It Depends What You Mean by "Better"

I agree that all that stuff is a two edged sword. If you improve the infant survival rate and lengthen the life span, you increase the population, which means more people to feed. When that happens to any other species, they either have to expand their territory or the population will crash. Humans are pretty good at expanding their territory, but eventually they run out of good land and end up fighting over it. The losers are exiled to the desert and the mountains, where they find themselves living much as their ancestors did. The Industrial Revolution broke that cycle by enabling more people to live on less land, but then you get pollution, crime, and social injustice. The alternative is to go back to the country and live in poverty. I think we're better off today because we have more options. We can live in the city, or live in the country and work in the city or, if we don't mind making less money, we can find a home in a small town like Cheboygan.

There have been climate changes before, you know. During the three digit years there was something called the "Medieval Warming Period" followed by the "Little Ice Age" in the four digit years. Then of course, there was the Big Ice Age back in the cave man days. Taking a broader view, there was a Really Big Ice Age that, by some accounts, we are just now pulling out of. I read somewhere that, for most of Earth's history, there was no ice on the planet at all. During that time there were no people on Earth either, so you can't blame them for it.

What makes everything seem worse nowadays is that we are more aware of the problems. If there's rioting in Africa, hurricanes in Florida, starvation in Spain, or Texas needs rain, we all know about it. A few hundred years ago, most people didn't know how to find any of those places on a map, even  if they lived in one of them.

I got captured by a religious group like that when I was in the army, only they were Christians. I was on a weekend pass in Augusta, Georgia. Sunday morning I ran into some guys who asked me if I wanted to go to church. I said sure, but I don't know where one is around here. They told me to get on the bus and they would take me there. The bus drove out of town, way out of town, to a little dump of church out in the middle of nowhere. This place was poor, I mean dirt poor, like in the movie "Tobacco Road". As a matter of fact, I found out later that the original Tobacco Road, upon which the book and movie were based, was located not far from there. I put a dollar or two in the collection plate, which was probably more than all the locals together put in. I'm not sure what the other GIs put in but, if it was anything at all, it must have made a big difference to the little congregation. On our way back to town, the two nice young men who recruited us explained that they were members of a different congregation, and that they did this to help out the poorer churches in the area. I suppose I could have felt resentment at being exploited like that, but I didn't. If someone had told me people were living like that in the United States of America in that day and age I wouldn't have believed them. The educational experience was well worth a dollar or two and an hour or two of my time.