The greatest centuries in history

[Bluemofia]

I see pills here. Only pills I know are made on Earth. I wonder what distant galactic pills are like, if there are any.

Not the first image, is it? (at least, it's not the first in mine. It's the 3rd. 1st and 2nd are the same image)

 

[Miles Teg]

Where's Mobby's old signature when you need it?

 

[Masada]

*Shrug* The century that did the most to raise up the average material human conditions. The rest is just window dressing.

 

[Bast]

20th century was by far the most eventful. 21st will probably trump it though.

20th century is the greatest century. It got a rough start, with the swaths of massive wars and genocides, but then they got over it, and started to develop great things.

Flight, Computers, development of modern day Chemistry, fields of QM and GR going beyond Newton, Moon landings, Internet, Civ...

Overall the vast amount of developments far outweigh the sacrifices made. It is inevitable that people will start playing with their new toys in an inappropriate fashion pursuing old grudges until they realize how they have to be responsible with them.

20th century, not even close.

I suspect it will be the 21st century by halfway through it.

Oh yes, the century in which there was mass genocide, institutionalized racism and segregation and extreme economic and social injustice. Yes, that's the greatest century ever?

I forgot that only the last few centuries matter.

Definitely the 20th century - an era of unprecendented innovation and rise in standard of living and freedoms worldwide.

You call yourself a Buddhist? How can you ignore the glory of the 6th century BCE? I'd rather live in the times of the Buddha than in the 20th century or now.

 

[Miles Teg]

You know, I should probably work on my comedic timing. The above joke would have been funnier/more pointed if I had posted it right below Bast.

 

[Tee Kay]

Oh yes, the century in which there was mass genocide, institutionalized racism and segregation and extreme economic and social injustice. Yes, that's the greatest century ever?

Would you like to have lived in the 26th century BC when on top of extreme economic and social injustice life expectancy was something like 20 years, when 99% of people can't read, when you will most likely spend all day working the land with basic tools, without plumbing, without electricity, when you don't have the vote, when women was (in most cases) property, when you're vulnerable to all kinds of disasters and diseases.

You call yourself a Buddhist? How can you ignore the glory of the 6th century BCE? I'd rather live in the times of the Buddha than in the 20th century or now.

The Buddha's mother died a few days after giving birth. In those days, maternal death after childbirth was common, even among the most well-off in society. In 1900 it still occur in about 1/100 births. In the modern United States, the figure is 11 in 100,000.

I like the 21st century.

 

[SG-17]

We landed on the Moon in the 20th Century so I'll go with that one.

That event outshines everything before and everything until we land on Mars.

 

[Masada]

I don't get the significance of landing on the moon...

 

[Arakhor]

Personally, I'd rather have the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler or Newton any day over a simple moon landing.

 

[Perfection]

What percentage of them looked at and gained inspiration from celestial objects that weren't part of the Local Supercluster?

I see pills here. Only pills I know are made on Earth. I wonder what distant galactic pills are like, if there are any.

In any case, the local supercluster is part of the universe, and the universe came from the big bang. So there.

 

[Masada]

Personally, I'd rather have the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler or Newton any day over a simple moon landing.

But I don't see how those are indicators of 'greatness' either. At best, they had an impact upon a tiny intellectual elite. For significant scientific accomplishments something like the Green Revolution which has a global reach and a profound significance for everyone would seem a better candidate for adulation. Then again, I'm probably just boring.

 

[innonimatu]

20th century is the greatest century. It got a rough start, with the swaths of massive wars and genocides, but then they got over it, and started to develop great things.

Flight, Computers, development of modern day Chemistry, fields of QM and GR going beyond Newton, Moon landings, Internet, Civ...

Overall the vast amount of developments far outweigh the sacrifices made. It is inevitable that people will start playing with their new toys in an inappropriate fashion pursuing old grudges until they realize how they have to be responsible with them.

Bah, technical development is easy! The real hard thing is social change. And while the spread of new social rules can cause terrible wars and be its most visible and impressive aspect, the real challenge is to get social change started.

So I'm again defending that the 19th century was far more important than the 20th.

Consider: the idea of popular sovereignty; representative democracy; the end of slavery (after centuries of excuses about "oh, it's an evil thing but we can't do without it); the separation between church and state; the end of political "tyranny" and the multiplication of the new "constitutional regimes"; the whole industrial revolution and the shift in economic power from ownership of land to capital and industry; the shift from agriculture to urban life; the separation of the Americas as independent nations, signaling the impossibility of (maintaining) world-spanning empires within the new liberal political framework.

As technical achievements: the spread of the aforementioned industrial revolution; the final exploration of the whole world, filling in the age-old banks on world maps. A system of worldwide trade which finally penetrated inside continental landmasses and connected virtually all human communities (for better and for worse). The first real-time communications with the first transoceanic telegraph cables. Electrical motors and power generation.

Many of these changes clearly had their seeds in the 18th century. But they were truly adopted, they irreversibly spread, in the 19th century. The 18th century intellectual innovations could have failed, as (for example) individual abolitionists wanting to end slavery were ignored for centuries; but after the revolutions and wars of the late 18th/early 19th centuries all these changes really took root, and there was no going back. The 20th century was largely about dealing with the irreversible spread of these changes, and technical refinements of 19th century technology. The who big technical innovations were space travel (and from that only satellites turned out to have some impact on the welfare of mankind so far) and computers, but I really don't feel that those outweigh the ones of the 19th century.

 

[azzaman333]

The 20th century because it annoys Bast.

 

[Airstrike92]

20th century for obvious reasons.
and the 21st century.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Oh yes, the century in which there was mass genocide, institutionalized racism and segregation and extreme economic and social injustice. Yes, that's the greatest century ever?

Wasn't that like nearly every century, ever? The only difference is the population of the world in each age.

Also, I'm on a moon.

In any case, the local supercluster is part of the universe, and the universe came from the big bang. So there.

Yes, but it is distinct from the rest of the universe right now. I don't think there were superclusters around the time of the Big Bang, or shortly thereafter.

 

[Bobbtjoe]

The 20th century, because that's when the moon landing was faked.

 

[classical_hero]

The 20th Century is the best and worst century, since it brought with it many great achievements, but also many of the worst in mankind at the same time.

 

[Dachs]

The 20th century for greatest and worst. Basically for the reasons classical_hero said.

For "stuff I know most about and am most interested in studying", the 4th century BC and the 5th century AD.

 

[Theige]

Oh yes, the century in which there was mass genocide, institutionalized racism and segregation and extreme economic and social injustice. Yes, that's the greatest century ever?

Are you trying to claim these things didn't exist before the last few centuries?

 

[Dachs]

They weren't nearly so widespread or costly in terms of human life in previous centuries, dude. It's a legitimate criticism.