Item — HN Reader

The WF is not even 25 years old. It’s crazy to think it will exist another 100 years, let alone 1000.

Even the US isn’t 1000 years old. Who’s to say it will even exist in a remotely recognizable form in 1000 years.

The last 1000 years changed at a snails pace compared to the last 25 years.

2 comments

In 1000 years Sweden went from a Viking culture to an egalitarian, tolerant, multicultural society. Just imagine how much change you can have in the next 1000 years. 50 years ago you guys had basically an apartheid and women’s place was the kitchen.

The problems with that argument are that first, the Viking culture was mostly rural and agricultural, the raiding and pillaging was a tiny side-effect that mostly happened during times of economic hardship, not as a way of life ... and that today's Sweden is rapidly recessing back to a less-tolerant, anti-multicultural society for many reasons. You also conveniently ignore the much more bloody 'military superpower' phase in the 1600s.

It’s not Ragnar Lodbrok turning into ABBA. It’s a mostly peaceful peasant society getting tossed around by history until it became a mostly peaceful service economy - and the shaking never really stopped.

History is not a straight progress line. Ask the Romans.

If you really want to be accurate about history in what is now Sweden, let’s also mention the horrific mass graves discovered in Birka and surroundings which seems to imply that massacring whole villages, women and children included , was commonplace even before Viking times. The later imperialist period seems less brutal to me.

Pre-agricultural societies are generally much more brutal because you need a lot of territory to feed relatively few people. Agriculturalists can conquer other people and make them work for them in a way that doesn't scale for hunters-gatherers. The consequence is that the combatant/noncombatant distinction is much more blurry, and genocide is often an explicit goal of the war.

Yes! It annoys me to no end when people pretend that time is developing us into a perfect image - we're just the latest generation in a long string of improvements. Making it seem like development is predetermined.

Ask a medieval peasant and he wouldnt even be able to describe how his life is different from his father's.

35 years ago South Africa had the apartheid, and now they outrank the US on a The Economist's Democracy Index [1]. So yeah, things move fast.

Nitpick: The US Voting Rights Act became law in 1965 [2], which is more like 60 years ago. Not sure if that's what you were getting at with "basically an apartheid" but it was the closest concrete landmark near your 50 year timeline.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

Your link shows that South Africa ranks below the US. It is ranked 43rd in the world, vs the USA which is at 28 (in 2024 the latest year).

good point: I'd fix the post but it's too old. Well hopefully it gets downvoted into oblivion soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...

(since posting Wikipedia links seems appropriate.)

Lol the pace things change. If there was an accurate time travel movie it would be more of a comedy. I don't care where you're from. Which language you speak. Even Chinese has changed. But any language especially English has changed so much it would be a foreign language if you went back.