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The world has never been more prosperous, safer, and more able to address the issues of its day, ever. Wars have been a near constant factor of human history fo
by onepointsixC 4y ago
The world has never been more prosperous, safer, and more able to address the issues of its day, ever. Wars have been a near constant factor of human history for nearly all written history, and yet today we enjoy more peace as a species than any other era. In the past few decades we've seen extreme poverty decline dramatically. And we've never had so many viable options for decarbonization.
When your parents had you, the world was decisively a worse place. Especially if you were born prior to 1989. Why wouldn't you want to bring a child into the objectively best times of human existence to date?
- jimmyjazz14 4y agoIts interesting that one of the most guaranteed ways to get down-voted online is to say the world isn't as bad as it seems, I would really like to understand the psychology behind that.
- guerrilla 4y agoI think it depends on how you say it. Some people here are just gaslighting, while others are being insightful.
- ryandrake 4y agoI think it's because comments like that are over-simplified and don't accurately describe the world as it is across the distributions of people. For a hypothetical "Worldwide Average Person," things are quite better today than at any point in history. There are a lot of people who were dirt poor yesterday and are now less dirt poor today. For a small number of very well-off people, things are exponentially better today than ever. But for a significant number of people who had it really good in, let's say the 1950s and 1960s, things are noticeably and measurably worse in all ways today. If you're one of these people, the "Well that average person over there in Indonesia is better off" argument isn't convincing.