Are you unhappy with the modern world?

[yaghish]

Maybe Scandinavia is so typical because it has Scandinavians living there, with a Scandinavian mind set. For one thing, introversion is much more valued there than in the USA.

And for returning to the Victorian Age because it started a lot of changes, I don't know. Now, today, you know the outcome, and can learn from it, and move on into the future with that knowledge and fine-tune the changes. What's not good in the modern world is also the outcome of changes started in the Victorian Age. Blame your great-grandparents for it.
And this being a steampunk forum: if the Victorian Age was all that perfect, it would have been a Victoriana-forum, with plain historic costumes and all, not the modified ones. "We steampunks" seem to make fun with the Victorian Age, giving it our own modern style and morals, making creations that are only loosely based on historic fact if not completely fantasized. For one thing, the lower classes are, apart from the usual Dickensian streeturchin, not available in the steampunk subculture. No-one cosplays servants or slaves, not the common man going to the factory each day, not even the small traders minding their own business for only a few shilling per week. Therefor, the steampunk community or subculture, and even a lot of steampunk literature, cannot be compared to yesteryear. And I really wonder how realistic "the steampunk view" is when it comes to nineteenth century daily life for the average human being.

[Tower]

Now then, not only are women expected to be mothers to propagate the species unless we are said, in the modern world to be possessed of some weird extinction deathwish, but part of the labor force as well, and we wonder wide-eyed why children grow up to be little feral heathens.Now that's not to say that Women are not an equal of men, but women are not men. Men are not women. Equal but not interchangeable.

The laws regarding maternity leave are one of the things that I find most attractive.  Here you are expected to put your child in daycare when they are six months old and go back to working your two minimum wage jobs. In Finland they realize that its actually worth it to pay a parent(male or female!) to stay home and actually raise a kid for a few years instead of letting the prison system do it ten years later.

[Dr. Madd]

Tower: Not bad, but it'd be better if people would go back to Smithian economics which allowed easily for a one income home.

[Atterton]

I lived in Ireland for a few years, and I must admit the chav population there was quite a bit higher than it seems to be in Sweden.

[Captain Marcus Stahlsturm]

iphones.  I would travel to a different place or time to escape iphones.  Im pretty sure that someone my age should love them but they seem to actually be actively destroying people's minds and disconnecting the two hemispheres of their brains.  Im bored with people posting innane rubbish on twitter and Facebook, telling the world that they've just finished having a cup of tea and that now they want a crumpet.  I sigh when I see people watching cats play the keyboard on Youtube. Am I unhappy? No way! Am I content with this time? No way! I long for a time when technology is once again replaced by romance and adventure.

[Tower]

There is no escape from them. I was in Sierra Leone, the worlds second poorest country and it seemed like everyone had an iPhone, they all of them had cracked screens but they where iPhones. The people there love them and gather around generators to charge them since they don't usually have power at home.

But iPhones are actually the only piece of modern technology I actually like. I think we would be better off without 99% of other but iPhones actually seem useful. The give every person access to the sum total of human knowledge no matter what there class is.

[Atterton]

Iphones aren't the only phones with internet access you know.

Mobile phones are useful though, in the way they can easily use them in third world countries without all the infrastructure setup normal phones would need. There's also some that use them for banking, which has also helped some African countries.

[Captain Brandsson]

I am curious where people draw the chronological line regarding "modern"?

Internet?  Electricity?  Indoor plumbing?  Penicillin?


One of the prevalent themes of steampunk is progress.  Forward motion.
As I have said before, the modern world is fine except for two very key issues:
1.) people on average need better manners
2.) the world has a desperate need for redecoration
Otherwise we live in a glorious age where we have the ability to use amazing technology to quickly and comfortably discuss how wonderful life was before these things existed. 

[GabrielCrimson]

The only thing i'm unhappy with is the distinct lack of full body prosthetics and hover boards 

[Indigo Spire]

iphones.  I would travel to a different place or time to escape iphones.  Im pretty sure that someone my age should love them but they seem to actually be actively destroying people's minds and disconnecting the two hemispheres of their brains.  Im bored with people posting innane rubbish on twitter and Facebook, telling the world that they've just finished having a cup of tea and that now they want a crumpet.  I sigh when I see people watching cats play the keyboard on Youtube. Am I unhappy? No way! Am I content with this time? No way! I long for a time when technology is once again replaced by romance and adventure.

Couldn't agree more.  Technology is also making us stupid.  People have forgotten how to spell and so few are able to do basic math without some type of calculator - which all phones have these days.

[Dr Fidelius]

The only thing i'm unhappy with is the distinct lack of full body prosthetics and hover boards 

I'll just make do with my full-body tattoo of myself, only thinner.

[Captain Brandsson]

The only thing i'm unhappy with is the distinct lack of full body prosthetics and hover boards  

This is a fair criticism!

Technology is also making us stupid.

I understand this complaint, I do...  But on average more people are actually able to read, write and do math (even if too many do all those things poorly) on average than at most points in history, not to mention that these skills are not limited to a select group.

[Captain Brandsson]

I suppose you could say "technology is not making people stupid, stupid people are using technology to stay stupid".

They very act of having this discussion online with so many interesting and various opinions makes me smarter.
Others not engaging in similar things is their fault, not the technology's.

[Indigo Spire]

I am curious where people draw the chronological line regarding "modern"?

Internet?  Electricity?  Indoor plumbing?  Penicillin?


One of the prevalent themes of steampunk is progress.  Forward motion.
As I have said before, the modern world is fine except for two very key issues:
1.) people on average need better manners
2.) the world has a desperate need for redecoration
Otherwise we live in a glorious age where we have the ability to use amazing technology to quickly and comfortably discuss how wonderful life was before these things existed. 

I may be contradicting myself here when I say that technology is great, penicillin, plumbing, electricity.  Without the Internet we would not be enjoying this board.   I am speaking only for myself when I say that people take things for granted, the more we have the less we appreciate it.  I am not saying that for everyone, so please do not jump all over me for it.  I do believe technology and advances that benefit humanity by makes our lives easy are wonderful things, but sometimes they make us less able.  I don't know what you do for a living, but I often have to look at employment applications, resumes and other things pertaining to potential employees and their files once they are hired.  People can't spell, they don't know that one shouldn't use pink gel ink to fill out an employment application.  People - ESPECIALLY - women don't know how to shake hands, people don't know how to dress for an interview.   I can not tell you how many people have asked me to help them fill out a W-4,    and I am not talking about people fresh out of high school that dont know better.   Our online selves make some lose their social skills and that does not benefit them in the work place or out in the world in general.  
We don't read newspapers, we don't hand write letters, we don't formally interact with each other, we lose a lot ....... Maybe it is just me.

[Indigo Spire]

To Captain Brandsson,..............I would love to run into you at a pub, I'm sure we would have a lively debate.

[GabrielCrimson]

The only thing i'm unhappy with is the distinct lack of full body prosthetics and hover boards  

This is a fair criticism!

Technology is also making us stupid.

I understand this complaint, I do...  But on average more people are actually able to read, write and do math (even if too many do all those things poorly) on average than at most points in history, not to mention that these skills are not limited to a select group.

I couldn't agree more, I know of lots of people in their 50's that can't read and not a single person around my age with the same problems even those from the same families. not that this is an indicator of stupidity , some are very successful business men, just that access to education or atleast the techniques used have massively improved and i can only imagine modern technology has a part in that.

[akumabito]

For thos who are unhappy with the modern world, I challenge you to find a time in human history that was superior to ours in any objective way. Yes, a lot of things suck these days, and the world is far from perfect, but certainly it has to be the best time to be alive. The only valid reason I can think of to be unhappy with the world of today is because it isn't the world of tomorrow. but that's just me maybe

[Indigo Spire]

For thos who are unhappy with the modern world, I challenge you to find a time in human history that was superior to ours in any objective way. Yes, a lot of things suck these days, and the world is far from perfect, but certainly it has to be the best time to be alive. The only valid reason I can think of to be unhappy with the world of today is because it isn't the world of tomorrow. but that's just me maybe

You are right, the freedoms we enjoy, the conveniences and quality of life are by far more superior now than they ever were.......but can you let us have our romantic yernings for yesteryear?  Is that so wrong?

[joethemechanic]

Being 50 years old now, I can recall times when we were much freer and a whole lot less monitored. I think I'd give up the modern conveniences of today to go back. I think in the 60's and 70's we were advanced and comfortable enough. Maybe it's just my geological location (Between Philly and NYC) but I don't feel very free anymore

[Tower]

Iphones aren't the only phones with internet access you know.

As far as the people in sierra leone are concerned they are.  My theory is that all those iPhones that people return with broken screens aren't fixed at all but shipped directly to africa to be re-sold.

As far as the modern world, isn't it possible that its not better for some people? Not everyone is the same or enjoys the same things. Maybe the world is better for the majority of people but there are a wide range of personalities that have evolved and some of them are much better suited to previous times. I believe that most of the so called mental illnesses are really just evolved adaptations for situations that do not currently exist. Some people  are simply born to be nomadic hunters, independent homesteaders or psychopathic gunslingers of hire. Those jobs don't exist anymore or have become extremely rare or socially unacceptable yet you still have millions of people who where destined for those kinds of lives born into a world where they will never find the kind of life they where born to live.  Its only in the past two hundred years that the rate of change of our society has grown so swift that it is impossible for us to evolve fast enough to keep up and I think this rapid change has left millions of us in the genetic dust.

The question "Are YOU unhappy with the modern world" may really by the only way it can be reasonably asked rather than "Does the modern world suck?"

[Captain Marcus Stahlsturm]

I know i wasn't even born then but from the information i've accumulated in my short life I reckon humanity was doing pretty well for itself up to the 70's.  Then computers were invented. Isn't it ironic that we're having this discussion only because of their existence though? I get nostalgic for times that I never experienced purely because I never got the opportunity to experience them. I would have loved to be a 50's greaser 

[Atterton]

Come to Sweden, we have a lot of 1950s greasers. They're known as raggare.

[Angus A Fitziron]

As far as the modern world, isn't it possible that its not better for some people? Not everyone is the same or enjoys the same things. Maybe the world is better for the majority of people but there are a wide range of personalities that have evolved and some of them are much better suited to previous times. I believe that most of the so called mental illnesses are really just evolved adaptations for situations that do not currently exist. Some people  are simply born to be nomadic hunters, independent homesteaders or psychopathic gunslingers of hire. Those jobs don't exist anymore or have become extremely rare or socially unacceptable yet you still have millions of people who where destined for those kinds of lives born into a world where they will never find the kind of life they where born to live.  Its only in the past two hundred years that the rate of change of our society has grown so swift that it is impossible for us to evolve fast enough to keep up and I think this rapid change has left millions of us in the genetic dust.

An observation that rings true, Tower. Our ability, as an average, to adapt seems to be falling behind the rate of change and so because a (small?) proportion of the population can manage to adapt we have a skewed society. This results in those left outside adapting in their own way, which is then seen as anti social because it is outside of the norm of the elite group of opinion formers.

Am I happy with the modern world? No, of course not - it has far too many injustices still, what is it? 27 million still living in slavery? It is vitally important that we are not happy with the modern world otherwise we would stop trying to change it for the better. Sometimes we get it wrong but in general, the trend of this thread seems to suggest that it is better now than it was, but it needs to be better still in the future or what do we have to live for?

[joethemechanic]

but it needs to be better still in the future or what do we have to live for?

I think this is a big part of it. Back in the days of the Industrial Revolution there was an optimistic hope of a better future. People believed in a brighter tomorrow through finding ways to better apply the technology of the time.

Also, there was the belief (Although erroneous ) that this was all sustainable.

[Angus A Fitziron]

Strongly agree Joe, it all hinges on the definition of better and for whom!