When and why did the idea that things today must be better than in the past become so prominent?

Wealth inequality is declining globally. You have no idea what you're talking about. Living standards have been rising steadily in most countries since world war 2.

We are culturally inferior to our ancestors. It's the reason we live more comfortable lives.

What's happening in that picture with the cat shopped in it? 9/11?

bruh
youtube.com/watch?v=U79DoiC49r0

also what is living standards? we have much less free time for example than in traditional societies and more division of labour to produce more "living standards" just makes that worse

Probably because things are better than in the past and have been steadily getting better since like 900AD

>also what is living standards? we have much less free time for example than in traditional societies and more division of labour to produce more "living standards" just makes that worse
M8 you have no idea. It's easy to see it that way, but go and spend some time reading accounts of lives from just 90 years ago, or 150 years ago. Our lives are inexplicably better today.

Today we live in a world of problems caused by success, and that is no bad thing.

90 years ago there was at least the hope from things like the IWW that we could do something to live a really good life
now we live in the so called end of history and everyone pretty much just accepts working for wages every day to buy shit

Hope for what? There was mass homeless and unemployment, there was no support for people out of work or unable to work, there was horrible working conditions, there were still workhouses for the homeless.

We work 8 hour days with breaks for decent pay, even our poor have technology and such abundant food that they are obese.

You don't have to be a wage slave, we live in liberal capitalist democracies, go start a business.

I say it again, it's easy to complain but you do not realise how good we have it.

And five years later cookbooks on how to eat rats and skunks to survive were pretty popular.

>Hope for what?
the abolition of those things, now the only thing that's done is to try to lessen the effect of them, which just preserves them
>You don't have to be a wage slave, we live in liberal capitalist democracies, go start a business.
only a small minority can ever do that and it's still pretty worthless

You sound like a communist.

The only thing stopping a successful business in the west is yourself, it's like doing poorly in school, blame the system all you like but at the end of the day you're the one who should have been listening, reading the text books and revising.

>you can only meet arbitrary criteria if you meet arbitrary criteria

Source: just like, your opinion dude

>The human condition has been vastly improved in the last 500 years and the exponential growth in technology will ensure further improvement

i don't think there were any billionaire ceos in inuit society

Great argument

What lacked was billionaire ceos. They did, on the other hand, have great stuff like higher rate of violent death, lack of literacy and education, lack of laws, lower living standards across all measurable indices (except maybe hours worked, gee)

Its just another episode of "user feels disenchanted with modern society and romanticises about stuff he knows little of)

> lack of literacy and education, lack of laws, lower living standards across all measurable indices
Holy shit you are memeing too hard. Calm down.

>have great stuff like higher rate of violent death, lack of literacy and education,
never contested that
>except maybe hours worked, gee
that's probably the most important though
>Its just another episode of "user feels disenchanted with modern society and romanticises about stuff he knows little of)
true but I've got to feel that way for a reason

>thats probably more important

Yes, rathervwork 4h a day as an illiterate peasant mindlessly tilling the land and shit my guts out at 35 than work an interesting, problem solving job for 8 hours (soon to be 7 or 6 in some places)

Are you sure youre not just lazy?

literacy is just one expression of the human need to connect with other people, and this was a need that was probably more fulfilled in traditional societies from what I've heard
so called interesting jobs are a huge meme that is essentially just used by the bosses to market your own wagecuckery to yourself people who really enjoy programming or something would just do that anyway whether they have to or not

>literacy is just one expression of the human need to connect with other people, and this was a need that was probably more fulfilled in traditional societies from what I've heard

At this point, I'd like to label you a societal luddite (in the memetic sense).

I'm fine with technology considering that I'm shitposting in the first place, the actual luddites did nothing wrong though

>There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.
ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature1/
alternet.org/story/142171/there_are_more_slaves_today_than_at_any_time_in_human_history

Remind me again, when are they going to abolish slavery in the United States?

>What is the word that describes this phenomenon anyway?
whig historianism?

>suicide is the most common cause of death under 40
Is that because suicide is way up, or all other causes for death are way down?

mixture of the two, this is also the age group which dies the most in car crashes

>technology is killing us
>lemme tell you while sending these carrier pigeons

It's probably somewhat Marxian in origin, with that whole idea about how society is progressing with socialism as the end goal.

Which is ironic since both wars were fat less deadly than earlier wars at the same scale.

>counting in total numbers rather than percenages
You realize the global population has increasee quite a bit since then?

It's 2016, why haven't you accepted immigration of non whites into western civilization yet?

nah, progressiveism started with humanism

Technology hides our cultural decline. One day it'll all come crashing down.

Also, technology was given to humans by fallen angels and the nephilim. Technology itself isn't inherently evil but it's used in bad ways.

Indeed. Pic related.

>Rousseau was right
Always a bad sign for your worldview since Rousseau was wrong about everything.

Technology wiped out obsolete carrier pigeons, soon it will wipe out obsolete humans.

the fact that both ww are now considered awful events and not an epic fairy tail is literally a proof of progress

It can be that in a figurative way?

Progress is inherent to mankind

This is why being a progressive liberal is the most logical political position

>more and more people are being killed by police.

No they're not. Do some research. It's just being more publicized.

Even though many people will try to convince you otherwise, the world has been steadily getting safer. Provably.

>more and more people are being killed by police,

Not true.

>there is more and more wealth inequality too,

Not true.

>and suicide is the most common cause of death under 40

Something has to be the most common cause of death. What should it be? Personally, I think if nothing is higher than "person dies because they want to," that sounds pretty good.

>must be better

"Must be" is a straw man that nobody thinks. That things generally ARE better is supported by most objective measures you could come up with.

le current year amirite?

That is what OP is complaining about, I assume.

Why do Americans get into the character of public safety personnel during emergency situations and take it upon themselves to issue people orders to move back?
Hollywood?
The second amendment?

Or, you know, globalozation stifles national economies And kills competition at a regional scale.

A socialist living in a capitalist world has to believe that everything is getting worse, anything else would be an admission that capitalism works. The facts are an inconvinience.

>only a small minority can ever do that and it's still pretty worthless

You literally have no idea of what you're talking about. There are poor immigrants who come here and start successful businesses. You just want to complain because you don't want to do anything more than sit on Veeky Forums all day.

The only really bad thing is that white men are getting emasculated and pretty much castrated by society and the state.

The global standard of living has been higher than ever. It's good to understand that we have a certain bias to our own time, but our standard of living is objectively the best it has ever been. Even in shitholes like Africa or rural Russia, the wages, literacy rates or life expectancies are at an all time high.

So unless you have some meme opinion where being healthy and having food are not important, it's a completely acceptable idea.

>4hour workday

if you ever lived on a farm you'd know that there might be 4 hours of regular work that has to be done daily and then there is another 6-10 hours of unforeseen crap that wouldn't count as agriculture but sure as fuck has to be done if you want your farm to still be standing a year later

>be third world ooga booga from Congo
>read about westerners wanting to go back to farming, no medicine, and no electricity

Always makes me kek

It's usually soft nancy boys too

Explain to me how I should have been grateful for caring for smelly animals, lugging around water, cutting down bush, chasing off vermin, and adhering to ancient customs & social expectations with no chance to break free in life

If your life was run by close minded hicks you'd change your tune real fast

I do know that, but the last time I argued farming is hard work, some smart ass decided to go all "no, farming is literally no work at all, etc." so I decided to avoid having that argument again

Read George Sorel's "The Illusions of Progress". It's really fascinating how random ideas got stringed together to create the modern idea of progress.
But the major steps would be first the Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns in the French Academy in late XVIIth century, where it started out as an intellectual trifle that was limited to literature. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarrel_of_the_Ancients_and_the_Moderns
Then the Enlightenment writers argued that it's possible for humans to make a concerted effort to make the world a better place.
Then it was applied backwards using a misundrestanding of legal historicism, to say that the world was a worse place before.

any books on medieval employment?