A wonderful illustration of what progress actually *means*

[neotoma]

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes...

This clip illustrates exactly why when someone starts talking about the 'good old days', I tend to downgrade them in my estimation of their intelligence and common sense.

Also, when fiction writers complain about how awful the 20th century was (I'm looking at you, SPN), I know that they don't have a clue -- there were many things wrong with the 20th century, but people not dying of measles, mumps and polio in childhood and actually managing to make it out subsistence poverty? Not a bad thing, at all.

Yes, there were awful, horrible wars. Otoh, most people thought that war was a bad thing, instead of an exciting chance for the elites to prove their bravery, and there were not roving bands of discharged-soldiers-turned-brigands destroying the countryside, holding towns hostage for go-away bribes, or actual class warfare where the workers killed the landowners, or religious figures proclaiming crusades to distract people from the fact that they were selling church benefices. I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century, and 14th century France had all that *and* the Black Death.

Anyone who thinks things were better 200 years ago is invited to go live the life of the average person in the UK or the Netherlands (the richest, healthiest countries) of that time period, which still means a life expectancy of 40 years, and annual income of under $4000.

Comments

[aggiebell]

I disagree about your point that the 20th century lacked "class warfare where the workers killed the landowners"- I submit China's communist revolution, especially the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. I know much less about other communist revolutions. On the whole, though, I agree that we seem to be improving over time.

[neotoma]

Hmmm... you're right that the workers killed the landowners in China. I was thinking of the Jacquerie, which was pretty much a bottom-up peasant's revolt. Weren't the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap forward more top-down in organization?

[fyrdrakken]

I think the Russian revolution in 1916 or thereabouts might also involve workers vs. landowners, but I know barely more about that than I do about the Cultural Revolution (and most of what I do know is focused on the Czar's family).

[lilacsigil]

The Twentieth Century had some massive advances, but it also had every one of those horrors that you mention - just mostly not in Europe. On the other hand, when the country with the shortest average lifespan (Sierra Leone and the Congo) is the same as the world average lifespan just 100 years ago, that's some pretty amazing progress.

[neotoma]

I will admit, my education is lacking in 20th century history... for some reason, in school, things generally got to WW1 and then we'd run out of time, and we rarely got deep into non-Western countries. So I probably have a narrower grasp of history than I should.

But yeah, the change in the last 100 years is pretty amazing.

[fyrdrakken]

Have had this conversation elsewhere, comparing notes with other Americans and with Europeans and Australians, and discovered that American schools teach history very badly and Ameri-centrically, with the same ground being covered over and over again and time running out on the school year early in the 20th Century. Astonishing to hear that Europeans were actually covering different periods in different years of school and getting a much broader overview. (Also maddening that when I tried to branch out of the 1492-to-WWII American history track and take a medieval history course in college, it wasn't counted towards my history requirement for my degree.)