From the perspective of an observer in 1900, are we living in utopia or dystopia?

Neither?

Eftsoon said:

From the perspective of 1900, would life in the western world be considered utopian or dystopian?

If both/neither, then it may help to break it down into areas:
economics
politics
education
etc

I think that 21st century life would be considered dystopian. I say this because of the confusion, alienation and the descent into chaos. We live under the iminent threat of nuclear war, terror and environmental calamity. We are imagining and conceiving technologies which have massive destructive potential (AI, nanotechnology, synthetic biology). The church is in total disarray. Half of it has been coopted by government, and the other half have been coopted by society. I could go on.

My thinking is more along the lines of the overall impression one would receive from that specific vantage point.... please don't respond with your own vantage point in mind. That won't work at all.

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I agree. Neither. We're in the middle, but moving toward dystopia. Keep in mind, we have never had a utopia, since Eden, and we never will until the second coming.

As for the threats of the day... I've been on this earth 50 years. In my lifetime, the threat of nuclear war was more of a reality in the 80's than it is today. Yes, countries threaten nuclear attack, but that's always been with us. Just because a country says they'll use their nukes doesn't mean they will. There's a lot of talk and little action. Will we see nukes before Jesus comes? I think it's possible, if leaders become desperate enough. The one thing that's kept it from happening is the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Society being in chaos is nothing new. That's not to say we're not living in the last days of the end times, we are. All of the descriptors found in scripture pertaining to how society will be at the end are seen in today's society, so there is cause for concern, but we should not fear, these things were prophesied and must come to pass.

I don't fear AI or technology whatsoever. What concerns me in these last days are powers and principalities (Ephesians 6:12), which will be the key players in end time events. The worst we have to fear is a death decree.

If we are faithful and trust in Jesus, we have nothing to fear from what is to come, even if it's death. We are not meant to worry about it one way or the other, but to look up, be patient and and await our redemption.

The world can fall apart around us, it changes nothing.

At the moment I think we're moving towards the Brave New World.

I'm awfully fond of air conditioning...

We're not living in utopia nor dystopia.

We never had it as good as we have it today, but we are losing it. Things could be far worse than what they are here in the US and it doesn't take long to see how bad it could be if we were living in other cultures.

The main thing that is destroying us is ingratitude. People, especially to coddled generation, is ungrateful for what we have and ignorant on just how we evolved as
a culture to this point. They want to destroy it all and especially anyone who disagrees
with them.

College professors now go into the restrooms at some universities and are faced with a sign on the wall warning them that they can be reported for words they
use which are offensive to students.

Watch the professors like Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein and Jonathan Haidt on YouTube explain the experience they've gone through at the colleges they use to
work at. Students literally got them to resign or get expelled or close to it.

I always thought a student was the person who needed to learn, not dictate to the teacher. Opps, they don't call students student anymore. They're now called, "learners."

economics, a tricky one. I think they would hate the open corruption, and that we seemingly have much, but more people are poor now. There are more steps to climb in our economical ladder. I think they would rather live modest as they did, and work their way up. Steady progress is worth something, along with personal freedom.

politics. They would hate it. Infighting and division would resemble a civil unrest situation, bordering on revolution. The people in the old ages wanted a united nation, that protected from outside forces.
education, do not think they would like the secular education at all, and taking God out of school.

Values and personal freedom would matter most to them, and religion. They were happy and grateful, wanted to earn their way. Do not think that free stuff would be enough. And I would think they would miss nice nature, hunting, clean water, fresh air.

This would be dystopian. So many dealbreakers from a person from 1900 travelling here in a timemachine. I am watching little house now, it seems like a nice time. Apart from this episode, now even Charles and Laura Ingalls are arguing.

Freth said:

I agree. Neither. We're in the middle, but moving toward dystopia. Keep in mind, we have never had a utopia, since Eden, and we never will until the second coming.

As for the threats of the day... I've been on this earth 50 years. In my lifetime, the threat of nuclear war was more of a reality in the 80's than it is today. Yes, countries threaten nuclear attack, but that's always been with us. Just because a country says they'll use their nukes doesn't mean they will. There's a lot of talk and little action. Will we see nukes before Jesus comes? I think it's possible, if leaders become desperate enough. The one thing that's kept it from happening is the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Society being in chaos is nothing new. That's not to say we're not living in the last days of the end times, we are. All of the descriptors found in scripture pertaining to how society will be at the end are seen in today's society, so there is cause for concern, but we should not fear, these things were prophesied and must come to pass.

I don't fear AI or technology whatsoever. What concerns me in these last days are powers and principalities (Ephesians 6:12), which will be the key players in end time events. The worst we have to fear is a death decree.

If we are faithful and trust in Jesus, we have nothing to fear from what is to come, even if it's death. We are not meant to worry about it one way or the other, but to look up, be patient and and await our redemption.

The world can fall apart around us, it changes nothing.

Click to expand...

Utopia is a political lie. It means "nowhere". A constant unattainable goal, everchanging, so you never get there.

AI has already won. No stopping it, I saw a robocoplike contraption that enabled wheelchairpeople to walk. Selfdriving cars. That development cannot be stopped. Too many benefits. And tech gurus like Elon musk fears it, and has stated that we need regulations for AI. But I do not fear it either.

We don't live in either a dystopia or a Utopia. Life, as always, is a mixed bag.

But from the perspective of someone from 1900 things woudl certainly look better

in 1900 the child mortality rate was 50%. A mother could expect half of her children to die before reaching adulthood. My Great Grandmother gave birth 21 times and only nine of her children made it to adulthood.

Children are protected by child labor laws
Children who are disabled are no longer locked away in institutions.
Lynchings are largely a thing of the past.
As is segregation (largely)
Women and minorities can participate in political life and businesses

Cancer is no longer a death sentence.
We have eradicated smallpox and come close in regards to TB, scarlet fever, whooping cough, polio, measles and dozens of others.
And yes we have new diseases here to terrify us but even those are treatable now
Life expectancy has almost doubled

We live in a world where any information we could want is at our fingertips.
the literacy rate has doubled.
We can communicate with most anyone anywhere on the planet.
We can travel to the other side of the world in a matter of hours.

As much as we complain about pollution out city s are so much cleaner than they were in 1900
Homicide rates are half what they were in 1900


Yes there are people who want to take those things away but there are more good people willing to fight to stop them

Freth said:

As for the threats of the day... I've been on this earth 50 years. In my lifetime, the threat of nuclear war was more of a reality in the 80's than it is today.

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I agree there was more fear of nuclear war 40, 50, 60 years ago than there is now. There was an uptick in fear around the time of 9/11 because people though a terrorist might explode a briefcase nuke or something like that. And even now, a single such terrorist event (or even a coordinated chain of such events) seems more likely than a full on nuclear war.

But it's also quite possible that we've lulled ourselves into a false sense of complacency. It seems unthinkable until it happens.

iarwain said:

I agree there was more fear of nuclear war 40, 50, 60 years ago than there is now. There was an uptick in fear around the time of 9/11 because people though a terrorist might explode a briefcase nuke or something like that. And even now, a single such terrorist event (or even a coordinated chain of such events) seems more likely than a full on nuclear war.

But it's also quite possible that we've lulled ourselves into a false sense of complacency. It seems unthinkable until it happens.

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This is true. September 11th never entered our minds until it happened. I'm not ruling out nukes, because it's possible, but the perceived threat is less today than it was in the past. Like you said though, we've become complacent.

Prophetically, the nations are supposed to come together for the final moves, not fight each other to the death (mutually assured destruction). That's not to say such things won't happen, but there has to be order to bring about last day events before the second coming.

Eftsoon said:

My thinking is more along the lines of the overall impression one would receive from that specific vantage point.... please don't respond with your own vantage point in mind. That won't work at all.

Click to expand...

Hmm... If one is black, female, or other group badly disadvantaged in the past, it probably looks a lot better. I'm sure a black person from Alabama in the 1900s, seeing how things are in the state now, would think it was a huge improvement.

For all the losses the middle class and working class have experienced in the past several decades, they are still much better off than they were in 1900, as far as income inequality and equality of opportunity is concerned.

People are living longer. Fewer childhood deaths. Violent crime has been declining for decades, while there was a huge increase in violent crime in the early 1900s.

The country is politically divided, but that's not unique in history. The current pandemic is bad, but not as bad as the 1918 pandemic.

I suppose an affluent male white racist would be dismayed.