Our world is slightly crazy nowadays.
People burn their time on electronics (I freeze, look down at my computer, and feel ashamed), most people seem to hate most other people, and nobody seems to be able to agree on anything. It' no wonder that sometimes people think that it might be better if we could live in a different time period. Perhaps we could live with the Romans, or the Egyptians. We could move back to the 50's, even.
I say that those people are all wrong.
Whenever I am asked this question, the answer seems blindingly obvious to me, although I'm sure that most people tend to disagree. I however stand firm by my answer; the best time to live is right now.
I know, yes I know, that I spent the fist sentence or two trashing the present day. And unfortunately, I still stand by the things I said up there. The world is still polluted, there's overpopulation, and there are a half-dozen crazy dictators running around shooting people. And maybe, in certain scenarios, it would be better to live a few years back. Life seems to have been simpler back then. Consider this, however.
If we go even 200 years back, there is slavery. Ethnocentrism runs rampant. Fundamental freedoms are taken away from certain groups, and to tell people that you're gay could lead to public scorn.
Rights were still being taken away from certain groups well into the 20'th century. Black people had to struggle for their rights in america. First nations groups in Canada were still being put into residential schools.
As far as world hunger goes, agriculture production has skyrocketed, allowing more people to leave for cities and the population to keep growing. Medically, penicillin was only discovered 100 or so years ago. Militarily, I'd say that we're actually doing pretty well right now. Sure, we still have wars. Russia and Ukraine. ISIS in the middle east. This is all of course terrible, but with a population of nearly 8 billion arguing people and considering the two world wars last century, I'd say we're doing pretty well.
And even with all of the discrimination still happening today, I'd say that we're doing better then ever before. In my generation, people can tell others that they're gay and generally people just shrug their shoulders and go are fine with it. Woman's rights are also doing better, with woman speaking out all over the world. People of all different religions are coming together, and sitting side by side without any animosity between them.
Said Martin Luther King during his "I have a dream" speech, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character." It seems to me that his vision is now starting to come true.
And yes, we have some big problems in todays world, and I'll not claim that we live in a world that is even close to being completely free of intolerance. Perhaps life was simpler, years ago. Perhaps our modern day gadgets are not really improving our lives, but helping us waste them. For as the book Le Petit Prince so eloquently points out, the time saving devices we use today can take the joy out of actually achieving something.
In the book, the Little Prince meets a salesclerk who sells pills that stop your need to drink. The salesclerk tells the Prince that taking the pills could save him 53 minutes a week, and asks the Prince what he would do with those minutes. "If I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked," said the Prince, "I'd walk very slowly toward a water fountain..."
And that is so true of todays society, I think. We need to work at something to take any joy from completing it.
Even with these faults, I'd take the time period of now over any other. The past, I believe, was a bumpier road then today's is, and the future is uncertain. And so I have the pleasure of being happiest right where- or perhaps I should say when- I am.
Thanks for reading,
-Mark
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