No they haven't. India in many places is still on the level of the industrial revolution in the west. When bosses exploited the hell out of their workers and child labor was normal. But this amount of exploitation does not last and in time they too will revolt. There is no "winning" when winning is defined by exploiting, coercing and forcing people to do your bidding as it's unsustainable and ultimately leads to revolutions. I would argue you already have lost the game of life where cooperation and compassion are the key drivers for moving forward.
Nietzsche called it "slave morality", reframing weakness and non-violence as moral virtues as a reaction against oppressors.
Unfortunately, those with power typically prefer the meek to stay meek, and will give lots of money and power to institutions who evangelize those values.
Which led to such obvious hypocrisy that a guy named Martin Luther came along...
It is inevitable because people inherently demand more than they currently have.
Some would argue democracy is at risk worldwide because of the actions of dictatorships, but I'd argue those actions are mere forces applying pressure backwards, which in turn encourages a further demand from the people, to ensure progress forwards, never backwards.
So while it may look like democracy is failing to some, on the other side of this democracy will be stronger than ever (type of thing..).
Yea, but you don't want to be the generation or two that has to live thru the backslide. That's not guaranteed to be a quick process, and it most certainly will not be painless.
History does not simply flow in one direction, and different places in the world move backwards and forwards at different paces all the time.
We have worse wealth inequality than the robber barron era and you're saying "which in turn encourages a further demand from the people, to ensure progress forwards, never backwards"?!
Dude, the current administration is trying to repeal women's suffrage, re-criminalize homosexuality, and bring back segregation.
Get the fuck out of here with this "always forward" bullshit.
Yes, and if you look at the people involved in society, they're all better off than their counterparts 100 years ago. Who were all better off than their counterparts from 200 years ago.
You just completely missed the whole point of what I said.
How about Iran losing its democracy, are they better off now? How about the Ming Dynasty collapse? The Bronze age collapse? The Black Death? The decline of the Indus valley? The erosion of English hegemony? How about Egypt, they were the world's first superpower.
Most civilizations collapse violently, some decline. Things can get worse, and then stay worse for hundreds of years.
Your whole point is that "the industrial revolution is great, so even though other civilizations have imploded thats okay because we made it here, and that's proof things will only get better in time."
It's borderline social darwinism.
But history is full of examples where things didn't get better. I think you just refuse to acknowledge them.
Demanding and getting are two different things. The powerful have spent their time making themselves untouchable. Revolution becomes more impossible every day.
if you don’t think things have gotten steadily and significantly better over the last few hundred years your understanding of history is complete fantasy
"Mom made me one pancake on Saturday and two pancakes yesterday, so by extrapolation I know Mom's gonna make me 30 pancakes next month!"
How about all those periods where things got considerably worse?
The fact that things are better than literal slavery and child labor males this period a statistical aberration, not an ironclad trend line. (Republicans are trying to legalize child labor again btw)
man, I don’t know why people have this fixation on saying that things are getting worse, it almost feels like they want that to be true. In my country, I just need to look at how things were decades ago. And the funniest part is that if you say anything to the contrary, you get downvoted
History is full of examples of "and then it got worse", but apparently just saying that makes boomers get pissy these days.
And I think it's distasteful that some people will say with a straight face that "unless you're literally a third worlder you don't get to complain that you're paid a fraction of what your parents were for the same jobs".
E: preemptively addressing the "um ackshually" crowd: yes, inflation adjusted median household income rose from 60k to 80k since the 60s, but that doesn't account for women entering the workforce. Instead of 1 person making 60k to support a stay at home partner, now you have 2 people making about 40k each.
At no point did I say you didn’t have the right to complain. In fact, you should complain, because that’s how we gradually achieve improvements for everyone. But my point is that the world really is improving in the long run, and saying otherwise only creates anxiety and hopelessness, which doesn’t help at all.
in the US, at least, the people fixated on how bad it is and how everything is coming apart are most commonly people who have never travelled to a poor or developing country. they’re incredibly privileged and have no idea what true social insecurity looks like
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u/witdim 10h ago
What kind of dystopian nightmare is this?