[echelon]

Point to a single time in history this hasn't been the case.

Things are a lot better now than they used to be.

The only thing that has really changed is that the post-war American boom is over. Cheap labor, cheap money, cheap everything has returned to baseline and reached the costs felt elsewhere in the industrialized world.

[G_z9]

Things aren’t better at all. People say this because we have better technology, medicine, etc. but there was never a time in the past when humans had the life sucked out of them as they do now. We are raised inside boxes, our whole lives elapse inside boxes staring at screens and our social and emotional brain networks atrophy, leaving us damaged and hollow. Like zombies. There is no escaping the state. The law is absolute, there is no chance of escape or starting over. There is no land that is mysterious, the world has been collapsed. There’s no mystery in the world compared to before. AI gets better by the month and now most people can’t rationalize or ignore it: humans will face obsolescence soon. This is bad not just for the obvious reasons. We ingest chemicals and environmental contaminants that make us extremely sick. People are keeling over from heart attacks, obesity much more than they used to. I’ve read a lot of history and I would much rather live in 1720 than 2020.