The 2010's — What A Time To Be Alive

In media, it is often the case that the current time is portrayed as a hellhole not worth living in, often with an idolized version of either the past or the future. However, it seems as the 2010’s come to an end it is my job to point out just how great we have it compared to any other time in human history.

This is not the first time something like this happened. Even despite the two World Wars, the 20th century was the most peaceful century on Earth in all of recorded human history. Despite that, the popular notion in the mainstream media is the exact opposite.

This has been the case since human history started, Socrates warned that the written word would be the end of civilization. Novels use to be the cause of people becoming isolated from society. What were the novels of Charles Dickens but a man who never farmed a day in his life talking about the wonders of farming?

Of course, people like this do not always turn into Ted Kacynski — however, the amount of people following his ideology in one form or another, rather it be through violence or support for Andrew Yang, is quite worrying. After all, they then want Andrew Yang to use violence to stop technology, which I guess is fine to these moderates.

Luddism as an ideology is always one that has never been sound. It started during the Industrial Revolution where people — mostly union leaders, labor advocates, and various populists (wonder if Tucker Carlson would have taken part) — would ruin various machines under the fear said pieces of technology would take away there jobs. Of course, they also hated these jobs and were constantly finding some way to improve conditions — but you know.

Of course, the absurdity of assuming a job that only exists because of technology would be taken away because of more technology is not something I wish to get into here.

The spirit of luddism lives on today, primarily through conservative movements of people like Senator Josh Hawley or Marco Rubio, as well as the aforementioned Andrew Yang. Either way, I find it just as nonsensical today as it was back during the Industrial Revolution.

Here are ten things that help show that the 2010’s is one of the best decades in human history:

1. 28% of all wealth has been created this decade
2. Extreme poverty has been cut in half
3. Child mortality has been reduced by a third
4. Life Expediency has increased 3.3 years
5. Countries criminalizing same-same acts has gone down from 40% to 27%
6. Countries with laws protecting women have gone up from 53% to 78%
7. Death rates from pollution are down 19%
8. Weather-related deaths have decreased 95% since the 1960's
9. Consumption of 66 out 72 resources is declining
10. Countries that aren’t free have gone down from 34% to 26%

Yet, many Americans seem unaware of this, wishing to go back to a simpler time where all of these things just didn’t exist. May I remind you the president promised to Make America Great Again, yet it seems both America and the world are better off today than they were during any time Trump could make America similar to.

Both sides are engaging in this — with only the rare libertarian candidate supporting an advancing world. Just today I saw a Michael Bloomberg ad talking about how he made the air “the cleanest it had been in fifty years,” despite that just being about average regarding air quality in the United States today. But that doesn’t matter, as Micheal Bloomberg will take us to this magical time where the air was cleaner, although for all his nostalgia Bloomberg really doesn’t want to talk about his time as a Republican.

At the end of the day, this is just like the King Of The Hill episode about the new millennium. In the end, Hank Hill learns the new millennium is nothing to fear, but something to look forward to, even if it sometimes hits you on the head (it makes sense in context, I promise).

Yet, it seems twenty years into the new millennium many of us have not yet learned the lesson Hank Hill learned way back in 1999. Here’s something to think about: Even the epidemics of this decade (think Ebola) didn’t kill a single American, meanwhile something that killed a hundred may not have even been called an epidemic a century earlier.

I remember 2016 being declared the worst year on record, but compared to 1916 and events like World War One, it was nothing. That’s basically been this entire decade, even the bad years were nothing compared to what the average year was like just a couple of decades ago.

I hope every decade is more like the 2010’s, that would make every decade one of progress and human rights.