Thx for the comment Andrew. I'm aware of that thesis. Personally I don't buy it and, I hope I wasn't giving that impression. My point was that each era has a different set of problems and that history moves in cycles that reach boiling points. It all depends on who, what and where you are. Shifting economic and geopolitical trends play a key role. For instance, if I surveyed my fellow Canadians of a certain age and asked them if life is better now or 40 years ago, I think most would say "then." The fact we can communicate instantly with strangers around the globe and there's only 13K instead of 70k nukes does not help people buy groceries or make the rent. It doesn't change the huge numbers of homeless people or the 32% increase in food bank usage over last year (a 78% increase since 2019) or reduce the overdose sirens we hear that were once rare.
On the other hand, it is also materially better to be a Chinese citizen today than a peasant under Mao (if you happened to have survived the Cultural Revolution purges that butchered anywhere from one half to 8 million). Plus nowadays if you say something nasty about Xi Jinping, it's more likely you'll just get detained at the cop shop for a few days. Unless you happen to be an ethnic Uyghur. So, peril and progress is entirely contextual. Plus it looks like we could be heading off the escalatory cliff at the moment. I hope I'm wrong.
Well... you're not wrong that it looks like we're heading off the cliff. I hope it's not what it looks like! And, thanks for sharing some additional thoughts here. I appreciate it.
I do think things are better for most humans alive today than 40 years ago, but yes, it certainly does matter a great deal who and where. None of the improvements in human lifespan or reduction in poverty or infant mortality, etc, has been uniform, and that means many areas are worse off now. I just happen to think there's a lot more good than bad that has happened.... but it's all perspective, too.
I remember the 1980s, and to me, that decade was vastly worse than today, and it's not even close, but I'm just one person with one perspective. I've also gotten progressively better at this game called life over the previous five decades (yes, I realize I am still a very young fellow!), so that could also skew my own perspective on how much better things are.
There has been some uneven progress in the areas you mentioned, which can be measured. Of course lots of advances in medicine and other areas too. But were there as many mental health problems in the 1980s as now? School shootings? How about mass shootings?
Could young people afford, with minimal help, a first home? Was there a vibrant peace and disarmament movement back in the 70s and 80s that seems to have all but disappeared?
Again the point of my piece was not to say things don't suck now because they sucked backed then (especially in the area of armed conflict - there were more wars going on in say the 80s than now) but rather to offer some hope that we've collectively been through a lot and somehow managed to stumble forward. But now you've got me arguing in favour of things really sucking now comparatively. Thanks a lot! Signed... Grumpy Gramps.
Ha! Well, life is complicated, and you've done a great job of priming an excellent discussion here. I don't have all of this figured out, and I fully recognize that there will be ups and downs. I still believe that the arc of history bends upward, but also that we've got to be the ones that bend it. We clearly have our work cut out for us, and I'm encouraged to see folks like you having discussions like these.
Well said, Punditman. Milanovic, a world expert on inequality, recently noted that most of the decline in inequality over the past years is due to China's rapidly expanding middle class which has dramatically reduced poverty. British economist Michael Roberts observes that "But Milanovic finds that global inequality began to dip about two decades ago. It has dropped from 70 Gini points around the year 2000 to 60 Gini points two decades later. This decrease in global inequality, having occurred over the short span of 20 years, is more precipitous than was the increase in global inequality during the nineteenth century.
Does this mean that capitalism is succeeding in reducing inequality and there is now a great convergence? No, because the decrease is driven by really just one country’s income growth: China. And at the same time as China’s fast growth reduced the overall global inequality index; within economies, inequality has risen in just about all the major economies." Most boomers like me had an easier go of it (despite in my case being born in the 1940s) than young people have today in late capitalist societies. So yes, we are in a crisis which he says stretches most recently back to the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis of 2008 (see Roberts' 'The Long Depression'. Expressions of that crisis are the recent wars in Ukraine and the Middle East which threaten to unleash WW3 if those in power don't wise up to the situation soon. So yes, Punditman we are in some sort of Omnicrisis.
What you’re saying is true that we’ve always been on the edge of disaster and there have always been horrific wars and atrocities and humans generally being awful to another “tribe”. HOWEVER, never before have we actually faced the extinction of everything we know because of what we’ve done since the Industrial Revolution with releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere that we’re continuing experiencing extreme weather events around the planet. Nobody can escape this. We have passed the tipping point and I don’t see things changing. We have collectively decided to go off this cliff together like Thelma and Louis.
Reminds me of a night I spent under the stars listening to YoYo Ma and Emanuel Ax sending Beethoven's Cello Sonatas into the universe. We're a mess but we also have moments of the sublime.
Life has probably never been better on planet earth, at least for us humans.
Thx for the comment Andrew. I'm aware of that thesis. Personally I don't buy it and, I hope I wasn't giving that impression. My point was that each era has a different set of problems and that history moves in cycles that reach boiling points. It all depends on who, what and where you are. Shifting economic and geopolitical trends play a key role. For instance, if I surveyed my fellow Canadians of a certain age and asked them if life is better now or 40 years ago, I think most would say "then." The fact we can communicate instantly with strangers around the globe and there's only 13K instead of 70k nukes does not help people buy groceries or make the rent. It doesn't change the huge numbers of homeless people or the 32% increase in food bank usage over last year (a 78% increase since 2019) or reduce the overdose sirens we hear that were once rare.
On the other hand, it is also materially better to be a Chinese citizen today than a peasant under Mao (if you happened to have survived the Cultural Revolution purges that butchered anywhere from one half to 8 million). Plus nowadays if you say something nasty about Xi Jinping, it's more likely you'll just get detained at the cop shop for a few days. Unless you happen to be an ethnic Uyghur. So, peril and progress is entirely contextual. Plus it looks like we could be heading off the escalatory cliff at the moment. I hope I'm wrong.
Well... you're not wrong that it looks like we're heading off the cliff. I hope it's not what it looks like! And, thanks for sharing some additional thoughts here. I appreciate it.
I do think things are better for most humans alive today than 40 years ago, but yes, it certainly does matter a great deal who and where. None of the improvements in human lifespan or reduction in poverty or infant mortality, etc, has been uniform, and that means many areas are worse off now. I just happen to think there's a lot more good than bad that has happened.... but it's all perspective, too.
I remember the 1980s, and to me, that decade was vastly worse than today, and it's not even close, but I'm just one person with one perspective. I've also gotten progressively better at this game called life over the previous five decades (yes, I realize I am still a very young fellow!), so that could also skew my own perspective on how much better things are.
There has been some uneven progress in the areas you mentioned, which can be measured. Of course lots of advances in medicine and other areas too. But were there as many mental health problems in the 1980s as now? School shootings? How about mass shootings?
Could young people afford, with minimal help, a first home? Was there a vibrant peace and disarmament movement back in the 70s and 80s that seems to have all but disappeared?
Again the point of my piece was not to say things don't suck now because they sucked backed then (especially in the area of armed conflict - there were more wars going on in say the 80s than now) but rather to offer some hope that we've collectively been through a lot and somehow managed to stumble forward. But now you've got me arguing in favour of things really sucking now comparatively. Thanks a lot! Signed... Grumpy Gramps.
Ha! Well, life is complicated, and you've done a great job of priming an excellent discussion here. I don't have all of this figured out, and I fully recognize that there will be ups and downs. I still believe that the arc of history bends upward, but also that we've got to be the ones that bend it. We clearly have our work cut out for us, and I'm encouraged to see folks like you having discussions like these.
Well said, Punditman. Milanovic, a world expert on inequality, recently noted that most of the decline in inequality over the past years is due to China's rapidly expanding middle class which has dramatically reduced poverty. British economist Michael Roberts observes that "But Milanovic finds that global inequality began to dip about two decades ago. It has dropped from 70 Gini points around the year 2000 to 60 Gini points two decades later. This decrease in global inequality, having occurred over the short span of 20 years, is more precipitous than was the increase in global inequality during the nineteenth century.
Does this mean that capitalism is succeeding in reducing inequality and there is now a great convergence? No, because the decrease is driven by really just one country’s income growth: China. And at the same time as China’s fast growth reduced the overall global inequality index; within economies, inequality has risen in just about all the major economies." Most boomers like me had an easier go of it (despite in my case being born in the 1940s) than young people have today in late capitalist societies. So yes, we are in a crisis which he says stretches most recently back to the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis of 2008 (see Roberts' 'The Long Depression'. Expressions of that crisis are the recent wars in Ukraine and the Middle East which threaten to unleash WW3 if those in power don't wise up to the situation soon. So yes, Punditman we are in some sort of Omnicrisis.
What you’re saying is true that we’ve always been on the edge of disaster and there have always been horrific wars and atrocities and humans generally being awful to another “tribe”. HOWEVER, never before have we actually faced the extinction of everything we know because of what we’ve done since the Industrial Revolution with releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere that we’re continuing experiencing extreme weather events around the planet. Nobody can escape this. We have passed the tipping point and I don’t see things changing. We have collectively decided to go off this cliff together like Thelma and Louis.
Reminds me of a night I spent under the stars listening to YoYo Ma and Emanuel Ax sending Beethoven's Cello Sonatas into the universe. We're a mess but we also have moments of the sublime.