Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Pre-industrialization, life was nasty, brutish, and short. Children were necessary because human/animal labor was all there was, and modern contraception didn't exist. In the months with fairer weather, the young men would go off to war since taking stuff has more profit potential than toiling in the mud. Slaves were taken, because again, a person is a machine that can do work.
Did the civilized world become civilized because they sat around, thought real hard, and came up with the idea that slavery is wrong? There is more slavery in the world now than any other point in history, and it all exists in impoverished places where people don't have affordable, abundant energy and machines to labor for them.
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This wasn't universal, as it depended on the moral values of each culture. There were cultures where altruism abounded, and war and slavery were either non-existent or not at all how you're depicting them.
Technology and industry have tried to limit our crimes and vices by offering us many more that do less harm to others, yet we also have fewer altruistic cultures as a result.
Also, thinking that everyone suffered before the industrial revolution is just wrong. Most families did not have slaves. The world wasn't in a constant state of war either. There were many benefits to such a life style. One was child-parent relationships since children spent time with their parents learning how to make a living and how the world works. This wasn't a bad thing, it was a good thing. It only became bad when greed caused parents to exploit their own children. But separating children and adults into two worlds, the working world and the school world, hasn't helped people stick to moral values and to respect others more, but rather has caused them only to get worse causing more disrespect.
Also, the industrial revolution hasn't fixed the problem of war. There are more wars and a higher death rate in those wars than previous ones. There is also a higher crime rate than ever before.
I suspect that as those who have more power find more ways to keep channeling more of the world's wealth into their pockets then the rest of the world will continue to make less and less until we're back to slavery once again.
And besides, getting back to the point of climate change, even if the only downside to industrialization were climate change due to tons of CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere, there's no reason why we can't look for and try out alternatives that lower or eliminate that. It's like cars. They have a problem, you get in a wreck and you can die. But seat belts, air bags, ABS and now auto stopping systems are saving more lives, and we still are able to drive around our tons of steel vehicles.