I’m not sure if you’re arguing against a simplistic “progress toward utopia” narrative (which seems obviously wrong), or against all narrative descriptions of the complex weave of individuals across the past (which I’m not sure what other options there are).
I have done some amount of thinking on it, and I consider myself very lucky to have been born in the circumstances that I find myself in. It’s not uniform, but generally “nasty, brutish, and short” does describe most lives before the 20th century. And honestly, most today—I’m lucky on more dimensions than just the historical period I’m in.
This is far different than progress being inevitable or monotonic. In a lot of ways the end of the last century was better than the current (for my personal lived experiences). But it is progress, and it’s pretty significant when looked at in half-century chunks for the last half-millennium. It’s much less clear about fine-grained improvements over longer timeframes.
I’m not sure if you’re arguing against a simplistic “progress toward utopia” narrative (which seems obviously wrong), or against all narrative descriptions of the complex weave of individuals across the past (which I’m not sure what other options there are).
I have done some amount of thinking on it, and I consider myself very lucky to have been born in the circumstances that I find myself in. It’s not uniform, but generally “nasty, brutish, and short” does describe most lives before the 20th century. And honestly, most today—I’m lucky on more dimensions than just the historical period I’m in.
This is far different than progress being inevitable or monotonic. In a lot of ways the end of the last century was better than the current (for my personal lived experiences). But it is progress, and it’s pretty significant when looked at in half-century chunks for the last half-millennium. It’s much less clear about fine-grained improvements over longer timeframes.