choice between starving and being fed, would prefer to be fed. And I think that most people, given a choice between being poor and not being poor, would prefer to not be poor. So I disagree with your belief that in some situations people would be okay with poverty or starvation or disease. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/52 "2025-03-07T00:07:18Z")
See, among other works, “The Spirit Level,” which points out the very real, negative effects of inequality on people. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/53 "2025-03-07T00:11:23Z")
Well, _prior_ to the Enclosure Acts they could. That’s the point, the rules of society had to change in order to make industrialization and urbanization possible. And of course we need to realize that “peasant” is used to describe a wide variety of social relationships at various times and places, neither of which either of us know much about, unless you do. It goes to show that “progress” depends on your point of view. If your 16th century ancestor could visit you now and see your smartphone and car and functional teeth, he’d probably think it was wonderful and want to stay. But if he visited your 18th century ancestor, who worked 14 hours a day in an unsafe factory and lived in a crowded, disease-ridden slum, he’d be horrified and think the future was a horrible dystopia. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/54 "2025-03-07T00:12:21Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > This is in part because the conditions necessary for peasant life had been forcibly extinguished; there was no ‘peasant life’ to return to. That’s true now but it hasn’t been true for most of human history. As I pointed out in a previous post, peasants have formed the majority for most of human history. Which means that peasant life was always an available possibility. And during all those millennia when peasant life existing alongside (and outnumbered) non-peasant life, there was a constant flow of peasants seeking to become non-peasants and a near complete absence of non-peasants seeking to become peasants. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/55 "2025-03-07T00:23:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I think most people, given a choice between being sick and being healthy, would prefer to be healthy. I think that most people, given a choice between starving and being fed, would prefer to be fed. And I think that most people, given a choice between being poor and not being poor, would prefer to not be poor. Which illustrates why Enclosure Acts were necessary. If you’re a peasant with a right to a plot of land to live and grow food on, you’re at much less risk of starvation or infectious disease than an urban worker with no property and no skills. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/56 "2025-03-07T00:25:31Z")
You might find Patrick Joyce’s recent book, _Remembering Peasants_ interesting for its counter-arguments and empirical data. This isn’t an all or nothing debate; but we are often bedazzled by technological innovation that is foisted upon us for the sake of profit rather than need and is not chosen freely to give ourselves a better life. No one needs to be told “cell phones are cool” or “sure am glad for that MRI!” That message is pumped out to us every minute of every day. Evaluating and weighing costs and benefits is hard work, not least because it runs counter to that message. We need to encourage that kind of critical thought. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/57 "2025-03-07T00:29:41Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > As a peasant, you worked from home and set your own hours. You got large portions of the year off. Isn’t that because they literally needed that time for subsistence farming and stuff like washing their clothes in the river by hand with rocks? ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/58 "2025-03-07T00:31:25Z")
Again, it depends on the time and place, but in general, “peasant” means a farmer who is, to some extent, tied to the land; he may not be able to leave, but nobody can take the land away from him, either. This is a hereditary class status. I don’t believe it was common in premodern societies for urban poor people to have the right to go claim some piece of rural land, so I don’t think it’s true that peasant life was “always an available possibility”. In exceptional situations such as 19th century America, when the government did in fact give rural land titles to anyone who asked, a great many urban people jumped at the chance to become subsistence farmers. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/59 "2025-03-07T00:32:37Z")
I don’t believe that primitive subsistence farming requires anything close to a 40 hour workweek, except maybe during a few brief times of the year. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205/60 "2025-03-07T00:34:58Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > a great many urban people jumped at the chance to become subsistence farmers. I think by the late 19th century and “free land,” the dream was not to become a subsistence farmer but a farmer tied to producing, say, wheat for international markets. Agriculture had become a matter of capitalist markets rather than subsistence. The hope was to become something more like an independent businessman than a subsistence farmer. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-do-you-think-about-the-argument-that-we-re-living-in-the-best-time-in-history/1015205.md?page=4)