The increasing rapid pace of life causes more problems than it solves

 

In the last few decades, there has been marked change in the lifestyle, owing to the advances in science and technology.  Some people think that the increasing rapid pace of life causes more problems than it solves. I disagree with this statement.  The increasing efficiency and the rapid pace of life have not lead to more problems,  though there sure has been a change in the type  problems that we need to tackle in our day to day lives. Let me illustrate this with a few examples.

In the prehistoric times, one of the main problems the hunter gatherers dealt with was procuring  food.  One could imagine the effort  they had to put in to first  locate an animal, then  with the poorly developed tools, kill it, skin it and then cook it in fire -  fire created by friction from rubbing dry sticks and painfully kept aflame.  There were no means  to store the food efficiently.   Cultivating crops would again be a cumbersome process, when they had to fight against the whims of the nature , and had to do all the labour manually. A big chunk of their awake hours would be lost in the process of just obtaining daily nourishment.  Compared to this, having a meal in recent times is by far an easy  process.   In the field of agriculture, with the rapid advances in technology, we have access to seeds resistant to common pests; we have pesticides;  the machines have made tilling the land, sowing seeds, irrigation, collection of the crops, all  far less cumbersome.  If needed, we can prepare a full meal in a few minutes, using prepackaged frozen meals that just need to be microwaved.  One might have to deal with a broken refrigerator or microwave, but these by and far are less common.

Consider the field of heath care. With the advances in the field of public health and medicine, the life expectancy has risen considerably. The problems we now deal with, at least in the developed countries are not related to infectious diseases, or high infant mortality,  which now can be effectively treated or prevented, to age extent.  The major health concerns of the modern world include the epidemic of obesity, a by product of our sedentary life style, which would be unheard of in prehistoric times. 

In recent times, we have to find solutions for the depletion of nonrenewable resources and  global warming. In the past, man had to find means to just keep himself warm.  Now we deal with  delayed flights and mechanical glitches with the automobiles; earlier it might have been getting  a fast and sturdy  horse  and  taming it.

In summary, the rapid pace of life has not created new problems;  we have increased efficiency, but  we have a novel set of problems to deal with in the modern era.