I’m not saying the “evils” won’t get worse in the future, just saying that for a long time they’ve actually been lessened dramatically.
We can acknowledge that things have been getting better for a long time, and work to keep that going for the future, without diminishing or downplaying the serious issues we face today.
Things haven’t been getting better, we’ve just gotten a lot better at deferring the negative consequences of our actions. In many cases entire generations can go by now without having to suffer the consequences of their actions, but those consequences are still coming.
As mentioned elsewhere, global child and infant mortality has gone from around 50% to around 5%. That counts as an example of something getting a lot better in my book.
But fair if that’s not what you mean. What would better look like for you?
Massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in general, massive reduction in both poverty and homelessness (ideally homelessness would be eliminated, there’s literally nothing stopping that from happening), access to healthcare as a fundamental human right, and massive reduction in wealth inequality would be a good start. On top of that we need better democracies (nothing has fundamentally improved on that front in hundreds of years), and equal protection of rights and access to justice for everyone, not just for the rich, those with the “right” color of skin and who happen to believe in the “right” delusion.
The EU has done a bit for a lot of these points in theory but the execution in many cases has been sloppy, haphazard, and generally ineffective. The rest of the world is looking a lot worse and in many cases is actively regressing. While individual countries at various points in time have seen improvements in individual areas in many cases those improvements were short lived as the various elements of humanity that oppose progress for selfish reasons chip away at and eventually destroy these small gains.
Our science, technology, and medical knowledge do constantly improve, but when all of that is then used for warfare and squeezing profit out of the suffering and misfortune of others the net effect is negative.
It seems like it’s almost a law of nature that for every gain and improvement humanity makes in one area, we must have an equal negative impact in another.
I’m not saying the “evils” won’t get worse in the future, just saying that for a long time they’ve actually been lessened dramatically.
We can acknowledge that things have been getting better for a long time, and work to keep that going for the future, without diminishing or downplaying the serious issues we face today.
Things haven’t been getting better, we’ve just gotten a lot better at deferring the negative consequences of our actions. In many cases entire generations can go by now without having to suffer the consequences of their actions, but those consequences are still coming.
As mentioned elsewhere, global child and infant mortality has gone from around 50% to around 5%. That counts as an example of something getting a lot better in my book.
But fair if that’s not what you mean. What would better look like for you?
Massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in general, massive reduction in both poverty and homelessness (ideally homelessness would be eliminated, there’s literally nothing stopping that from happening), access to healthcare as a fundamental human right, and massive reduction in wealth inequality would be a good start. On top of that we need better democracies (nothing has fundamentally improved on that front in hundreds of years), and equal protection of rights and access to justice for everyone, not just for the rich, those with the “right” color of skin and who happen to believe in the “right” delusion.
The EU has done a bit for a lot of these points in theory but the execution in many cases has been sloppy, haphazard, and generally ineffective. The rest of the world is looking a lot worse and in many cases is actively regressing. While individual countries at various points in time have seen improvements in individual areas in many cases those improvements were short lived as the various elements of humanity that oppose progress for selfish reasons chip away at and eventually destroy these small gains.
Our science, technology, and medical knowledge do constantly improve, but when all of that is then used for warfare and squeezing profit out of the suffering and misfortune of others the net effect is negative.
It seems like it’s almost a law of nature that for every gain and improvement humanity makes in one area, we must have an equal negative impact in another.