Topic: Does modern civilization is currently progressing or declining? - page 2. (Read 454 times)

As for me, the modern world is the best place we have ever lived. The world of our past was seemingly a very cruel place, while all these romantic books and films make people delude themselves.
Many people blame the civilization and technologies for a high level of stress, depression as a norm of life, and a range of environmental problems that influent our health. However, I guess that having depression is much better than to die at meaningless war, or of plague. We have so many freedoms and opportunities today that it looks like a great ungratefulness not to appreciate it.

Regarding ecology - in true, it is an issue of great importance but I still believe that we will resolve it sooner or later using namely technologies - although they are considered as the main reason of bad ecology by so many people.

modern civilization has progressed and not declined because we have learnt and corrected the mistakes of years back, and with today's technology
that is improving every day I can confidently say we living in a much smarter and simplified environment!

There are so many practical examples we can give which could serve as evidence of progress...talk of travelling, people use to take months, days just to
get to their destinations but today its all done in a couple of minutes or hours to get to our destinations and another example all thanks to technology human health has improved all thanks to modern civilization.

I think this problem is partly caused by the combination of wealth and democracy as a
form of government. Democracy works great in the first generation where everyone still
remembers the horrors of the tyranny or the dictatorship that preceded the democracy.

However, in the first world we are already past that stage where nearly all people, who still experienced
these horrors are either dead or too old. The other problem is related to the fact that the easiest
way to get people to like you and to actually vote for you, is to promise them free stuff and
government handouts. This leads to a bidding war between candidates where you can only win an election
if you promise to increase government spending / welfare. This leads to an expansion of the welfare
state, which in turn leads to an increasingly large number of people that live off the government.
After the percentage of these people gets too big in a society, the society is basically fucked.
E.g. in my rather rich European country only 14 % of the people are net taxpayers
(the other 86 % of the population either pay no taxes at all (children, unemployed...) or pay
less in taxes than they receive in other government transfers). This is obviously a huge problem
for the society and my society is not the only society that is experiencing this bad development.

Despite this unsustainable decline of society the system still hasn´t exploded, because of the reason
that I shortly touched upon at the start - the enormous wealth that has been built up
in the previous generations and the general technological progress.

Nonetheless, I completely agree with your post that these countries will experience very bad times
in the future.

I think we are getting more intelligent as a race, but humans are devolving quickly getting weaker by the day. If you look at how easily offended and lazy people are becoming it is depressing, especially in the first world. (I know I am generalizing, ofc there are tons of strong hard workers left)

Life is becoming too easy imho in the good countries, at least looking at it as an outsider living in the third world.  You basically can just ride the welfare train and live a decent life sponging off your government. This is very detrimental to the world, once people who contribute nothing to their fellow man and national economy reaches critical mass then bad times lay ahead.

People should always be aware where money comes from, that it comes from hard work and nobody is simply entitled to it for no reason. Where the freedoms we enjoy today come from, that people in the past gave their lives fighting for it.

Even failure is a progress. Sometimes you need to try something and fail to learn from it.

I doubt there were many things better in the past than they are now. There were more diseases, more wars, more violence.
Life was more physically challenging for most people, since more jobs required physical labor.

These times might be more psychologically stressful now for some people, but worrying about basic needs in the past could be considered even more stressful.
Rarely do people worry about survival these days.

Not an academic article, but interesting video about how things changing in the world https://www.facebook.com/INSH/videos/1730633627019235/

Do you believe that in ancient times (like a thousand years ago) people had a better living, or were wiser, braver, or had any special knowledge?  Suffered less or more? Had better social order?  I am looking forward to hearing your opinion and arguments and strongly appreciate links to relevant academic articles and books you can advise.