Holly Cairns is wrong - our generation is much better off than our parents (via IrishTimesOpEd)
But the way we measure our wealth – as individuals and as a group – extends beyond immediate material factors. Social progress has generated a much fairer world. Technological advance has improved lifestyles day-to-day in ways once considered unimaginable. When Cairns says her generation is “worse off” than her parents’, it seems a conceit convincingly designed to ignore all the other ways that we can be rich.
Fifty years ago we didn’t even have the terminology to describe sexual harassment let alone the impetus or capability to fight against it. Now thanks to the likes of #MeToo huge progress has been made to improve the climate of sexual violence. It extends far beyond this. The world is not perfect but it is less racist and less homophobic than it has been even in recent decades. It may be immediately expedient to understate this progress – it certainly makes for a fashionable political point – but acknowledging all the ways the world has improved is crucial to keeping us on that path.
In fact in the long swooping arc of history most people would probably elect to live now – probably the best time to be alive in human history. Maybe we could ascribe that to soaring global literacy rates; or huge steps made in girls’ education; the decline of excruciating and fatal diseases; how we managed to change the tide on AIDS.
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