The world has radically changed. Suffering was a major part of human life for all of human history. Today it is a minor factor.
The amount of suffering individual humans experience has so dramatically changed that the magnitude can not be imagined nor the importance ignored. This has occurred in less than one century in much of the West.
In most of the world, two centuries ago, half of all children died before age 5 and one out of three women died in childbirth. That meant death was common in almost every family. Children who survived commonly had two legs of different length and distorted feet. Everyone had painful teeth most of the time for most of their lives.
Nearly everyone had smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, chicken pox,mumps and measles all of which left facial scars and many children died. Tuberculosis left many crippled and most who got it dead. The same with polio.
A wide range of injuries meant death; animal bites meant death from rabies, most serious cuts and gashes meant death from infection and sepsis.
Outside the agriculturally abundant United States, famine was the norm every five years along with war.
Suffering from illness, disease and a variety of infirmities and pain was the norm of human life.
Most of this is gone.
What does this mean for humanity?
- First we don’t notice the absence of suffering so we find trivial problems in our lives and magnify them. Many find their problems on soap opera TV.
- The role of religion, which was used to ameliorate suffering, has been drastically diminished.
- The Iron Curtain ended in 1991, the human-caused global apocalypse began with the Kyoto Protocols in 1992. Armageddon replaced fear of nuclear bombs and physical suffering.