Posted: 6/1/18 at 8:11am
Over on the main board, OlBlueEyes questioned qolbinau about the claim that the world has made much progress, in a general sense. I wanted to provide some relevant information to demonstrate that, in terms of historical trends, things have gotten decidedly better. (I pasted the relevant part of OlBlueEyes' post at the end.)
Anyhow, over the past several centuries:
* Rates of violent crime have plummeted (see here).
* Global literacy rates have risen dramatically (same source).
* Life expectancy has risen sharply (see here).
* Standards of living have risen, too (see here).
These trends have persisted over long periods of time and have continued in the 20th and 21st centuries, with some short-term setbacks (we might be in the midst of one right now). And, to assess these matters, one does have to look at historical trends, not snapshots from particular points in history.
I'll also add that, in the United States and other parts of the developed world, there has been incontrovertible progress in terms of civil rights and political equality (again, with some setbacks interrupting the unmistakable trend).
Here's OlBlueEyes' original post:
Since I see the world in a hopeless rather than hopeful state, I'm eager to learn about all this progress that has been made. The two World Wars of the first half of the 20th Century were the most brutal and barbaric in world history. No one really know why WW I was fought. There was peace and prosperity for most. For four years the war in the West followed the same strategy for both sides. Concentrate men on the line, leap from your trenches, and charge entrenched machine guns, which mowed the men down.
The Great War or The War to End All Wars, led directly to WW II after a short period of vindictive peace. In this war for the first time innocent civilians were considered fair game. Millions suffered horrible deaths from poison gas, high explosives, fire and unescapable firestorms, large doses of radiation, firing squads and especially the case with the Japanese, a bayonet in the gut. The two biggest villains could have been religious, but they were not. They cared about religion only as a method of controlling their population.
This country for the first time in its proud history as a Constitutional Democracy elected as President a man not fit for the job. Atomic bomb technology is over 75 years old and bombs can be made or bought with increasing ease. So I see mushroom clouds over cities again by the end of the century.
.jpg?format=auto&width=300)
