Why the future is a utopia compared to the past

The world is getting more and more awful by the hour. The new generations are much worse than the ones preceding them. Apocalypse is behind the corner. There is no future…

We all hear (and maybe make) these statements. On the surface, they may all seem to be true to some extent. But what if we look back historically at the world? How was the human race developing? How were people living in the past and what societies looked like?

Imagine that you come from another planet and for a second scan the history and the current state of the world unbiasedly.

Science up

Let’s see how science and medicine fared just two-three hundred years ago. Compared to the 200,000 years of humanity, this was not so long ago.

Something that is now common knowledge, i.e. bacteria and germs, were not known back then. Doctors were performing surgical procedures on patients, using non-sterile instruments, which very often caused infections and death. One could easily die of a tooth infection. Most of the diseases were not treatable and infant mortality was ten times higher than today. A large part of the knowledge scientists and doctors had in the past is now probably learnt by medical students in their first one or two years of study. Our knowledge has significantly advanced in the last hundred years alone. Not so long ago, doctors were advertising cigarettes and recommending children to smoke. Heroin was discovered by Bayer (yes, the same Bayer we all know today). It was prescribed to children and adults and advertised in newspapers as the best painkiller ever with no side effects whatsoever. Artificial sweeteners were considered the best alternative to sugar and advertised as good for your health.

Today we have modern science and medicine that is really advanced. But 50-60 years ago people thought the same just like people 100-200 years ago. This begs the question: What will doctors and scientists of the future think of our knowledge? Will they laugh at our practices as we laugh at doctors advertising smoking to children? Will they consider our medical practices barbarian as we now think of the way surgeries were performed not so long ago? Looking historically at the world, they will sure do.

We are now thinking that we are killing the planet and everything is irreversible. However, when the machinegun was invented, people panicked because a scientist calculated that if a certain number of people start shooting at everyone it would take just a week to kill everyone on earth. Yes, we are polluting and destroying nature at an alarming rate, but more attention is focused on this than ever before. And maybe, just maybe, people are getting smarter and more compassionate every year and this, combined with all the technological advancements, may mean that all this problems could be solved and damages reversed. It may seem like a utopia but going to the moon seemed like a utopia and considered something impossible and unthinkable mere hundred years ago.

Human change

Another popular myth is that people are getting worse and society is now more corrupt than ever. This is probably due to two things: one is that people’s memories (collective memories included) get painted in punk as time goes by – the more time passes, the better the memories look, and the second one is that we know more about every aspect of our society – be it politics, business, crime or even personal life.

Most people have a really nostalgic and romantic notion of the past. Do you know which women were considered the most beautiful but very hard to come by when the first dating ads appeared in newspapers? Women who had a full set of teeth in their mouth. Not so romantic after all.

Up until not so long ago, towns and cities didn’t have sewage, meaning that everyone was literally shitting and pissing on the streets. Imagine how everything smelled! In addition, no one was brushing their teeth or was taking a bath that often. So, if you go back in time to that moment, socializing will be a nightmare for you and just talking to people will be quite an endeavour.

The first days of the cosmetic industry weren’t so bright either. At some point, women in Europe wanted their faces as white as possible because it had become fashionable. That’s why they started using a cream made of lead. This significantly worsened their skin but they tried to cure the inflammation by applying more lead.

When sugar was discovered, it was considered a luxury. It was very expensive and available only to the rich. Queen Elizabeth could afford to eat all the sugar she wanted and she did. This resulted in her teeth falling out and no one knew why it happened. Ironically, today not eating sugar is a luxury and sugar-free food is more desired and sometimes even more expensive.

In today’s world, most of the population live a much better life than the aristocrats and royalties hundred years ago. We drive vehicles that are ten times more powerful, faster and comfortable than even the best carriage. The average person has access to such kinds of foods from all over the world that would amaze even a king form the past. Our health care and way of life are better than ever before and in general we have superior lives than most of the past kings had. Even kids are more educated and have much better knowledge than scholars back then. If we described our way of life to people from the past, they would say that it is a utopia and it is not possible.

Then comes technology. Its development in just the past 20 years has been so fast and explosive that the older generation often struggles with new technologies even though it all has happened in their lifetime. Can you imagine explaining the Internet to people in 1883? It will be truly impossible. But can you imagine explaining it to someone in the 1980s? It will be nearly impossible.

So now we can(not) imagine what the world will be in 30 years. What will it be in 50 years? Even the best futurists and science fiction writers cannot predict it. How could they if today’s way of life is so vastly different that even if someone comes with a time machine from the 80s, they will have hard time understanding it and fitting into our society. They will also probably be flabbergasted by how inclusive and tolerant our society has become.

Generations on steroids

Up until the 1990s, generation change had one common trait. The oldest generation always knew more than the younger ones how the world worked. They had more knowledge and experience of almost every aspect of life and society. Moreover, nothing much had changed for hundreds of years until the industrial revolution. Do you know of any great invention or big change in the world that happened between year 1000 and year 1700?

Then the industrial and technological revolutions came. Changes occurred at warp speed. It was reflected in the huge difference between the generations and an enormous change of models. For the first time in the history of everness, the new generations know more about technology than the older ones. And as we all know, technology is now a huge part of every single aspect of life and society - banking, communications, transportation, working environment, etc. Nowadays, the world is divided into digital natives and digital nomads – it is not about who is better in agriculture or who is a better engineer or a chemist. Change on every level is faster than ever before. In today’s world, paradigms are shifting like the weather in spring.

All this doesn’t seem to be stopping any time soon. So what if we travel 50 years in the future? Probably, we will not comprehend how people live and what their societies have become. We will struggle to understand and use their technologies. We will not comprehend how businesses, societies and nations operate. We will not understand fully their medicine, values and even everyday life – just as someone who comes in 2022 from the 1500s will not be able to comprehend our world today.

One is sure though, 2072 will look to us as a utopia?