Utopia or Dystopia?

[occamslightsaber]

Dystopia on these accounts:
- demographic growth accompanied by a huge level of economic production and consumption are depleting some resources in some regions (rare earth metals, sand used in concrete aggregates, some types of fish, even fresh water)
- increased urbanisation has led to increased density of population that have turned into urban heat islands
- larger populations need many more resources just to keep things going, expensive systematisation of all kinds (economic, logistic, political), for example just to keep them employed
- mass employment in high-density urban areas: pollution, traffic, increased stress, soaring costs of housing
- technology that has a colossal potential for destruction, even if we think about how different the 2 world wars were from previous ones, when they had no tanks, motorised units, aviation was much less developed as well as explosive technologies

So Thanos did nothing wrong?

[gamevideo113]

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Utopia. Science has gone so far. On the other hand, humans are just the same as they were 3000 years ago and they have always been.

are you sure about the human part? Compared to 3000 years ago I feel todays humans are, shorter, fatter, lazy, weaker

Yes i am pretty sure about the human part. How we do things has changed throughout history. Why we do things, on the other hand, has remained remarkably the same.

I disagree with you though, first people used to use live for themselves, individual greedy lives, personal glory etc.

Do you really think this is not the case, nowadays, too? From what i can tell it is a naive assumption.

Now many join towards a common goal, from personal glory the goals have changed to the benefit of our species and other species in general.

Again, this is both an assumption and generalisation. The fact that we are more connected surely means that we are more likely to find people who have the same goals as we do. But ultimately, regardless of what you might see here and there, nature has a very simple rule: survival of the fittest. Humanity has been able to oppose to this rule in many ways, but ultimately it cannot be erased. A lot of human behaviours can be linked tho this rule. Capitalism itself is a very apparent manifestation of the fact that personal greed is still very much present and possibly even more problematic nowadays than what it used to be, hundreds of years ago.

mankind is moving towards a common ideology and it won't be longing before mankind as a species is united. Earth will be one nation. We are slowly getting ready for age of space exploration, slowly preparing to acknowledge existence of sentient intelligent life outside Earth.

Another assumption-generalisation. What is even this common ideology every human being is striving for that you claim to see? Personally, i see none. If anything, humans might have learned to respect each other a little bit better, but i really don't see much beyond that. Earth will never be one nation, that's just a very sci-fi-esque idea.
Humanity will probably be extinct before we have the chance to interact with another sentient and intelligent form of life.

These things wouldn't be possible 3000 years ago "why"

As i said, i think that how we do things might have changed. Why we do things, ultimately, is still the same.

[deleted_user0]

Oh right, if you read it in this key, well, in some ways we live utopia compared to late Iron Age, while in others dystopia.

Utopia compared to late Iron Age in terms of:
- medical care - they couldn't have dreamt of what we can cure today
- infrastructure - getting from one side of Europe to the other in about 2 hours or less? that's the stuff myths about celestial gods could be made of
- security - there's something called police that makes sure your neighbourhood is not overwhelmed by crime, national army and military alliances that keep a certain balance and make sure you're not getting invaded and plundered on a regular basis
- free education in many countries and free access to a huge corpus of information (internet, libraries)
- less starvation overall, especially in developed and developing areas
- [spoiler=middle class person could live in something like this:][/spoiler]

Dystopia on these accounts:
- demographic growth accompanied by a huge level of economic production and consumption are depleting some resources in some regions (rare earth metals, sand used in construction aggregates, some types of fish, even fresh water)
- increased urbanisation has led to increased density of population, cities have turned into urban heat islands
- larger populations need many more resources just to keep things going, expensive systematisation of all kinds (economic, logistic, political), for example just to keep the majority of people employed
- mass employment in high-density urban areas: pollution, traffic, increased stress, soaring costs of housing
- technology that has a colossal potential for destruction, even if we think about how different the 2 world wars were from previous ones, when they had no tanks, motorised units, aviation was much less developed as well as explosive technologies (you need to multiply this by many orders of magnitude to realise where are right now)
- [spoiler=no, this is not cyberpunk, this is China][/spoiler]

Adding to that, many things also depend on what you're used to. For example a 100 years ago most meat people ate was fresh off the animal, or otherwise dried or salted. So when the Parisian butchers were unable to get enough cows for fresh meat during WW1, two shops opened which sold frozen beef from Argentina and other countries. Most Parisians shunned those places, for a variety of reasons, such as believing that frozen meat was unhealthy, of poorer quality, etc, and also they disliked the fact that the beef wasn't local, not French but imported. To them it was a thing of horror. But nowadays, meat can be frozen up to three years, and still sold in the supermarkets as fresh meat. And imported meat is often seen as a luxury item in many places. This entire attitude pretty much changed within the span of three or four decades.

Many things from the past seem to us horrible, and the other way around as well. Progress, in some ways, is in the eye of the beholder.

[Horsemen]

Many things from the past seem to us horrible, and the other way around as well. Progress, in some ways, is in the eye of the beholder.

Agreed, for example many people today believe that Socialism represents progress, whereas people in the past would have been horrified at the thought of being stripped of their rights and possessions at gunpoint by a militant state.

[lejend]

The world is always changing, yet always the same.