Are our times unique?

Well, the most unusual thing about it is the breathtaking speed at which we’ve changed in just the last 100 years.

All times are unique.

It is unique because of technological changes, the way we communicate, our ability to travel and our military capabilities.

It is not so unique in the way we relate to each other. I am using the word ‘we’ in a general sense. Those who are considered different are still often viewed as a threat. We still don’t seem to be able to resolve problems without resorting to violence. We still can’t accept and live with the many different belief systems that exist. Some people because of their colour, culture, gender, sexuality, religion or lack of religion, are still discriminated against and/or treated as inferior. The list goes on @flutherother.

So while some things are unique to now, some things remain the same or certainly don’t appear to have progressed very far.

On a micro level, yes. On a macro level, no.

I believe this current era is unique among all others in the ability for the little common persons ability to broadcast to a worldwide audience. This has profound implications for government, business, and religion. Their dirty deeds are more easily exposed than ever before.

Yes, it is unique because mankind is coming to the end of the road. Unfortunately, we are going to take a hell of a lot more with us when we go than we should.

One never steps twice in the same river.

@Pied_Pfeffer I would say just the opposite, on a micro (or personal level) no, but on the macro level (society as a whole) yes.

@rojo I look at it from the perspective that humans typically feel, “Wow! Look how far we’ve come in the past 100 years!” In the bigger picture, humans haven’t been around that long and haven’t really come that far. For example, we are still fighting in wars over religion, territory, etc.

What I think is unique about our times is that our civilization encompasses the planet. Other civilizations have risen and fallen in various parts of the world knowing nothing about the lands beyond their boundaries but today there are no boundaries. The entire globe is interconnected and sailing into uncharted territory regarding population growth, environmental destruction, pollution on land and sea , scarcity of resources and extermination of wildlife.

There may be political boundaries and imaginary lines in the sand but these don’t exist for the capitalist forces that now dominate the planet and do not care about tomorrow.

I think every time is unique, because it is always different from what happened in the past. It may seem that what is going now is particularly different from the events in the past, however the events in the past were as well different from the very distant past.A human though can only compare things with his own past or with the past of their parents/grandparents. There are not so many people who think in terms of universal logic, everyone is more likely to analyze his own life and the life of the closest people. That’s why every generation keeps thinking its times are unique.

Pretty uneventful as history goes, fairly settled period.

I would suggest those who feel we are living in unique times listen to this song by the Temptations, a 44 year old song.

The list is endless. From the existence of this very site through the melting of the poles to the rise of the Tea Party and dumbing down of the country. “It’s a Barnum & Bailey world. Just as phony as it can be.”

If you step back and look at the big picture, it is a unique time. There’s an accelerating rate of change for technology‘s_law and population growth. Both of those have exploded in the last few decades, and with exponential growth the changes will only get faster.

The industrial revolution had a lot of the same things going on. In the process, the western world moved from feudalism to capitalism. My favorite author, Kim Stanley Robinson, says in one of his novels that each type of society has elements of the one that came before and after it. So an agrarian, feudal society would have leftover elements of a hunter-gatherer society in it. And capitalism has echoes of feudalism- most of the resources are concentrated in the hands of a few people.

It took hundreds of thousands of years to go from hunter-gatherers to farmers, and then ten thousand years to go from farmers to an industrial society. It’s been a couple hundred years from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the communication-centric society we have today. We might be in the process of moving into a new era, where the generation or two after us would barely recognize our lifestyle. I mean, think of the differences between today and the 1980s or the 1950s.

My link above is supposed to go to Moore’s Law. Aargh.