In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: “dentistry” - PJ O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World

This article is a sort of round-up of passages from various writers to the effect that things are better now - at least in some important ways - than they used to be.

 There’s a telling scene in the documentary Food, Inc where industrially raised cows are getting E.coli due to the cramped and unsanitary conditions they live in, and because they're being fed a diet unnatural to their systems. In order to combat this, food writer Michael Pollan suggests that if the cows were only put out to pasture for five days (to be fed on grass, their real diet), the problem of E.coli would be self-correcting. It would go away. What does the industry do instead? It builds an enormous space-age looking factory where men in fully enclosed suits put all the meat into stainless steel kettles where it's treated with ammonia to remove the contamination. Forget about the condition of the cows or the final quality of the meat- the solution chosen is the one that will continue production unchecked so that outputs can continue to be maximized.

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” – Peter Tosh

We’re a culture of babies. Our knowledge has been sprinting upward on an exponential curve, but our wisdom sighs and chuffs up a modest incline, pausing frequently for a deep fried snack and a nap. We don’t mind the planned obsolescence of new gadgetry; it gives us an excuse to upgrade to that snazzy newer version everyone else already has. We know our clothes come from sweatshops and our meat comes from factory farms, and these things are terrible, and someone should really do something about them. But we still want cheap food and clothes. Because we’re used to them. And we like them. And we want more. Because we’ve got a serious infection of narcissism.

What do you do while you eat? I read. Some people watch TV. Some sit at the computer. Take meetings. Stand. Walk. And talk on a hands-free phone. A stat from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: 20% of calories in America are consumed while driving. In The Omnivore’s Dilemma Pollan points out that “virtually the only information that travels along the food chain linking producer and consumer is price. Just look at the typical newspaper ad for a supermarket. The sole quality on display here is actually a quantity: tomatoes $0.69 a pound; ground chuck $1.09 a pound; eggs $0.99 a dozen - special this week. Is there any other category of product sold on such a reductive basis?” What’s on special? What do I have to pay the least for? That’s what I’ll put in my body! The implication: food is, in and of itself, unimportant. Spend as little as possible, eat as quickly as possible. Fuel up and get to the important stuff in life.