Reply #10: Very true

[Nederland]

A better age is always 100 years down the road. It is extremely hard to pick two dates that are 100 years apart and say that things were better in the earlier one than the later one. I suppose you could argue that 1842 was better than 1942 simply due to WWII, but examples like that are the exception rather than the rule. They tend to be confined to very short time periods involving war or disease. The relentless march of technology has made life better pretty consistently for millenia. In fact, the one period of time where it is almost universally recognized that society got "worse" is the fall of the Roman Empire, which resulted in a decline in knowledge and technology. Even that example has skeptics, who argue that in addition to coming from a rather Eurocentric viewpoint, it also reflects a bias toward the rich and wealthy. Did the fall of the Roman Empire really change life for the average person? Does it really matter much if you are a slave owned by a Roman instead of a Visigoth?

The absolute proof that things are getting better, however, comes from observing people's choices. I see very few that are willing to give up the advances of technology and decide to grow their own food, have no electricity, refuse modern medicine, etc. Sure there are some that do this, but they are far fewer than those who bitch about how modern life sucks.