A nice little science-based look at now versus the past. I find myself saying “Yes, but … ” Nonetheless, good to get something cheery in these rather gloomy days.
Life at times can be overwhelmingly rough – with natural disasters, major politically conflicts and uncertainly about the future. But as most people won’t stop complaining about it being a horrible time to be alive, you might be surprised to see your life now vs. what it would have been in the past.
Video – via AsapSCIENCE
Further Readings and References: NCBI, The New York Times, The University of Minnesota, Early modern France (Wikipedia), List of wars by death toll (Wikipedia)
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Thanks for sharing Marilyn! It’s all perspective it seems- and things really aren’t so bad- at least as they used to be! 🙂
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Perspective and DIGNITY. Always DIGNITY.
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We get maybe one great advancement in science story a week in our media, but 50,000 depressing stories of the latest national, international, state, and local disaster/act of violence/stupidity. No wonder many of us have a negative view of modern life! thank you modern media.
The other thing worth considering is our sheer numbers and productivity. It used to take nearly the entire population working 6-7 days per week sunup to sundown just to make enough to eat ( and pay any imposed taxation!) these days much of the population has way too much time on their hands and the devil finds ‘work’ for such. 😉 Few had time to read newspapers or watch TV/Social media
Another interesting area of difference is travel – when was the last time you got held up by bandits or highway men (other than at toll booths?) 😉
In an effort to add to the positive vibe out there i’m going to post the vid – thanks for this post, Spike! 🙂
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It’s good to be reminded that things could be worse.
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Especially right now. But I’ve always recognized that I’m something of a miracle of modern medicine. Between one thing and another, I’ve survived stuff that would have long since killed someone in an earlier time.
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Without “Time Travel” and “Do-Overs” hard to say if it would have been better or worse. One thing for sure.., it WOULD be different!
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I think the really huge difference is health. You and me, we’d be long dead. Most of the people we know would have died of something by now, something for which we have survived because we are vaccinated or got antibiotics or surgery when we needed it. Some people DID live a long time anyway, but most didn’t. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten past my toddler ear infections.
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Still, we don’t really know for sure. We can only speculate at best.., and that’s based, only, on what we know at this juncture.
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Well done. Similar to think pieces I did the morning after “The night” before. BIGLY good!
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I love this! I keep saying this to people, but I think people like gloom and doom more than they like, “Wow, we’ve really gotten somewhere! Maybe it took a long time to get here, maybe we have a long ways to go, but empirical evidence — which is sometimes faulty — indicates that if we keep trying and doing our best, we’ll keep doing better for the future.” But we can’t easily look past our lifetimes. I just think of the 17th century Europe and the 30 years war and famine, when cemeteries were guarded to keep people from digging up the dead babies to eat them, or 30% of the population of Europe dying in the 14th century Black Death. I have a pretty long list of stuff that’s changed for the better.
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I felt kind of the same way. This was pretty uplifting, first thing in the morning. It reminded me that however dark parts of our world have become, there’s hope. It’s not over yet.
I thought the % of death during Black Plague was a lot higher than 30%, by the way. In England, I know it was higher. Maybe it was lower elsewhere.
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30 to 60%
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I know that in parts of Britain, entire towns died. Everyone. But I also knew it wasn’t equally bad everywhere. I’m not clear on the better/worse areas.
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Interesting thought…
Leslie
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Cute cartoon, too. These guys just “followed” me and they are doing some nice public service work. We need more science.
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we underestimate some of the most important advances that have been made.
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