Progress needs protection, despite its obvious achievements. The victories of science, technology, and industry were repeatedly described as a great breakthrough, a great escape, or exaltation of the Western world. Over the past few centuries, humanity has achieved amazing successes: more than twenty-fold increase in GDP per capita in developed countries, a decrease in extreme poverty levels from 80% to less than 10%, doubling the average life expectancy, and tenfold reduction of children’s mortality, an increase in the level of basic education and literacy from 15% to more than 85%.
However, for most people in rich countries, these achievements have become familiar and granted. We use the benefits of the modern world, such as fresh food, furniture, pure water, and streaming music, without thinking about where they come from and how they are created. We rarely realize that once all this was not available.
Today you can eat by checking the news on the smartphone, without thinking about technology and technologies that allow you to grow and harvest. You can wear a variety of clothes, not knowing about complex production processes that make it affordable. We turn on the light, not realizing the complex infrastructure that delivers energy to our house. We enjoy films and music, not understanding how computers and information exchange protocols work. With infection, we take antibiotics without thinking about how they were open and tested.
The achievements of the modern world often tear us away from the harsh reality, which was the norm for our ancestors. We do not encounter dirt, hard work, hunger, and diseases, as it was before. Life has become convenient, safe, and predictable. The problems of the past and their solutions seem to us something distant and invisible.
We forget that once the luxury, now accessible to everyone, was the privilege of the rich. Fruits and spices that previously symbolized wealth are now sold in supermarkets. Clothing, available only to emperors, now lies on the shelves of ordinary stores. Our houses are more comfortable in winter than the palaces of the past.
Each achievement, even the simplest, was once an innovation. Flakes-monks, paper clips, studs, and elastic bands were invented only in the 19th century. Simple containers for food, such as plastic bottles and cardboard bags, required significant engineering efforts. Even the toothbrush began to be massively produced only at the end of the 18th century, and the bristles in it were made of pork wool until nylon is invented in the 1930s.