Is the world better then it was 10 years ago?

[calpoon]

the qualities of "improvement" are entirely subjective. to much of the arab world a return to times of militant religious rule is what they consider an improvement. to some people a faster computer is improvement. If you look at it objectively in terms of simple behaviour on the part of the members of the world- the worlds been the same for the last 3 million years. people fucking shit up, people killing each other, people having sex with each other and making more people, people making useless things. it's always going to be the same until people wipe themselves out. then it's going to be the same way that it was for a billion years, and a billion more years until the sun explodes.

 

[member2686]

OMG I am LMAO, calpoon!!!

Some very interesting and engaging points have been made here.

While the capacity for humans to kill each other has increased over the last ten years (guns all over the place, military developments in essentially all developed nations, etc.), our capacity for saving and extending life has grown immensely, and the abilities of people to communicate with each other on a global scale, travel far and wide, and resolve differences rationally have all improved immensely. Unfortunately, we currently have a dunderhead President here in the USA (IMO), but that'll soon change and onward we'll go...

As someone mentioned, it's all relative anyway. One person's improvement is the Playstation 3, while another's is better access to medicine/quality medical care.

:2 cents:

...it's always going to be the same until people wipe themselves out. then it's going to be the same way that it was for a billion years, and a billion more years until the sun explodes.

 

[Imagine]

FYI, our sun won't explode. It'll burn out. In case anyone wanted to know (yeah right).

 

[calpoon]

it will after the increased density gravity sucks the earth into it and detonates all of our nukes, if they are still around at that time. :tongue:

 

[JiDoKwan]

Perhaps this could help in comparing years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996

I'd say worse, much worse.
The only thing that's improved in the last ten years is our level of technology, but our wisdom to use that said technology has diminished greatly.

The wikipedia for 1996 shows noteworthy events for each month & if you read them carefully they read like foreshadowing for events transpiring in our present.