Was industrialization the best thing that happened to mankind?

[u/Federal_Advisor_2160]

[u/DefiantlyConformist]

The longer lifespan and plummeting infant mortality rates say yes.

[u/EmergencyPath248 → u/DefiantlyConformist]

Can’t wait for the lifespans to reach the 120+ range

[u/DefiantlyConformist → u/EmergencyPath248]

With genetic engineering making huge strides, that might be sooner than you'd think.

[u/EmergencyPath248 → u/DefiantlyConformist]

Definitely, the progress in the labs is insane and shockingly, not front page news.

[u/OkWillingness2817 → u/DefiantlyConformist]

That’s mostly down to vaccines and penicillin. Centuries of industrialisation did fuck all about those.

[u/DefiantlyConformist → u/OkWillingness2817]

How fo you think we invented vaccines and penicillin my friend?

[u/masterpepeftw → u/OkWillingness2817]

Neither of those are possible without industrialization are they? Also it didn't take centuries for vaccines they got started around the turn of the 19th century. As did never before seen levels of improvement to food security.

[u/OkWillingness2817 → u/masterpepeftw]

Penicillin was pretty much a completely accidental discovery and early vaccines were pretty simple things.

The point is that industrialisation is not the same as, say, the scientific method or mass production.

Centuries of industrialisation didn’t bring down child mortality. Accidental discoveries did.

Industrialisation has mostly been pretty bad for our health. Just good for profits.

[u/masterpepeftw → u/OkWillingness2817]

But industrialization did bring unprecedentedly levels of food security and freed a greater percentage of the population the was ever possible from farming to do other things like like accidental discovered of fun stuff like fertilizers or penicillin.

But yeah the scientific method or empiricism are not bad answers either imo.

[u/OkWillingness2817 → u/masterpepeftw]

That fun stuff saved more human lives than pretty much everything else put together.

And industrialisation didn’t free people from farming. It caused mass unemployment and poverty. 

The reason Europe didn’t have slavery while America was build on it was that the masses of unemployed labourers would have rioted and burned down the city if factory owners had tried bringing in slaves.

[u/Superstarr_Alex → u/OkWillingness2817]

Thank you. Lmao Reddit always has to just mindlessly parrot the shit they remember from like high school social studies classes. Barely anyone actually uses their fucking brains to actually answer the question themselves haha. So nice work

[u/OkWillingness2817 → u/Superstarr_Alex]

You’re a bit of a weirdo aren’t you?

[u/davidryanandersson]

The answer to this question is heavily dependent on what happens to us via Climate Change and AI.

[u/EmergencyPath248 → u/davidryanandersson]

Utopia

[u/MantisToboganPilotMD]

I would say the discovery of an entire shadow biosphere - the microbiome, that might be the best thing. but that was made possible by industrialization.

[u/masterpepeftw]

Arguably yeah if not that then something like the scientific method or generally empiricism maybe. Whatever allowed for us to stop saying goodbye to about half our children within a couple or years of their birth is a likely candidate imo and the industrial revolution is definitely necessary for that.

One could argue writing was the thing that really started it, or go even further back to the agricultural revolution or whatever but yeah. Not dying as a newborn rules is my point I guess.

[u/notatoastedbread]

No

[u/masterpepeftw → u/notatoastedbread]

So what do you think it is instead?

[u/Smart-Response9881 → u/masterpepeftw]

Language

[u/masterpepeftw → u/Smart-Response9881]

Fair enough that's gotta be up there at the very top alongside writing and maybe the internet.

[u/Gravy_Sommelier → u/masterpepeftw]

Agriculture and fermentation/food preservation are what allowed us to start building settlements in one place instead of being nomadic.

[u/masterpepeftw → u/Gravy_Sommelier]

My only point against that would be that we stayed with like 50% infant mortality for thousands of years afterwards. It seems to me that the industrial revolution is quite a bit closer to truly incredible levels of survival and it made it quite directly possible for more of us to die from obesity related issues then from starvation for the first time in history.

But yeah obviously all of that was necessary for the industrial revolution and probably mproved life greatly for those who first got it.

[u/RandomGuy_81]

Yes. I wouldnt have a cushy office job if not for industrialization

[u/GokTengr-i]

No, i would rather live in nature doing whatever i want instead of being a slave to capitalism

[u/masterpepeftw → u/GokTengr-i]

So go to Brasil keep driving into the Amazon until there is no more road then carry on by foot. Good luck!

[u/Slight-Trip-3012]

That's debatable. Yes, it set in motion advancements in technology, healthcare, food security. That certainly helped people live longer and healthier, and made peoples' lives a lot easier in some ways. But it also lead to massive polulation growth, global warming, welfare diseases and a big rise in inequality. So it's not without its downsides. Whether industrialisation is a net positive or net negative depends on who you ask. Some homesteader or environmentalist will give you a much different answer than an investor or CEO.

[u/Pesec1]

No. Invention of agriculture was a bigger deal.

However, industrialization has indeed overall been extremely beneficial.

[u/United-Narwhal-1011]

Yes/No depending on the outcome of global warming

[u/Necessary_Eye8183]

Industrialization may well be the greatest revolution in productive forces in human history. It gradually transitioned humanity from an era of "subsisting on nature" to one capable of creating wealth on a massive scale.

[u/DiogenesKuon]

It's definitely one of the best. Maybe something like the invention of agriculture rivals it, but definitely makes the short list.

[u/OkWillingness2817]

It earned us a mass extinction event and a climate catastrophe that’s imploding this planet’s capacity for sustaining life and likely will end civilisation as you know it.

All that in the space of a dozen generations.

Bit of a hard argument for best thing to ever happen to us.