> Consider, for example, this observation, conveyed by the Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven: “the average citizen lives more comfortably now than kings did a few centuries ago.”
> A Snickers and a power shower would blow Henry VIII’s mind.
That's such a narrow, snapshot view of humanity. Comparing one epoch to another directly, skipping the trend, seems inconsequential.
For the majority of human history, descendents did better than the previous generation. There's nothing surprising or awe-inspiring about that.
Henry VIII did not expected warm baths and chocolate bars, but he expected (in theory, I know, don't fret about it) everyone to have a little more, then in the next generation, a little more, and so on. That trend eventually leads to somewhere like chocolate bars and warm baths, even if you don't land on it exactly.
However, _this is not true anymore_. There's an argument to be made that we are not on this trend anymore. Where before young adults could buy houses, now they can't, for example.
It seems like we went over peak humanity, then dropped a little. Some very important things got a lot worse.
Under this light, talking about how anyone now lives better than a past king, sounds disconnected from a reality where mostly everyone feels like shit. You can't convince me that I'm in the best phase of humanity if I can quite easily point out some better paths we could have taken. We were supposed to be better than we currently are, or at least something manufactured that impression in large scales. Either way, something feels off.
>For the majority of human history, descendents did better than the previous generation. There's nothing surprising or awe-inspiring about that.
I'm not sure this is true. This has probably been true subsequent to various industrial and agricultural revolutions, but I would imagine that much of 3000 bc --> 1400 ce did not see clear cut generation-by-generation improvements in quality of life.
I definitely take your other points though; in the 1970s the president of the united states would not have had the capabilities of a modern smart phone; but the fact that this is true does not actually improve the quality of my life in any way. Part of this is just because not all technological advancement necessarily speaks to quality of life improvements. Some obvious examples might be: indoor plumbing (clear improvement) vs. social media. (mostly a detriment)
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 28.1 ms ] thread> A Snickers and a power shower would blow Henry VIII’s mind.
That's such a narrow, snapshot view of humanity. Comparing one epoch to another directly, skipping the trend, seems inconsequential.
For the majority of human history, descendents did better than the previous generation. There's nothing surprising or awe-inspiring about that.
Henry VIII did not expected warm baths and chocolate bars, but he expected (in theory, I know, don't fret about it) everyone to have a little more, then in the next generation, a little more, and so on. That trend eventually leads to somewhere like chocolate bars and warm baths, even if you don't land on it exactly.
However, _this is not true anymore_. There's an argument to be made that we are not on this trend anymore. Where before young adults could buy houses, now they can't, for example.
It seems like we went over peak humanity, then dropped a little. Some very important things got a lot worse.
Under this light, talking about how anyone now lives better than a past king, sounds disconnected from a reality where mostly everyone feels like shit. You can't convince me that I'm in the best phase of humanity if I can quite easily point out some better paths we could have taken. We were supposed to be better than we currently are, or at least something manufactured that impression in large scales. Either way, something feels off.
I'm not sure this is true. This has probably been true subsequent to various industrial and agricultural revolutions, but I would imagine that much of 3000 bc --> 1400 ce did not see clear cut generation-by-generation improvements in quality of life.
I definitely take your other points though; in the 1970s the president of the united states would not have had the capabilities of a modern smart phone; but the fact that this is true does not actually improve the quality of my life in any way. Part of this is just because not all technological advancement necessarily speaks to quality of life improvements. Some obvious examples might be: indoor plumbing (clear improvement) vs. social media. (mostly a detriment)