Young people nowadays?

I just can’t get on board with the idea that humanity is getting worse. What makes people think that it was ever significantly better overall? I know that sounds rather rhetorical but I am actually interested in the answer.

There are some things that tempt me towards the ‘everything’s going downhill’ pov, notably areas of British life that have changed dramatically either post WW2 or post industrial revolution (can’t decide which was more pivotal right now – perhaps neither!):

• Technology
• Communication/Media
• Family life
• Food

There are probably more but these leap out at me.

Technology and Communication/Media, I presume, are more advanced than they have ever been before. However, that is clearly not a bad thing all round. The now hackneyed charge that all the new types of communication are destroying real relationships doesn’t hold much water for me. Without exception email, Facebook, MySpace, msn, texts, blogging…have enhanced my relationships with others. Including my family. Perhaps that’s just me. More serious, perhaps, is the way that modern technology etc. has sped up the pace of life. But is that really the case? All (I can’t think of any exceptions) my friends who have lived for some amount of time in Australia or South Africa say that the pace of life there is so much more relaxed and yet they have access to the same technology in those countries.

Oh, there is so much more to say about my first two bullet points (a little taster: freedom of speech, photography, propaganda, hyperreality, charities, medical technology, the Hippocratic oath, image manipulation, transport, pollution, weapons…), particularly about the press . However, nothing that I think of really convinces me that humanity is being damaged by these in a way that we have never been damaged before.

That’s really the same for the state of family life and food (in modern-day Britain, at least) both of which are pretty miserable at the moment. When were they ever that much better overall? The problems and the causes vary immensely over time and location but there have always been horribly malnourished people and appalling mothers and fathers en masse.

Is the problem facing humanity, in fact, simply that there are so many more of us living on an elderly globe? There are more people doing the same amount of wrong things and it’s too hard (as it always has been) for most people, most of the time to step away from the glory of wealth, the pleasure of a quiet life, the horror of suffering or the temptations of what is just out of reach… to take the long view and act. Earth may be slowly (or quickly) dying but compare its rulers, children, youth, parents, teachers, managers, writers, role models, wealthy, poor, etc. to their equivalents in times gone by and I’m not sure there’ll be much in it.

And yet, we’re still here. Somehow, people manage to scrape away the dirt and find love, dreams, talents, pleasure and hope. That is a sign that humanity hasn't gone down the drain with a final glug. This is too. Whatever rises above the rest.