Has the system finally cracked? Have the wealthy and powerful simply taken so much leaving the rest of us grasping at our very survival, easily manipulated into turning against other groups and even each other in an attempt to make sense of it all? Is society destined to destroy itself or descend into eternal servitude to our masters? How do we get out of this spiral of madness?
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Back then, there weren’t much of medical knowledge and medicine that prolong lifespans; people had much shorter lives and died young.
That seems a bit incorrect. Of course medicine made a big leap over the last two centuries, but it was not worthless before.
Also people had good chances to reach their 60ies or even 70ies once they survived their first 15 years.
Been rereading Vonnegut, a hero of mine, the last two weeks. Stunning to see him outline the exact same societal and environmental ills back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
OTOH, we hadn’t drove our ecosystems off a cliff until recently.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the average size of monitored wildlife populations has declined by 73% since 1970.
Oligarchy is nothing compared what’s in store due to global warming. These are the good times…
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History repeats itself but accelerated and amplified?
It’s been understated if anything for the past few decades.
The 2 signs that jump out at me:
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Rising rates of “deaths of despair”
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Watching birthrates fall into the abyss, all across the world. People seeing the future in store and opting out.
Birthrates are falling because education and wealth are rising. Both trends strongly correlate with smaller families. Besides, most don’t need 10 kids to work the farm any longer.
I also wonder if a bit of the “no kids” thing isn’t really a case of sour grapes. Young people are less social, less sexually active, more socially anxious, all that. Not blaming them, they got dealt a weird hand of cards.
FFS, people were fucking and making babies in WWII ravaged Europe. Think they saw a bright future?
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No. No. No. What?
I welcomed globalisation. But it seems to have been twisted by the right wing into ‘immigrants taking our limited jobs’ and now into ‘deport the migrants/ lock the borders’ rethoric. Would this have happened with more equitable distribution of wealth? I frankly don’t know.
Can I recommend watching Vlad Vexler (u-tube). Vlad talks about the deterioration of democratic institutions with a larger historical context.
Vlad’s interpretation of the current US situation is that it is a minor crisis for which there are still chances. He expects a real crisis over the next 10 years, when an authoritarian arrives who isn’t a moron.
There are problems, and risks - but still hope.
Society has gotten far, far more unequal and oppressive before without the system being threatened.
Reinterpreting this as “is there still hope for humanity”, it’s more complicated. Big history is kind of a wide-open mystery. It’s possible we’ve already won, already lost, or have any odds of getting a good ending in between.
Society has gotten far, far more unequal and oppressive
By what metrics?
Historically there simply wasn’t physical things with which to have the modern level of inequality. Historically the average lower end was was lower, but the modern high end is incomprehensible orders of magnitude higher.
Historical acts of oppression were often far more brutal and cruel but that’s because it wasn’t physically possible to maintain the constant, but relatively minor oppression that is characteristic of modernity.
I mean, the pyramids are huge, and they were built starting ~2500BC. There was stuff.
It’s true that in any discussion of today’s economics versus that in history (or in very different countries today) you run into the problems of an apples-to-oranges comparison. It’s most common for economic historians to default to hours of unskilled labour; early economists like Marx or Smith would be proud. Archeologists meanwhile tend to use house size in settlements as a proxy. That leads to ideas like the bronze age “palace economy” where all wealth would have flown through the ruler, although one wonders how that could possibly have been implemented in practice. When it comes to comparing modern global inequality, the best measurements are multidimensional indices, but that’s only possible because you can interact with people on the ground in real time. (No, two dollars a day isn’t the same everywhere)
Although there’s some dissent, the gist that pre-modern history included much higher levels of inequality than we see today holds. Here’s a recent example. Here’s an old AskHistorians reply about it, by alternate frontend.
There’s is some interesting comparisons out there. In certain periods and areas, medieval peasants were eating pretty well; much better than the modern global poorest, probably because of there was a lot of land relative to the local population. One the other hand, the poorest countries today have better infant mortality than the richest countries of the early 20th century.
Historical acts of oppression were often far more brutal and cruel but that’s because it wasn’t physically possible to maintain the constant, but relatively minor oppression that is characteristic of modernity.
Pragmatism might have had something to do with that, as did unfounded beliefs about the effectiveness of draconian punishments (the English bloody code being an infamous example). There’s no shortage of examples of historical suffering handed out on a consistent rather than occasional basis, though.
This happens every once in a while in history. The wealthy grow very wealthy and the poor realize they’re being used and chop off a few heads or descend into lots of wars or whatever and then the cycle starts again. Don’t worry it’s not the end of humanity itself but it very often signals the end of an empire.
See: the feudal ages/french revolution or the end of the roman empire
That’s not at all how Rome ended, though.
As far as I know, the only purely domestic peasant’s uprisings that succeeded were the French and Russian ones. They’re actually kind of exceptional events. Usually, it’s struggles between different factions of elites (like with the slow balkanisation of Rome).
Edit: Haiti was a slave revolt, but I should probably include it.
Hm that’s true. Rome had a lot going on towards the end and I can’t pretend to be an expert, but certainly the elite’s greed led to a financial crisis, and what I would consider to be a grave dehumanization of poor citizens (and the ongoing reliance on slaves) played a role. It didn’t end the same way with a revolution, but the factors that led to its fall were all quite similar.
Rome didn’t treat it’s lower classes and actual slaves very well from the start, though. Nor did the rulers before them or the feudal splinter states after them. I’ve had an actual historian of Rome tell me point blank nobody has any idea why it started to decline. Historically, scholars have pointed at too much generosity with the privileges of citizenship and senatorial appointments of those from humble backgrounds.
I think it’s fair to say that usually the peasants know they’re being screwed. Very rarely, the aristocracy has been complacent enough it develops into an actual movement, but before the French revolution it always ends like the English peasant’s revolt: it’s crushed, and everything goes back to normal. It’s kind of weird it’s worked better since then, really.
(There was also more than one financial crisis in the Rome, but that’s neither here nor there)
Google “The French Revolution”
It is more difficult to change course after you pass a turning point, but never impossible. Even if we have passed it, we need to keep working to improve the situation. The only certainty is that giving up will not make things better.
I find it odd that there are a loud and large number of people who decry communism and socialism as failed theories – pointing to the ruins of various countries that have unsuccessfully implemented them – while pointedly ignoring the fact that capitalism is falling into the same problems: the ruling class (ie, ultra-rich) takes all, and the working class suffers from a rapidly widening wealth gap.
However, when you know that the media is owned by only a handful of billionaires to benefit from the system as it is, it starts making a lot more sense.
I’m guessing you’re from the US and probably haven’t left there (at least for any country that isn’t wealthy or pretending to be in tourist areas)?
No. Speaking generally of stagnating wages, increasing right wing influence and media’s influence on the general population.
