<if this is Utopia, I'd hate to see what the opposite is like.>
Anywhere I've been, it has looked a LOT better than retreating from Moscow in 1812 as part of Napoleon's Grand Army. Even Beijing and Bombay in the past decade looked pretty good compared with what those soldiers experienced.
<//They have also got a higher standard of living than ever before.//
I don't know which "they" you might be referring to kimosabe, but here in the U.S., the highest standard of living for the nation was achieve in 1973 >
I meant the utilitarian "they" being most people as in the greatest good for the greatest number. 1973 in the USA? I don't believe it.
Perhaps in inflation-adjusted GDP per capita, but nobody had a computer then [and those who did have access to them had to punch holes in cards - must have been the hanging chads which bugged my programmes]. Air quality then was the pits. Health and safety standards minimal. Lead was in petrol to the tune of 0.84 grams per litre and catalytic converters were just coming in. Vietnamese were being killed by the million and napalm was a common word. I wasn't referring to the USA anyway. I was referring to the totality of people. Americans are only about 4% of the world. Made in China was unheard of and Nixon was playing table tennis with Mao. In 1974 the price of oil zoomed and oil exporters started enjoying serious profits at the expense of yank-tank motorists.
The USA I see looks better off now than in 1973. Air travel is not quite free, but not far off it. Medical treatments are spectacularly better. There's a long list of improvements. Everywhere else [almost] is similarly better off. Pol Pot and Rwanda and the like were of course hideous blots on the landscape. But there were always similar horrors going on and they were normal in earlier centuries.
<Since 1904, approximate 96% of the commercial stocks of seafood have been seemingly permanently depleted. If this is progress to you, I'd be interested to know what you think depletion is all about. >
I know about that, having experienced first hand the depletion of fish in the Manukau Harbour and general availability around New Zealand. That is indeed NOT progress. Fish farming is a pale imitation of wild fish quality. Not all is perfect or even as good. Some things are worse.
<Let's look at life for a moment from the perspective of the Maori, the Sioux>
For Maoris, life is much better than in 1904 or any time previously. Same for Inuit and other native Americans [those who weren't murdered during the conquest]. Maoris are on the pig's back compared with then. Life in the tribe was not all that great in the bad old days. The whares had no heating, no hot running water, no waste collection on Monday, no flush toilets, no Sky TV, the diet was limited, the wars constant and the way of life nasty, brutish and short.
Which isn't to say there weren't unreasonable impositions on them, as there are unreasonable impositions on me today. But I wouldn't swap today's impositions for those of a century ago. Neither would they.
Unlike many others such as Australian Aborigines, Amerindians, Armenians, Jews [in Germany], who were subject to various degrees of genocide, Maoris invited the British in. They gave land to get British to settle around them. Then they could get work and trade for muskets [useful for getting more land from neighbouring tribes] and other British goods.
I wouldn't claim life is better for turkeys. There are more turkeys murdered these days than ever before. On the other hand, one could argue that there are more turkeys enjoying a comfortable life than ever before too. Millions of lambs gambol happily each spring in New Zealand. If not for the kind farmers, they wouldn't exist. Okay, it's true that they don't live their full normal life span, but suely being farmed is better than not existing at all. I'm being farmed by the farmers in Helengrad and while I'd like to enjoy the vaunted freedom which King George II goes on about, it's better than nothing. If I behave properly, I might even be allowed to live my normal life span [unless they introduce conscription again or China decides to get some liebensraum].
<Such moral relativism was used as a defense >
It's true. I'm happy with that. It's less vicious to shout at somebody, and terrify them with a dog, than to pull their nails out one by one, then pour acid in their ears and so on. Surely you can understand that. I think the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay would rather be in their shoes than those of the Care woman who had her head hacked off after weeks of unmitigated terror. Some things really are not as bad as others. To help you understand that, think of your arm being bitten by a mosquito, and now by a pack of hyenas. Which would be worse? [Let's assume the mosquito doesn't have malaria or AIDS etc.]
Mqurice |
