“Civilization Basically Stopped Progressing In The 1960s”

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion (Peter Thiel, billionaire Facebook investor, former PayPal CEO, and Palantir co-founder): “For most of recent human history—from the invention of the steam engine in the late 17th century through about the late 1960’s or so—technological process has been tremendous, perhaps even relentless. In most prior human societies, people made money by taking it from others. The industrial revolution wrought a paradigm shift in which people make money through trade, not plunder.

“The zenith of optimism about the future of technology might have been the 1960’s. People believed in the future. They thought about the future. Many were supremely confident that the next 50 years would be a half-century of unprecedented technological progress.

“But with the exception of the computer industry, it wasn’t. Per capita incomes are still rising, but that rate is starkly decelerating. Median wages have been stagnant since 1973. People find themselves in an alarming Alice-in-Wonderland-style scenario in which they must run harder and harder—that is, work longer hours—just to stay in the same place. This deceleration is complex, and wage data alone don’t explain it. But they do support the general sense that the rapid progress of the last 200 years is slowing all too quickly.”

My Comment: All the years of development after 1960 have not been beneficial for mankind. We need to rise to the next level and strive to achieve goals other than the material ones that no longer can satisfy and benefit us.
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