When i read history books, there were a lot of stories of how families struggling for food and daily necessities. There were not enough technologies and knowledge to overcome pandemies, famines and droughts. The political system were still in feudal state. It means nobles and high level societies think the lower class as slaves. Only ten percents of population able to enjoy ninety percents of things that human can produces.

What about now? today, we have industrialization in everything, there are many technologies to overcome many daily problems, if you lack of food, you can buy from other countries who are in surplus of food, you can even grow plants inside a building. Pandemies, you can use vaccines to prevent such outbreaks or you can depend on antibiotics for bacteria infections. Politic? most countries adopt democratic system, it means, everyone has the right to own properties and enjoy the economic benefit from it. From this perspective, there are gigantic improvements in common people prosperities.

However, how come people seems still struggling ? they seems not happy though many things that threatened their livelihood in the past are less threatening anymore. There are many cases of suicide, depression and frustarion. Have you ever wondered why?

There are at least 3 reasons that i can come up with

First, overpopulation, with the advent of medical technologies such as vaccines, antibiotics and life saving devices, the life expectation of general population has increase and lead to population boom everywhere. If you look at the population of Japan for example, you must be heard that Japan has population crisis nowadays, however it is still five times more than Japan’s population in Meiji era. It is also the same with the other countries. The more population you have the more you need to feed them. Though technologies have advanced, it plays catch up with the population grow, and it leads to the second problems

Inflation, more people means more demands, if the supply of goods and services are lacking behind, it surely will drive the prices higher. It is not a problem if you have a lot of money, a stable and high income jobs or having a profitable business, but for most people , they born after everything has systematized in this rule based order society, they usually start from the bottom of economic class, and need to compete with people who are inherit fortune from their family, the fortune here is not necessarily money, but also education and social networks. Can you imagine how hard they need to work to have a piece of prosperity?

The third problem is the lack of opportunities and jobs, as i stated before, those who are born in lower economic class, and do not inherit anything from their family need to work really hard to climb up the economic ladder. If you are a business person, then you will likely to compete with many competitors who usually have better capitals. If you are a working class, then you will face a stiff competition from other workers

I do not know which one is better, modern world or ancient world, in a modern world full of technological wonders, we know that there are solutions to our daily problems, but we may lack acccess to it due to lack of money. It is a pressure toward human’s mental state. In ancient world, we were forced to accept reality as there were not many solutions to most of our daily problems.

which one better? what do you think?