I feel dificult to think in English:( , would anyone give me some advices?
Issue 133
"The problems of modern society have led many people to complain: 'We live in terrible times.' Yet, given the choice, no one today would prefer to live in any other time."
There is a tendency nowadays that many people complain that they live in terrible times and given the choice, they would prefer to live in any other time. While I strongly oppose those people for their opinions could do nothing but impede progress of our society, I find that they are not mistaken but confused.
Through superficial comparison, one may conclude that modern society is undoubtedly superior to any previous one. Democracy is superior to monocracy, industrialization bring us material affluence that agricultural times could never do, our working conditions are more comfortable and we are working more efficiently, it is far more accessible to gain any information via modern media than the merely books and newspaper times… such examples of comparison are infinite.
Yet once considering the problems born of modern society, one may complain that we live in so terrible times that he/she would rather live in the past. Nearly all the merits of today bring out problems that never happened in the past, which always lead people to regard themselves unfortunate than their predecessors who didn’t have to confront those terrible problems. Industrialization provide us affluence in material as well as squalor in spirit, efficiency hasn’t liberate us from the burden of heavy labors but make us like cogs in a precisely operated and never-stopped machine, too much information overload us who are confused about how to dispose… in one word, we have been thrown into a dilemma.
To get rid of the confusing comparison between the modern society and the past, more rational analysis is needed. First, we should be conscious that our predecessors may have been confronted with the same dilemma. Peoples in the monocracy society, since they couldn’t know such things as democracy, would prefer to live primitive society in which they could gain freedom. That is to say, were you possible to live in the past, you would complain no less than today. As through democracy we gain our freedom, someday we would solve the problems now we have no way to. Second, no type of progress would bring us a certain benefit without any relevant problems. Our society is progressing painfully at the price of the emergence of new pressing problems. Third, since to live in other times is nothing more than an illusion, the most realistic and courageous people would prefer to adapt to the modern times.
In sum, those who claim that they would rather live in the past have been misled by the existing pressing social problems. Given any choice, by which I mean the choice of reasoning rationally and objectively, no one would prefer any other times.