A Snickers and a power shower would blow Henry VIII’s mind
From jet lag to gene editing, this article has a list of things that shows how different humanity is now from previous generations. We know all of this, but when you put it all in one place it’s pretty eye-opening.
When things seem so negative in the world, it’s worth reminding ourselves that we’ve actually never had it so good.
If the history of humanity were condensed into a single 24-hour day, this is roughly what it would look like:
- The Hunter-Gatherer Age—23 hours and 3 minutes
- The Agrarian Age—55 minutes and 32 seconds
- The Industrial Age—1 minute and 17 seconds
- The Information Age—11 seconds
More than half of the world’s population is under the age of 30, meaning that the majority of humans alive today have only lived in those 11 seconds—an era that is, without question, the weirdest period in human history.
Consider, for example, this observation, conveyed by the Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven: “the average citizen lives more comfortably now than kings did a few centuries ago.”
A Snickers and a power shower would blow Henry VIII’s mind.
This morning, I woke up in a supremely comfortable bed, knowing there would be no deadly predators or pests to eat or infect me. With cheap soaps and pristine, hot water, I became cleaner in five minutes than was possible for any human—no matter how wealthy—in the past.
Source: The Garden of Forking Paths
Image: Loris Boulinguez