Like each successive generation of OS, each generation of human society becomes more and more complicated as redundancies and inefficiencies are squeezed out to do more with the same resources. Bad features are removed, and the good ones are expanded upon. Everything changes in this way, slowly moving toward the "perfect solution" that seems to be just beyond each horizon, but each "solution" brings new problems that must be solved as Murphy's Law reigns supreme again and again.
Posted by Anonymous at July 9, 2006 8:05 PMhow do you explain hiccups like the dark ages? definitely a long winded step backwards
Posted by jon at July 9, 2006 10:22 PMmy comment is directed towards the first comment
Posted by jon at July 9, 2006 10:24 PMWell "dark ages" is a misleading term. Outside of Europe and even within Europe at different points, society continued to evolve relatively steadily. But that's just me nit-picking.
In the original post, it seems implied that there is a "good" side, the side of progress that society as a whole seems to strive for, and an array of antagonists, or a "bad" side, for lack of a better word, that opposes our endeavors to improve things for any number of reasons. Both sides evolve in reaction to the other. For example, humans create medicine to kill a virus and the virus adapts and becomes immune to the chemicals in the medicine, or as malicious hackers exploit security holes in an OS, programmers develop patches to close the loopholes.
"Bad" and "good" are relative terms in this context. What's good for a lion is probably bad for the zebra, for example.
Your hiccups are simply the antagonists developing new traits that take longer to overcome. However, I would like to note that in the long run, human ingenuity wins out and progress reaches out to new heights for society as a whole. Thus far, at least.