Things have gotten better and progress has been made from times past, it just seems worse now because we have more access to information. We’ve come far, and have further to go!
Things have gotten better and progress has been made from times past, it just seems worse now because we have more access to information. We’ve come far, and have further to go!
Jesus Christ this thread. The technicalities aren’t the point. You are allowed to find happiness where you can in an imperfect world that contains suffering. It doesn’t mean you’ll be complacent to injustice. Fighting against injustice can be done without thinking the world is hopeless dogshit. There’s satisfaction that can be justifiably had, through means other than smug superiority at knowing all the depressing truths of the world, or the sympathy of others for your problems. We feed ourselves so much rage and sadness via the internet, can we not have a palate-cleanser like this without chewing it up and spitting it out, and then going back to gorging on more?
The thingeis: the world is getting less free and inequality has been constantly rising in the last decades.
This Steven Pinker BS is advertising complacency, while we should agitate people to fight for a better world.
If you want to be optimistic, look around for the average kindness of everyday live inside communities. The FOSS community, unions, mutual aid in neighborhoods etc. This would lift you up and point in the direction where things could get better.
Holy shit, I thought you were kidding but this whole thread is just full of sad people.
Well said!
Hey OP, this is a book about just that: https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814
This is a website that goes along with it and has updated stats: https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/32-improvements/
Basically everything is getting better, despite public opinion to the contrary. The one thing (as this thread is harping on) is climate change, and ya, that’s big, but it is good to acknowledge that most other things are changing for the better in most ways.
In the US every single one of those indicators is going the other way. It’s only by looking globally that you can say that.
Well fuck the rest of the world, amirite? U S A! U S A! U S A!
US income inequality plummeted under Roosevelt (inequality coefficient: 0.59 - 0.47) and began its steady climb under Regan. It leveled out in 2012 under Obama (0.58) and had a slight dip (0.58 - 0.57 - 0.58) in 2020 under Trump. We’re almost back to where we started when Roosevelt took measures to help. The USA has, however consistently been well below the world average for income inequality (0.71- 0.66). https://ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality
Infant/Child mortality rate hasn’t raised anywhere since 1960 and is lower everywhere than it was in 1950, and yes the USA is still winning:
https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality
Extreme poverty is trending downward faster in the US than the world average:
https://ourworldindata.org/poverty
Thank you for this research, it gives great perspective.
The wealth gap between the US and citizens of dirt-poor nations is insane. People live on less in a day than I make in a few minutes. I don’t mind losing a little to help bring others up, and, since it’s not zero-sum, it ends up being a larger plus overall than the minus for us.
If that’s where it was going I wouldn’t mind but researchers have tracked the missing wages and extra profits to the 1 percent.
When you think about what people live on in other countries you also have to think about what things cost around them. An apple, for example, is far cheaper for them to buy. That said there are still people in poverty even with that in mind and they should be helped. But that’s not what’s causing the inequality gap in western countries and it’s far overblown as an argument to make Westerners ashamed to complain while they are exploited by the extremely wealthy.
The gap isn’t necessarily bad. It’s the things that cause it (and that the rising tide isn’t lifting all boats) that’s the problem.
This gap very much is. It’s way too much for any sustainable society.
Also some good stuff on YT by the late Hans Rosling…
Be happy the silent generation won some serious gains that the boomers, X, and millennials are steadily eroding for profit?
No thanks. That’s called complacency.
Celebrating and taking pride in what has been achieved is part of what motivates people to defend it. Doomposting online does nothing to motivate people and merely depresses them.
Every inch of progress has been won through a combination of a rhetoric of hope for what could be achieved, and a recognition of the shortcomings of the current system. Having the former without the latter leads to complacency, but having the latter without the former leads to apathy and despair.
Considering that most progress in the last few hundred years has been fought for (sometimes violently), like weekends, the 8 hour day, etc. kinda proves you wrong.
And it was fought for by people who had hope for what could be achieved, and crucially used that to unite working people.
I’m not arguing for complacency; I’m arguing that labour movements work best when they are pushing for clearly defined goals (like an 8 hour work week), and the labour movement should honour those that gave their lives for the cause in those doomed strikes at Homestead, Blair Mountain, or Pullman.
Great, I agree! … But unfortunately, OP used data fragments that IMHO promote complacency (i.e. general “progress”) instead of celebrating victories of social movements.
Celebrating the achievements made in the past while obliterating them in the present is nothing more than white washing the problems people face. Like the record numbers of homeless seniors.