We Live In The Best Era, We Live In The Worst Era
Ever since the industrial revolution, our world had changed, for the better or for the worse. The changes are inevitable, as if stagnant water cause pests to infest the water, getting dirty as it continues to be stagnant, changes clear them out. Yet, humans are imperfect. Similarly, the changes we made are started out as an experiment, imperfect; and until today, it's still imperfect, and will always be.
Several things changed. While industrial revolution allows for lowered price from mass manufacturing, it means cheaper means to produce house appliances, like chair, desk, bed, etc; and the invention of office works means that we freed ourselves from having to walk a lot. Plus, the invention of cars, elevators, trolleys, etc that saves us energy also means we can save as much energy as possible. The result? We now need exercise to ensure physical activity. For the better, improvements in medicine means longer lifespan. For the worse, improvements in back-laying chairs and office works means we don't maximize our healthspan.
The digital revolution changed lots of things, and that's really a lot. Some are great! Others, not so great. Yet, considered how technology had been misused all the time it was invented. Computers was originally created to solving some problems like mathematics that it's hard to do on paper or in our brain; at the cost of brand new addiction called computer gaming. The internet was invented so we have easy access to information, no more outdated libraries that tries to keep lots of books but couldn't keep everything, so essentially a giant library with access via a computer (and other smart devices); at the cost of mindless browsing for cute cat pictures, recklessly binge-watching NetFlix or YouTube or whatever other stuffs. The initial invention of instant messaging and emails were to communicate important information that can't wait until you see each other again, basically, and replace the physical letters that takes ages to send; at the cost of, ok, this is a big cost. It makes people easy to pull out of conversation, to ghost other people midway, to ignore without letting them knowing its being ignored so basically waste their life and we don't feel the bad because we can always blame them. And then someone comes up with an idea: what if I can invent something to pull people's attention so they never had to leave the screen? Here you go, social media. Since text messaging had already made a wreck in our relationship, let's make it more worse by allowing people to feel that they had relationship in the vast space by pulling the threads, and feel sober if they pull out from it a few seconds after. It allows us to not learn the arts of communication, problem solving when we have emotional issues, and settle things down together when things become difficult. We gain, but we lost.
It never seems to me that any problems were really solved. While we were worried about insufficient food and water and shelter in the past, now we were worried about health, about friends, about access to whatever, about goods. It seems that our worries had just transferred from one aspect to another, without a decrease in its strength. If we define the strength of our worries in the past as 1, it's still 1 today; it's just what we worries about different from what our ancestors worries about. Sometimes, one feels a lost of direction in the future: is it worth it for the improvement? Logically, one knows it's inevitable. Yet emotionally, it's a different answer...
Perhaps we never understand life after all. And perhaps, we never understood what we really want.
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Exercised by Daniel Lieberman.