Mathematician
Reason, and reason again
For reasons sociologists of later generations can determine, there is a widespread belief that modernization has ruined human society. I think too often people are in search of some traditional non-existant utopia. Religious, cultural, and social changes have not set us on any bleaker path than has been pathed out before. If anything, our species has done remarkably well in the past 100 years of adapting to astounding change. Society now looks down upon treating women as inferior, slavery of any kind, discrimination, wife beating, slave rape, and lynching -- all "evils" that persisted for thousands of years with relatively little care.
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1602/Modernization-Crime-long-term-European-view.html
http://www.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/data/CrimeData/hist-1b.htm
http://www.liberator.net/articles/SloanGary/GoodOldDays.html
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1602/Modernization-Crime-long-term-European-view.html
Social historians thus object to everyday beliefs and raise skepticism against arguments and findings by most sociologists and criminologists who, in a short-term view, associate violent and property crime with modernization. Instead they consider their findings to be in sync with the civilization theory developed during the 1930s by sociologist Norbert Elias. This theory would predict exactly what the cited historians have found, a dramatic decline in violence: European history since the Middle Ages has been characterized by peoples' growing capability of self-control, including constraint from violence, especially in the public sphere. This individual level change is, Elias argues, due to two conditions. First, the emerging modern nation-states claim the monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Violence as a means of dispute resolution thus becomes increasingly illegitimate and subject to penal law. Second, with urbanization and the growing division of labor, people are embedded in ever more complex social configurations. The use of brute force in the relationships that constitute these configurations is no longer suited to advance an individual's interests. More sophisticated action strategies are required. The result of these new constraints on individuals is growing self-control or civilization.
http://www.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/data/CrimeData/hist-1b.htm
http://www.liberator.net/articles/SloanGary/GoodOldDays.html
Prostitution in the United States was so pandemic after the Civil War that in several cities officials talked seriously of legalizing it.
Drug addiction was so rife in Cincinnati that, according to one disgruntled visitor, you couldnt walk down the sidewalk without tripping over an opium slave.
Between 1860 and 1890 the crime rate was more than twice the rate of population growth. The Charleston News and Chronicle reported: Murder and violence are the distinguishing marks of our civilization. In the 1930s, a criminal had a 99 percent chance of escaping punishment. From 1930 to 1950 Chicago had an estimated 700 hired assassins. Only eight of the assassins were ever convicted. A much larger ratio of convicted felons go to prison now than 60 years ago.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, clergymen routinely advised parents not to get too close to their children. Male adolescents were often sent away to live with other families. Many couples lived in sin. Today, proportionately more Americans marry than ever before. In the 1880s, the divorce rate in America exceeded that in all other industrialized countries. In the 1800s, there was one abortion for every six births. In the 1920s, one in four pregnancies ended in abortion.