The grim truth about the "good old days"

"When Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, declared in 1995 that "the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race," he was voicing a sentiment that now circulates widely online. Rose-tinted nostalgia for the preindustrial era has gone viral, strengthened by anxieties about our own digital era, with some claiming that modernity itself was a mistake and that "progress" is an illusion. Medieval peasants led happier and more leisurely lives than we do, according to those who pine for the past."

""The internet has become strangely nostalgic for life in the Middle Ages," journalist Amanda Mull wrote in a piece for The Atlantic. Samuel Matlack, managing editor of The New Atlantis, observed that there is currently an "endless debate around whether the preindustrial past was clearly better than what we have now and we must go back to save humanity, or whether modern technological society is unambiguously a forward leap we must forever extend.""

"In the popular imagination, the Industrial Revolution was the birth of many evils, a time when smoke-belching factories disrupted humanity's erstwhile idyllic existence. Economics professor Vincent Geloso's informal survey of university students found that they believed "living standards did not increase for the poor; only the rich got richer; the cities were dirty and the poor suffered from ill-health." Pundit Tucker Carlson has even suggested that feudalism was preferable to modern liberal democracy."

Online nostalgia for the preindustrial era has spread widely, driven by anxieties about the digital age and claims that modernity and technological progress have harmed human wellbeing. Some argue that medieval life offered greater leisure and happiness, while others insist industrialization brought environmental damage, urban squalor, and worsening conditions for the poor. Surveys show many students believe living standards for the poor did not improve during industrialization. Political commentators sometimes praise older social orders over liberal democracy. Environmentalists and social traditionalists idealize different aspects of the past, fueling an ongoing debate over whether to reject or extend modern technological society.

Read at Big Think