> I think this is pretty naive or at the least, a simplistic way of viewing technology.
Bear-baiting is not coming back. If you don't know what it is, learning about it might upset you, which is my point.
Polio is confined to portions of the world instead of stalking the globe. Same with malaria. Smallpox is gone entirely.
Even more dramatic, there are places on the Earth now where people think it is a terrible, horrible tragedy if even a single child under three dies. Those people think it equally tragic if even a single mother dies in childbirth. Children in those regions are named before they're even born because it is expected as a matter of course that they will get to use those names!
It has been said that the past is a foreign country. Well, it is certainly inhabited by foreigners, people whose mindset was shaped by circumstances we shy from remembering. The mother of three children who gave birth eight times. The father of four children, the last of whom cost him his wife. Our minds are largely free of such horrors, and not inured to that kind of suffering. That is the progress of technology. That is what is improving the human race.
It is a long, long ladder, and sometimes we slip, but we've never actually fallen. That is our progress.
Bear-baiting is not coming back. If you don't know what it is, learning about it might upset you, which is my point.
Polio is confined to portions of the world instead of stalking the globe. Same with malaria. Smallpox is gone entirely.
Even more dramatic, there are places on the Earth now where people think it is a terrible, horrible tragedy if even a single child under three dies. Those people think it equally tragic if even a single mother dies in childbirth. Children in those regions are named before they're even born because it is expected as a matter of course that they will get to use those names!
It has been said that the past is a foreign country. Well, it is certainly inhabited by foreigners, people whose mindset was shaped by circumstances we shy from remembering. The mother of three children who gave birth eight times. The father of four children, the last of whom cost him his wife. Our minds are largely free of such horrors, and not inured to that kind of suffering. That is the progress of technology. That is what is improving the human race.
It is a long, long ladder, and sometimes we slip, but we've never actually fallen. That is our progress.