Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
I think they would swap in a heartbeat. They would crawl across broken glass to swap. Today, people can reasonably expect to live to an old age. They can expect that their children will survive to adulthood. They wouldn't expect that in the past. One look in a grocery store in winter would be enough to get them to switch.
Sure, there's the man with a test tube who might kill them, but that man is a whole lot dangerous than smallpox, the black death, diphtheria or any number of epidemics.
There is a cemetary in North Dakota with seven tombstones, for seven children from one family killed in a diphtheria epidemic. We don't reaize how good we have it. What average people have today, kings would have envied. If Henry the VIII had had access to modern medicine, he would have lived a long, healthy life surrounded by his sons.
And if that the energy resources we had were limited, but that we had plenty of other energy sources, such as wind and solar, we just needed to be willing to take advantage of them, they would probably say "What's the problem?"
Sure, the present has its own problems, I'm not saying that there is no place for dystopia, I just think that there should be some balance.
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You are spot on, of course. There is no way in hell I would swap my life for anybody else's 500 years ago, even Henry VIII's. Tho I hear he did quite well with the ladies, at least from his point of view.
I think the point I was more or less driving at, tho it wasn't well said on my part, was basically "What a waste". With all the techy advances we have, we have squandered so much potential to do the right thing. Life has improved vastly for the average person but human nature is just as crappy as ever. And will probably never change so much of the future has the potential to be truly disastrous. I think one of the reasons that much of SF is pessimistic is partly because of this.
And Sil_lis, as bad as bureaucracy can be, it just doesn't scare me as much as the black plague or an manufactured Super Ebola virus.
If anyone could recommend a good SF work that is optimistic and well grounded in sciences (Both Social and Scientific) I would love to give it a try.
SL Jordan, I will dl your free novel and check it out, I just don't know when. Good luck with your writing career, I'm envious.