A recent thread started with a rambling dissertation on the darkness of modern life and the coming demise of earth at its own hand.
Hogwash.
Like many postmodernists obsessively contemplating their intellectual navels, Mechanic has completely lost sight of the enormous improvements western civilization has given to the world. For just a few moments, turn your gaze from the horrors of a world without gun control, where farm animals are actually eaten and where Americans insist on electing those you consider equals of Hitler!
Our shared western civilization has raised the quality of life to levels unthinkable even a few generations ago. Industrialization of agriculture has eliminated starvation in the western world, and in general famine is no longer a threat in the world – except where it’s the product of failed governments. Untold millions – maybe even billions, when subsequent generations are considered – have lived where they would have died, thanks to elimination of many childhood diseases and epidemic disorders.
Consider also the material prosperity we so take for granted. In modern western cultures, “the poor” almost all have shelter, food, and warmth. Most have material goods that, though far less than the average for their culture, would have made their great grandparents stunned with envy. The middle classes have more vehicles, larger homes, more possessions, and more entertainment possibilities than any similar group in history. In the last generation, I’ve seen international travel become so affordable that the French Club in our local (US factory town) high school thinks nothing of going to France, where 25 years ago the “rich” school near me sent their kids to Montreal.
Job safety used to mean you stayed home. Death and maming on the farm or the factory was common as fleas. Now, zero injury is the goal.
Are our politics, and the rule of the oligarchy, degenerated from those of the past? Absolutely not. I can only speak with confidence about American history, but be assured that even the worst we see now is far better than the Teapot Dome, the manipulations of the Gilded Age, the election campaigns of Washington and Garfield and Harrison. and Hayes.
And in the third world, life is still better than it ever has been in history. Internecine wars are fewer and shorter. Displaced populations have international support (of varying degrees, but still – its there), and are not just left to starve.
I’d even argue that continued poverty and oppression in the world come NOT from the nastiness of the West and its corporations, but from failed importation of western values – like the concept of the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the individuals right to security and safety.
I don’t see a future of environmental holocaust or assured destruction. Many who wail about the state of the world act as if they hated their cultural heritage; I believe we share the greatest traditions discovered by humanity, and I believe that we do a disservice to ourselves and our futures by neglecting to appreciate what we have.
