yet our stories of their past don't include any history before colonial forces, slave capture, or the faintest possibility that anything other than improvement could have come with the civilizing forces.
What? Even without the conquests of societies in the past, most other societies were much less likely to survive nature. A simple walk through the forest before antibiotics was ridiculously risky.
Again, the claim is that the bar is rising. Not that it always rose fairly. Nor that it has equally reached everyone. Just that, by and large, technology has made our lives better.
I mistakenly thought your double-grand-parent was related... so my comment is without context.
yeah, "tech" is changing things and I couldn't imagine life without it... I imagine there are beings on the planet that can't imagine life with it, and they seem to live fine lives.
we're special animals... in that technology is part of "us". but I don't know that makes our lives better.
