Is the world going to hell?
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- čas přidán 17. 05. 2023
- Stefan Sagmeister’s bold new exhibition draws on the work of Steven Pinker, Our World in Data, and Human Progress to document how much life has improved since the good old days.
reason.com/video/2023/05/18/n...
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Is the world getting better? Or is it on the verge of collapse?
Stefan Sagmeister emphatically believes that things are looking up, and his art exhibition "Now Is Better" showcases a bold new way to convince the world that he's right. He takes actual paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries, disassembles them, and creates new works by juxtaposing them with data visualizations of just how much things have improved since the good old days.
Some works chart the incredible decline in deaths on the battlefield, from famine, and from natural disasters while others map how much cheaper food and lighting have become in real terms. One piece documents the explosion in the number of guitars per person on the planet-an indicator of growth in leisure and entertainment-while another charts the persistent belief that crime is always rising despite its well-documented decline.
A heralded graphic designer who has designed album covers for Jay-Z, The Rolling Stones, and Lou Reed, Sagmeister has won two Grammy Awards, including one for his design of the Talking Heads' boxed set Once in a Lifetime. Born in Austria in 1962, he's called New York City home since the 1990s. He draws on sources such as Our World in Data, Human Progress, and the work of Steven Pinker, who has written the foreword to a book version of the "Now Is Better" series coming out later this year.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Sagmeister tells me why it's so important to acknowledge and defend material progress, why art and commerce aren't enemies, and what he loves about the New World he's adopted as his homeland and how that ties into the "Now Is Better" project.
Photos: Morteza Nikoubazl/Polaris/Newscom; Stefan Sagmeister
Camera and Video Editor: Kevin Alexander
Motion Graphics: Isaac Reese
I don't know many people who are happy with what is happening.
Has nothing to do with hell, as the title asks.
If they aren't happy with something does anyone have to care? Be the change, or join the silly psychopaths.
The video wasn't really about happiness, though. There doesn't seem to be a huge difference in happiness between developed and developing nations. If you've seen those videos of poor children in Africa giggling their heads off, you know what I mean. But what has changed is very positive: a longer lifespan, more leisure time and less work time, less extreme poverty and less poverty overall, new technology and things that improve lives, less disease, less death from natural causes, better medical treatments, and so on. So why haven't we gotten happier? I don't know the full answer, but it could be that we're always looking ahead, planning for, and worrying about, the future. Or maybe it's that we have become so developed that we indulge in gainless pleasures such as casual sex, pornography, sugar, smoking, and so on, which don't make us truly any happier.
I think there's another factor in the belief that everything is getting worse: adulthood. As children, the world is amazing - filled with free food and drink, constant stimulation and play, a never-ending supply of new mysteries to solve. As we grow into adults there is so much more to think about: responsibilities, health problems, financial headaches, deadlines and commitments, etc. It's only natural that it would color one's thinking.
True, but something to the contrary that came to mind while reading your comment is also how much more grateful I seem to have become as an adult. It correlates neatly with your description that as we understand more deeply just what it takes to go on day to day and have what we have, we can also find ourselves naturally growing in appreciation.
what comes after gen z? it's not every generation is the same again, things have/are changing rapidly and all the squares on the monopoly board have been bought while us gen x rebel generation have so far yet to rebel against the boomers. it's not about becoming adults, it's far more about we're all losing because the system needs to evolve
People fondly remember the past because the terrible things that occurred back then weren't their problems they were their parents problems.
People also tend to focus on the negative in their current situation, and take for granted/forget how much general life has improved from the reality of what it was for most of human history. That, or they are simply historically ignorant.
Plus problems are easier to handle when you have a closer family and community to help you through things. But hey, give it another year and we’ll have virtual companions to play that roll.
Quality of life in advanced western societies has been stagnating or declining since the early '70s, particulary in the area of autonomy and free agency. The same Malthusians who are prophesying doom and prescribing degrowth and depopulation continue to consolidate control over every aspect of our lives. People can sense their loss of control over their own lives, and are right to feel like things are getting worse, even if we have sufficient nutrition and a guitar.
Population growth has been slowing down for ages. It generly goes hand in hand with better education for women and wealth creation. The degrowth moment is stupid. I recently found Solarbakery which are paying 9% interest, fighting Hunger, climate change and helping grow the economy in less devolped countries. How the fuck are we supposed to fight climate change if we stop coming up with such solutions? Even if our economy shrunk by half, as long as we still power them with fossil fuels that won't achieve anything, and all less devolped countries will just laught at us. I however agree on consolidation of power being a huge problem. The amount of corruption and other unlawful activity politicans can get away with even if it's done in open daylight is astonishing. The fact that they are still trying to go after Assange proves that.
Yes, world-wide, nutrition is better than in past centuries. But over the last half century, is San Francisco better? What would a visitor from 1963 say if she say human feces and used syringes on sidewalks, major stores boarded up, and crazy people living in tents on the sidewalk, and no one doing anything about it? No one cares whether times are better than in long-dead people's times - they care about what they remember. I remember a time before the United States lost millions of manufacturing jobs that allowed people to raise their kids and put a little away. If the trade-off is smart phones and CZcams, i'll go back any time
Agree 100%
I can tell you're a Trumper just by the way you mentioned "manufacturing jobs". You're not hard to spot.
This a planned obsolescence of the American dream and of the United States of America experiment, now back to dystopia authoritarian rule by the elites in govt and business!
And electricity just decreases human connection and destroys connection with life.
I think you are missing a fundamental point: it is *because* the world is so much better that "causes" the decadence you see in places like San Francisco (arguably one of the former leaders in prosperity). So, I think Pinker, Bailey & Tupy in "Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know", Sagmeister are all exactly correct - and so are you.
"going"???
The world is not going to hell, we're already there, living in it every day.
Hell is where the heart is.
@@thadaliciousdelicio yes, hearts are in hell
I wish people who said stuff like this could go back and spend a month or two living in the 1800s.
@@ShadowWizard123 they would have to be younger than 27 or they would just be dead.
Came here to say, you can’t go somewhere you already are.
Compared to when and based on what metrics. Your answer to those questions will change the result.
Having loved Stefans work since I was a design student in the 90s, seeing his curiosity turn this direction brings me such joy, optimism and hope.
Institutionalized child genital mutilation is one sign of decline.
So true ...Circumcision is a sign that Satan is in total control of the world. Every child that is circumcised is already marked by the beast and work for him personally to influence the uncircumcised to do bad things. We should sacrifice ever circumcised human. It is the only way to win the war over good and evil... Killing in the name of GOD!!!! It is the only way.
Is that a new phenomenon? I thought that the US performed male genital mutilation for ages.
Why are you here?
@@hydroponichomesteader6852 "who to avoid" anybody with colored hair is automatically someone to avoid
@@we.are.all.barabbas Exactly… Gingers are soulless creatures.
Now do one with the skyrocketing rates of autism, cancer, allergies and autoimmune illnesses. 🙎
Depression, loneliness, mental illness, drug abuse, stress...
I prefer being reminded of how much less likely we are now to watching our babies die, going hungry for days, and being killed by someone.
@@CornyBum Do you live in the Congo?
@@DegreesOfThree yes, how'd you know?
When you recognize certain children with developmental delays have a specific set of characteristics that can be referred to and treated, instead of just labeling them “mentally retarded” and putting them in an institution, autism rates go up; when people live longer due to improvements in sanitation and medicine, diseases resulting from accumulated genetic damage increase; when better sanitation leads to higher standards of hygiene and lower incidence of infectious disease and parasitic infestation , children grow up with fewer challenges to their immune systems that previously would have trained them to recognize non-self antigens.
I love the utter joy on Nick's face during this interview. So wholesome ❤
Stefan Sagmeister is undoubtedly one of the most influential and inspiring graphic designers of our time and it is always a pleasure to listen to him.
Crime is going down? Explain why all these stores are closing and citing shoplifting as the reason why.
shoplifting is economically driven. Or lack thereof.
That's how they've done it since time began. Starve & deprive, (rape & pillage)
After that, they pitch out a few bones for the sheep to fight over. So once not having any money in your pocket, then all the sudden you're feeling pretty good cuz now you have an extra $100. But that 100 is so devalued, it'll be gone in no time. Thus the cycle is *sicklical* 🤔
Shoplifting is not just economically driven
It is culturally driven. Poor Japanese do not shoplift. Nor did our grandparents or great grandparents who could afford much less stuff than we can today
(There is literally a film called "shoplifters" in Japan that became famous for essentially showing the then unheard-of fiction of poor people needing to steal. It really never happens there..)
Only going to hell? Nah... World already knocks down the hell's door. And I'm hearing key is turning in the lock.
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. -Matthew 16:18
Yes, unless it repents and gives itself to the only One who can save it; each of us
I need an app extension that turns off the annoying background music in these videos!? anybody got 1 to edit this out?
Yes, art where you have to explain what is happening is so-oo great.
Time for a radical change 🌍
What is this retarded call for revolution over?
"Save the planet"? The only thing that happens with "saving the planet" is giving the billionaires all your money and freedoms so they can do whatever they want while you're stuck in a pod eating rations of insects
Sagmeister became the JP of graphic design.
Yeah. I could Google and come away w the same impression. Why does this guy believe the statistics and any of the institutions they come from? Not saying he wrong, but how does he know who to trust?
Exactly. Our gdp is more than cut in half to fund death and destruction and to fund bogus propaganda studies
trust the experts, duhhh, jeez do you guys see this stupid comment? makes me so angry
Now do one with fertility rates 🙎
YES!
The world is going straight to hellloooo down here!
19:00 Yes, the Free Market is an excellent example of a Direct Democracy at work.
Is it only me or they look like brothers? 😮❤
I/ We are all artists some shine brighter than others
I like the work and respect the objective, but our success as a species is the result of constant vigilance. Lately we do seem to be back sliding on liberties on intelligence and health.
it was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... & everything in between.
Maybe it's just in hell already.
I have heared that the statistics that global poverty is on the decline is wrong due to the fact that the definition of poverty hasn't been adjusted for inflation. Even if less people live on 2$ a day than in the 90s 2$ bought a lot more in the 90s than today. There are so many trends that show that things have gotten worse recently for the average person. The rich and well connected have been doing fine, but for everyone else thinks haven't been so rosy.
This just isn't true. Those statistics are PPP and inflation adjusted. And most economists agree with those statistics, as far as I can tell.
@@aidanmeyer944 thanks for telling me. The source where I got that from was the video that was accusing kurzgesagt of making propaganda for billionaires.
The more salient criticism is that people living a subsistence lifestyle in which they obtain their necessities from their immediate environment, can have a satisfying existence (lack of access to modern conveniences and medical treatments notwithstanding ) in which they can raise children to the next generation, yet have zero income, and thus be considered “poor.” Move those people off the land and into cities, where they can get work , increases their income, but also increases dependence, as they must now pay for everything they need, and if their wages don’t provide enough to support a family, they cannot raise another generation, even though they have been “raised out of poverty.”
@@zimzob I agree, although nobody is forcibly moving them. So they must be deciding for themselves that the city life is better. But even though people are financially better, happiness hasn't made a significant change.
Tragic destruction of existing art, despite the usefulness of the data overlay.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. -2 Timothy 3:1. The world is being prepared for the literal Antichrist. Accept Jesus while you still can.
The antichrist is already here. He's been here. Just under the disguise called "transparency"
TRUTH
All gods are fiction. Drop the nonsense.
Over industrialization Vs under industrialization
Bravo!
This guy, I think we should all be able to agree, has the most delightful combination of voice and accent. It's almost distracting pleasant, but every idea comes across with absolute crystal clarity. I want to say, this should be the Platonic ideal of perfect English that the rest of us approximate.
Very well, But what I noticed is that stupid "background noise is in the foreground😝
He sounds a lot like Werner Herzog
What do you mean, _"going"_ to hell? Did you miss all the signposts? Were Do you need a personal appearance from Satan himself before you recognise where we are?
The question at who has pulled whom pulled who out of poverty and what was the cost
It's the equivalent of the classic movies bias. Everyone would say movies were better in the past, completely ignoring the fact that they only remmeber the great movies, the tops movies of a decade and are forgetting the hundreds of trash films that came out.
Art is our true narrative MWM
we are living on the technological progress our parents and grandparents fostered under still somewhat sane cultural regimes capable of adapting it on a mass scale.
Current tradjectories of IQ, crime, political instability, and overall decline of community trust and culture as a whole will see us enter an era of technological stagnation and overall civilizational decline thereafter.
Key infrastructure in parts of the USA and the western world more broadly are already in a state of perpetual disrepair. Where these devasational impacts are most heavily felt (very left wing states and cities like Detroit or St Louis, high immigration areas in Europe, etc.)
That said I do not think the USA or any other western country is on the brink of collapse. quite the oppsite; I suspect they will reign for another several hundred years (maybe even 1 thousand) because the rest of the world is much, much, much worse off for systematic virtually unfixable reasons. Those born today will see a slow decline of culture and material standards over their lifetime. But there's a long way to fall. Like I mentioned, it's already started depending on where you live.
You can’t ignore the fact that the Michigan legislature, under Republican leadership, restricted the ability of economically troubled cities like Detroit to raise tax revenue, promising to make up municipal budget shortfalls from state coffers, but then repeatedly refused to provide those funds. What would you expect to happen in that situation ?
@@zimzob The seeds that sparked the decline of Detroit and the Rust Belt more broadly (speaking as someone who was born in and resides among the Great Lakes) were sowed over half a century ago. Chiefly, they were embracing union politics, limiting environmental liability/getting rid of environmental tort, and failing to reject race oriented politics. Over regulation during "good times" while the USA had a lead over the rest of the world ultimately made the region uncompetitive once the world caught up.
ultimately they made it artificially expensive to do business in the Rust belt and this was only laid bare/made materially obvious once other areas opened for business (The US South after Air conditioning was invented; the rest of the planet once trade relations were normalized and peace ensured). It's more than just "cheap labor" also. it's labor productivity/value per labor input which is where the Rust Belt fell behind.
The ability for Detroit to raise taxes on an increasingly poor and shrinking tax base is akin to putting a bandaid on your knee after the entire leg has already been cut off from the body. and that's only if you beleive that anything the city of Detroit could fund would lead to a more superior outcome than privatized services that have proven more successful elsewhere
Does it matter it we have more artist if everything they depict is either depressing for good reason or explicit? Questions he didn’t answer as if they don’t even think that way yk fr sir world perspectives on life is he qualified?
We'd been in hell since germany lost at '45,if not '18
❤
Eat the bugs, own nothing and be happy. Isn't the future we will be forced into wonderful?
1:05 Yo Nick ! Is that you ? 🤣
Take the rose colored glasses off my friend.
Yeah, ok but whatever one thinks of his premise he couldn't present his ideas without destroying 18th and 19th century paintings? I imagine if you have Jay-Z album cover type money ( The kind of money that allows you to buy classical paintings just to dismember them) then the world would look pretty good to you.
That bothered me a bit, too, but he's using art that likely would've just been lost to time and disinterest anyway and giving them more value and use in their second lives, as covered in the video. For any one of these repurposed paintings, imagine how many hundreds or thousands already have gone away, even if excluding stuff like accidental damage and destruction. Something isn't worth preserving just because it's old. We preserve and value a tiny, _tiny_ fraction of art from centuries ago. Have you ever visited some local artist's booth at a small market? How many of that random artist's works will be around 200 years from now? How many of them are we responsible for preserving? (These are just rhetorical questions.)
I was hoping those were just copies...😅
No.
You WILL live in the pod! You WILL eat the bugs! Things can only get better!
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I'm listening to this, and not really watching. I'm having a hard time not picturing Arny right now.. .
U just did a show 2wks ago, where the guy said we've lost a great deal of freedom. When is this mixed messaging, & not just offereing nuance
Now do spiritual health.
What an absolute chancer!
Cool, but most of the gain in global wealth since the 1970s has accrued to China at the expense of other developing countries. Does the art account for that?
fantastic interview Dr. Nick, thank you
No
Out of the Collapse rises the Phoenix MWM
the realm is going to hell.
look at this man's art as more proof its pure babylon nuff said.
Seems to be yes. Not in the literal sense of course, but as far as society is concerned these days...
Some disinformation? Population is increasing, number of jobs decreasing due to automation
Are jobs now being farmed out to other planets these days? I think I'm missing something.
Birth rates have been declining for like 50 years.
Nothing but negative news adddicted crazies in the comments. You all want the world to end so bad.
@SierraLima it's prosperous for me and my family. We were dirt poor in the 90s. We are doing better now. Only difference is we are Latino. If you heard that we are doing well, it means automatically someone else is doing bad and it's OUR FAULT. Keep saying the US isnt prosperous. Its prosperous for me and mine.
@SierraLima not the case. We own a landscaping company. Family owned. Family run.
@SierraLima But we did for years in the 90s as we were once again DIRT POOR. Thanks to the taxpayers we moved out of that life and since the early 2000s we've been on the up.
@SierraLima in fact. Now grown. I was a WIC baby. And now I happily give back hoping that it helps other kids like me who didnt have a generational familial structure to use as a safety net throughout their young years. I'm glad the US is prosperous enough to have provided for me when I needed it and now I'm happy to contribute as I have been for the past decade or so.
@SierraLima that's just how YOU and your likeminded friends see it. Because it isn't about money, it's about race. You don't like the brown people catching up to you. The world progressing isn't progress to you because you're selfish. But I'm a believer in christ. And I will always share. I will always give to the poor and help those who need it. God bless.
He doesn't get the malaise that people actually feel. Isolation, emptiness, and the wealth disparity. He is so out of touch with people in poor areas in the USA. He totally out of touch.
Are you guys first cousins?
No, just the west
A man that gets it. 👏.
Looks ridiculous
It's be so much easier to communicate these ideas without the pretentious hipster remixed art bullshit.
@8:35 reveals the absurdity of this entire exhibit. Having more artists than doctors is NOT inherently a positive development. Having too many artists is more likely a sign of end-stage degeneracy and imminent societal collapse.
If the decrease in the doctor to artist ratio coupled with a decrease in life expectancy you'd be right. It didn't.
@@VincentWeisTheThird Life expectancy is currently falling in the western world. Also, the quality of life is falling. A long miserable life is not inherently better than a shorter happier life. The life expectancy data from 100 years ago is also skewed by infant mortality and war. It's not an apples to apples comparison. Life was more dangerous 100 years ago, but heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases were virtually non-existent.
@@DegreesOfThree life expectancy was unambiguously rising before COVID. The worst trough caused by the pandemic dropped us two decades behind, still unambiguously leaving us better off than a century ago. In terms of time prices, the amount of time needed to buy things like bread, energy, so on, we are unambiguously better off. Even things like housing prices are conspicuously localized problems, suggesting it isn't a broad scale decline in living conditions.
As for your point about disease, it's certainly the case that when more people actually live to the upper ages where one dies from heart disease instead of polio, you'd expect more deaths from heart disease than polio. If given a choice between dying from dysentery, polio, and measles in my 40s vs heart disease or cancer in my 60s and 70s, caused in part by a tasty food selection I couldn't have afforded at all before, I'll take this world, any day.
@@VincentWeisTheThird Bread is peasant food that humans probably shouldn't be eating in the first place. If you want to make a comparison, at least use something that actually improves life, like a dozen eggs or a pound of steak.
Even basic housing is practically unaffordable in most cities across the US. It used to take one or two years of labor (15-20K) to afford a modest sized house. Now those same houses could easily be half a million or more, depending on the location.
Tuition and health care prices have also skyrocketed, even though kids are dumber than ever and people are sicker and more depressed than ever.
If this analysis had been done in the 1990's, I would've mostly agreed with it, but the last 20 years have been an unmitigated disaster by almost any metric.
@@VincentWeisTheThird Also, you're still confused about life expectancy and the health outcomes of people 100 years ago. When I say cancer and heart disease were virtually non-existent, I'm talking about ALL age groups. 80 and 90 year olds were simply NOT getting these diseases 100 years ago. You can add macular degeneration to that list. Once people survived childhood, they lived healthier lives than we do today, but the statistics were skewed by infant mortality, World Wars, and workplace deaths. Even amongst the founding fathers, who had NO benefits of modern medicine or refrigeration or antibiotics, many survived well into their nineties.
Older dude discovers photoshop for the first time. Thinks himself clever.
that'd be funny if that were true...actually it's still amusing to imagine as true and also funny to wonder if someone actually believes in this comment
@@CornyBum Bot? Or do you have a point?