Writing about the developing COLLAPSE I hear comments like this all the time.

“Technology and progress should have stopped no later than the 1800s or maybe earlier. It hasn't actually improved our life in any way shape or form. The negative effects far outweigh the positive."

People imagine that somehow the past was “better” than the present because the world was less crowded and simpler.

I was born towards the end of the 50's. The 60's are my childhood and I remember them well. My grandmother was born on a farm in Texas in 1909, the oldest girl of the 21 children that her mother carried to term. Because there was no birth control, so women whose fertility wasn’t destroyed by infections or physical damage could expect to have baby after baby and be pregnant for most of their adult lives.

She NEVER romanticized what life on “the farm” was like.

My advice to people who think that “gearing down” and going back to a simple agrarian life will be “better”.

Don't over romanticize the 19th century.

Sure the global population was only about 1 billion and the world was relatively unspoiled.

BUT

Just under 50% of children DIED before the age of five.

Do you really want to have five children and then watch 2 or 3 of them die from fevers, infections, or childhood diseases?

It happened to Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and destroyed his faith in G-d.

Not to mention the racism, sexism, colonialism, and genocide of native populations.

Also, the "lack of technology" didn't prevent the American 1% from cementing their grip on the economic system, mimicking the way the European 1% owned EVERYTHING in Europe. Throughout the 19th century farmers and workers got SCREWED by a government that was "of the rich, by the rich, for the rich". Social Darwinism and Eugenics were 19th century inventions.

The 19th century built the "Proud Tower" that collapsed in the slaughter of a generation on the bloody fields of WW I.

The 19th century also gave us the philosophy and economics of "utilitarianism". The moral foundation that allowed the British to starve the Irish and say that it was necessary because it "reduced the surplus population".

The 19th century also created the first "climate crisis" that resulted in 10% of the world starving to death between 1875 and 1900. A crisis that the Europeans ruthlessly exploited in their conquest and subjugation of the "third world".

Technology is a tool.

What WE do with that tool is on us.

Technology hasn't failed us. We have failed ourselves.

We have developed "G-d like" technological power but failed to create a philosophy/religion/society that does anything more than reward and lionize sociopaths for their vicious exploitation of the natural world and their fellow humans.

Going "back to the past" won't fix that.

Until we do, going “back to the past” will mean going back to feudalism.

Whatever you think about the world today. That will be worse.