The book "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think" brings a different perspective to this conversation. I strongly encourage folks to read it, but if I had to summarize the point that feels relevant here, it’d go something like this.
Relative to the whole of human history, the time we’re living in right now is by far the most neutral, even OK, (in some cases, even good) things have ever been.
You are correct that the divide between privileged/lucky and not is still wide. But arguably this is more about the uneven distribution of progress, and ignores the fact that poverty has significantly gone down, deaths from disease are significantly lower now than even 10-20 years ago, and so on.
This does not minimize or invalidate the fact that many do live in dangerous or "not OK" environments, but it’s worth looking at the broader historical context to help contextualize that.
Yes, more change must happen. There is much progress to be made. But much progress has been made, and that should be acknowledged.
It’s a Hacker News comment that gives the common argument, often used in conservative and libertarian circles, that everything is pretty cool today compared to thousands of years of human history. Therefore, no need to turn it up to fix the latest (which are in fact old) issues.
I understand very well what this means and how this allows a little more breathing in our lives when thinking about it.
I also don’t like it at all.
It is such a counter-productive, complacent thing to say. The argument that the world is better now than ever is a non-argument. Why not celebrate that earth hasn’t exploded yet, it’s about as deep as that.
First of all, there is an intellectual entitlement to think at that scale. “Human History”. Most people don’t, never will think about life this way and they still don’t deserve to struggle daily, trying to avoid all kinds of traps. That’s something that seems to hurt intellectuals because yes, if you believe that everything is better now and that there’s no need to be that angry, you are being soft (maybe disconnected as well) about fixing issues. Because you probably can afford that. You are removed from the heat.
if you were angry you would/should triple the fuck down on making distribution of progress/wealth a much, much more even affair.
Progress distribution has been very stagnant and skewed towards a small amount of people, that’s the elephant in the room. This is the major problem we have and it completely exploded considering how much wealth is floating around since the 1970s (compared to the rest of human history, wealth grew 100, 1,000, 10,000 folds in the last 40 years). Even in a pandemic the richest got way richer and the poor kept and stay dying.
And you want me to relax because our ancestors would not believe how much less wars there is now? There are still wars on every continent so I’m not even sure what the argument is doing here, besides wasting our time.
The world WILL BE truly better when there are not so many flagrant failures in our systems, like having homelessness with vacant places all around. How am I supposed to close my eyes over this in 2021? It’s ultra fucking embarrassing for the human race, I’m sorry. We have no business reaching out for Mars if we can’t even solve basic housing issues here. We don’t. How come giant tech companies couldn’t afford to provide internet access to communities that needed it here last year in LA? With the absolute filthy, ever-growing income coming from our data, you can’t deploy hotspots for families and kids in the middle of a pandemic?
I don’t want to hear you tell me things are better than ever, then. They’re not.