Post #213132 by mbonga on Tue, Feb 7, 2006 8:10 AM

If you were black, would you want to live now or in the 50's?

Exactly that same thought hit me after posting my spiel. My answer is the same as Noam Chomsky's: Some things have improved, some have declined. Some minorities have gained freedoms (especially blacks and gays) but others have lost freedoms in a major way that make the '50s discrimination look tame in comparison. Medicine and technology have definitely improved, but in general human rights have gone down, worldwide, and we have new incurable diseases and and dangerous organisms (especially the ebola virus, HIV, and stronger forms of STDs and common bacteria) that we didn't have before. TV has more channels but is so censored that it isn't worth watching. Music and recording equipment are much more sophisticated and much less expensive but people can't seem to write good melodic music anymore. More people are into scuba but there are fewer decent places to dive where the reefs haven't died off or been otherwise destroyed. Science has advanced, but a large percentage of students entering American colleges now are painfully deficient in basic math and reading & writing skills. We generally have more sexual freedom but now there are so many STDs around that casual sex has become more dangerous. Which brings me back to my original claim: superficially things seem to be getting better in ways that are the most readily measurable, but the most important things like happiness, stability, knowledge, wisdom, freedom, and optimism, which are more difficult to measure, are generally declining.