At Philosophers' Playground, SteveG asks, "So why is there the perception that there has been no progress?"
Hmmm... Let me think about this...
A war of aggression. Habeas corpus. Domestic wiretapping. Worldwide economic exploitation. Third-world Sweatshops and chattel slave labor. Intelligent Design. Kansas.
Need I continue?
The Global War on Terror. Global warming. New Orleans. CEO salaries. Falling real minimum wage. The American health care system.
I could go on and on.
And all that's just us. The richest, most powerful country in the world, the inventors of modern democracy.
A few tens of millions are living in unparalleled luxury. A few hundred million are hanging on to a middle-class lifestyle by their fingernails. But billions continue to be plagued by the same disease, war, famine, pestilence and grinding soul-destroying poverty that has been constant throughout human history.
Progress? Color me skeptical.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
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Unbelievable. Did I marry you only to discover this?
ReplyDeleteThis is a major anti-liberal conservative talking point and I always felt it was an unfair one. Maybe it isn't - my favorite liberal is repeating it.
Yes, there has been progress. No, things aren't perfect and never will be. To sneeze so on the concept of progress is to take away all hope. As you well know, I'm not the most optimistic person you know, yet I firmly believe in the idea of progress.
I like to think the world's happiness quotient has increased. No, all misery is not wiped out - but in pockets here and there, people are happier, healthier and safer than they ever have been.
This is progress, or I don't know what the word means.
As for all the rest of the world's problems...if only those brown people would stop reproducing at such a furious rate...
Stop blaming everything on white people! Good Christ....