Has Human Nature Really Changed Over The Centuries?

We look around us at all the marvels of modern technology and all the great inventions and believe that things have greatly changed over the centuries. It is true that outer circumstances have changed and the average person of today has more luxury than a king of olden times.

Human nature is basically the same now as it was at the beginning of recorded history. Read some of the old manuscripts or books such as the bible and other religious documents and you will find the complaints then were basically the same as now.

The same mischief, crimes, misdemeanors and evils that were perpetrated then are present today. The distribution of wealth was basically the same and parents had the same complaints about the younger generation we currently have.

We think all this to be more prevalent today because we are exposed to more of it through the media. Things which in olden times rarely traveled further than the local village or town now rapidly gain world-wide dissemination.

If one person out of a hundred was a criminal, it was not considered an epidemic. When you expand this to sixty million out of six billion, the figure of sixty million seems like a massive amount.

I venture to say that proportionally it is all basically the same. The percentages remain relatively unchanged.

In conclusion, we live far more comfortably than any of our predecessors, but we still have the same inner turmoil and conflict they had. We just use fancier words for it.