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These, the early years of the 21st century, were promising. On the one hand, decades prior, America and its allies defeated fascism, and slowly, and surely, most of the world democratized, and the red grip of communism and kleptocracy slowly receded to liberal democracies across the globe (Russia notwithstanding).
On the other hand, the First and Second World Wars cost the lives of some 150 million people, or more. In both conflicts, taking real numbers as a percentage of the world's population, more people died from those wars in the last century than all the other wars in recorded human history. Only the Black Plague, the Spanish flu, and small pox have killed more people per capita, particularly in Europe.
The twentieth century gave us women's suffrage, the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan, civil rights, voting rights, the destruction of Jim Crow, feminism, the Soviet Union's dismantling, the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War, the end to South African apartheid, and globally, less poverty.
(More people were lifted out of poverty in China during this period and the early 2000s than in all the rest of the world. Ever).
In many ways, now is the best time to be alive in history.
Yet, with all this progress, there have been considerable downsides. Chief among them is the proliferation of nuclear arsenals across many countries, including unstable ones like Pakistan and North Korea.
Wealth has been created for almost everyone, yet wages for the middle and working classes have barely kept up with inflation, while wealth for the wealthiest has dramatically increased.
In America, between 1979 and 2007, incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans grew by an average of 275 percent. The top wealthiest 1 percent possesses 40 percent of the nation's wealth; the bottom 80 percent own 7 percent. After the Great Recession of 2007 (thank you trickle-down voodoo economics championed by conservatives and Bush II), the richest 1 percent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.
Less talked about are the psychosexual and social effects of an increasingly digitized world. As we become ever-more enmeshed with social media via online platforms, from Facebook to Snapchat to virtual reality and role-playing video games, our identities are now inextricably connected to and informed by electronic devices and the applications we use to interact with others downloaded on said devices.
Not even a decade ago, most of what we now consider ubiquitous and essential didn't exist. Now, if I left my smartphone at home, I'd be lost as to what to do with myself. Just meeting friends requires I text about it beforehand. The weather, news, banking, commerce, writing, art, romance. Everything is done via electronic means.
Besides terrorism, cyber warfare, and identity theft, what this all means is we've become more accustomed to social interactions done partially or completely without actually meeting people in the real world.
Part of Korea and Japan's death-spiral low marriage and birthrates comes from this phenomenon. Japan is much worse, actually. Women and men now prefer no dating and no sex, and certainly no children, and indulge in an online existence. There are video games where one can be a father or mother and have children in an idyllic virtual fantasy, one that can be turned on and off.
In both countries, there are classes on how to initiate dates, have sex, and carry out relationships in the real world in an academy-style fashion. And yes, you can take those classes online too.
Much of the developed world is experiencing this kind of digital self-pleasuring to varying degrees. If it weren't for immigration, almost all of Europe and North America would have birthrates like that of Korea and Japan.
The digitization of life and love may also mean we don't understand how to empathize and understand human suffering and human value. The realistic violence in video games is often blamed for the increasing numbers of mass murders and gun deaths in America (even though violent crime has decreased dramatically in the U.S. over the last generation, and New York City is one of the safest large cities in all the Western World), but that is most probably too simplistic an answer.
I use Facebook (per peer pressure years ago; true story) and of course smartphone apps and the like. I do a lot of shopping and such online. But I'm sorry, dates, dinners, drinks, parties, and pleasant conversation with friends or lovers is much more preferable to playing "League of Legends" or "SIM Family" or whatever the younger folks are doing online. The fact that I have to say that is disturbing.
Go outside. Meet someone. Please.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
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