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Are we better off in the 21c compared to 19c?

Are we better off in the 21c compared to 19c?

  • Yes, much better

    Votes: 35 76.1%
  • Yes, slightly better

    Votes: 3 6.5%
  • No change

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, slightly worse

    Votes: 1 2.2%
  • No, much worse

    Votes: 5 10.9%
  • I can't make up my mind

    Votes: 1 2.2%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 2.2%

  • Total voters
    46
While I can't speak for anyone else on this forum ,I know that in the 19th C I would most likely have been a slave for the almost the first 2/3rds of that century and probably a poor sharecropper like my great great grandfather in the latter third of that century instead of the successful restaurntuer that I am today.And I'm willing to hazard a guess that not only would my wife not be a surgeon who is allowed to vote,but we probably wouldn't have been allowed to marry each other back then because I'm a dark skinned creole and she's a cajun.
So at least for me and my wife we are definately better off in this century than in prior ones.

You can't be a successful restaurntuer if you can't even spell it correctly.

I used to be a successful karpentur.
 
OK, so let me clarify with a clip of Robert Zemeckis' 1997 film "Contact" which many of you probably remember. :)

 
People who think of asking questions like these should first ask themselves what was the 19th century like before asking that kind of question.

I think we can unilaterally agree that the 19th century was pretty ****ty for almost everyone in it.
 
I think we can unilaterally agree that the 19th century was pretty ****ty for almost everyone in it.

The 19th century had much better taste in music.
 
You can't be a successful restaurntuer if you can't even spell it correctly.

I used to be a successful karpentur.
What are you,a spelling nazi?So I mispelled a word,get over it.What does spelling have to do with being able to cook and run a restuarant?
 
I doubt there are very many religious people who think porn is more important than antibiotics, vaccines, mass communication, universal literacy, automobiles, and 80-year lifespans.


They had porn in the 19th century anyway. Also whorehouses, gays (still in the closet but they were there), risque fashions, booze, opium, and vices comparable to most anything going on in the modern world.


I'm glad I live in the 21st century.
 
Other
But thats me
We are better off, of course, but, the "uber" wealthy may be less "better off".
Too bad.
Two posters state that they are less "better off".
As I say, we need a better people.
 
Other
But thats me
We are better off, of course, but, the "uber" wealthy may be less "better off".
Too bad.
Two posters state that they are less "better off".
As I say, we need a better people.


Yeah, I guess it does have to do with what side of the tracks you live.
 
You can't be a successful restaurntuer if you can't even spell it correctly. Come on, now, yes, spelling is important, but.

I used to be a successful karpentur.
Being a decent human being is more important.
The reason why I spell correctly is the "SpellCheck" , NOT that I am a great speller.
I think that in most aspects we are better off.
But NOT all of us,IMO.
 
I'm generally not a spelling Nazi. I promise. I just think that not knowing how to spell what you are is akin to misspelling your own name. It's not just a word anymore, it's your essence. Construction workers aren't typically known for English language skills, so we would tell the apprentices that you needed to be able to spell carpenter to be one.

If I was a restaurateur. I would definitely learn how to spell that word. And yeah, I just stuck an 'n' in there and spell-check made me select the correct spelling.

But hey, I'm not one.
 
Are we better off in the 21-th century compared to 19-th century, what do you think? :)

I had some serious medical issues after I was born that required some innovation in how doctors deal with immune issues (I was never told the specific details). I wouldn't be alive in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century.
 
OK, so let me clarify with a clip of Robert Zemeckis' 1997 film "Contact" which many of you probably remember. :)

The movie is an infuriating demonstration of the anti-social self-indulgence that really motivates the Trekkies extraterrestrial fixation. The government wastes billions just to award Jodie Foster with a fantasy interview with her deceased father.
 
I had some serious medical issues after I was born that required some innovation in how doctors deal with immune issues (I was never told the specific details). I wouldn't be alive in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] century.



I had a conversation yesterday with a young man who had renal cell cancer at the young age of 27. He's doing fine now, six years later. In the 19th century he would have died, today he has two children and works full time.
 
Yeah, I guess it does have to do with what side of the tracks you live.
On the contrary, people like Edison, Lincoln, and Carnegie could rise in class with their formal education ending at 3d Grade. You started at the bottom and worked your way up, learning on the job or through self-education. People like Lincoln, who was an excellent lawyer, weren't forced to not earn a living until they were 25, which is required of law students today.
 
I'm generally not a spelling Nazi. I promise. I just think that not knowing how to spell what you are is akin to misspelling your own name. It's not just a word anymore, it's your essence. Construction workers aren't typically known for English language skills, so we would tell the apprentices that you needed to be able to spell carpenter to be one.

If I was a restaurateur. I would definitely learn how to spell that word. And yeah, I just stuck an 'n' in there and spell-check made me select the correct spelling.

But hey, I'm not one.
I was unable to find the full etymology, but from my knowledge of Latin, I can guess that restaurant comes from a participle like "restoring" so "restauranteur" would be like saying "restoringer" instead of restorer. Or "debatinger" instead of debater.
 
The movie is an infuriating demonstration of the anti-social self-indulgence that really motivates the Trekkies extraterrestrial fixation. The government wastes billions just to award Jodie Foster with a fantasy interview with her deceased father.

Such an angry young man!:shock:
 
On the contrary, people like Edison, Lincoln, and Carnegie could rise in class with their formal education ending at 3d Grade. You started at the bottom and worked your way up, learning on the job or through self-education. People like Lincoln, who was an excellent lawyer, weren't forced to not earn a living until they were 25, which is required of law students today.

That wass then, this is now.
 
I voted "I can't make up my mind," because in some ways we are better off (lifestyle conveniences, medical advances, etc.) and in other ways we are worse off (overpopulated, overly complex, living more out of balance with our ecosystems than ever, more financially leveraged and fates all interconnected, we have nuclear weapons pointed at one another, etc.).

So while day-to-day life in the immediate sense is much better, our long-term stability outlook is shaky to say the least.

Can't really say.
 
I voted "I can't make up my mind," because in some ways we are better off (lifestyle conveniences, medical advances, etc.) and in other ways we are worse off (overpopulated, overly complex, living more out of balance with our ecosystems than ever, more financially leveraged and fates all interconnected, we have nuclear weapons pointed at one another, etc.).

So while day-to-day life in the immediate sense is much better, our long-term stability outlook is shaky to say the least.

Can't really say.

You have to stop worrying and love the bomb!

 
The government wastes billions just to award Jodie Foster with a fantasy interview with her deceased father.

No, the government wasted billions to award doctor Eleanor Arroway and as it turned out it wasn't such a fantasy. :)

Never mind, that was an illustration.
 
Yes, but we've gone backward since the 20th Century.
 
Are we better off in the 21-th century compared to 19-th century, what do you think? :)

Are you kidding? Most of us would be dead by middle age if we'd been living in the 19th century, having either worked ourselves to death, or died of some common, simple disease (either due to lack of money to pay for treatment, or lack of medical technology to treat it). For most women, life was little more than being traded as property and bred like a farm animal. Black people were either enslaved or living under the weight of Jim Crow. Society was considerably more violent, and the chances of you dying at the hands of another were astronomically higher. The chances of you getting through life without being violently assaulted were virtually nil.

As per your later posts, anyone who thinks porn and gay people are new-fangled inventions is seriously ignorant of history. Gays have existed for millions of years in almost every mammal on earth, and humans have made and consumed porn since we first figured out how to carve shapes in rocks. There really isn't anything new under the sun; just different incarnations of the same ole', same ole'.

I honestly can't even imagine how anyone could ask whether we're better off now or 200 years ago.
 
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