Those are some good things.
We have also increased pollution in the world enormously, widened the gap between rich and poor with considerable social consequences (recognizing that the world simply cannot sustain an entire globe living the American lifestyle, so that we are setting up a set of expectations which may eventually overwhelm us), have increased rates of cancer, have increased exponentially the ability of people to kill each other, have lessened interdependence, have promoted the open use of sex for commercial purposes and the commercial degradation of women, and created many people who are dependent on drugs, both legal (Prozac, e.g.) and illegal to to overcome whatever unhappinesses they find in their lives, among many other quite negative changes.
I know there is a danger of romanticizing the past, and I certainly don't myself want to go back to the days of outhouses and manually pumping water. Been there, done that, moved on. But I do have to ask whether the average American feels happier and more fulfilled as a person today than a hundred years ago. |
