Economist Essay Rebuts Idea That Past Eras Were Better

A culture essay published by The Economist on November 12 argues that the common instinct to romanticize earlier eras does not survive contact with the historical record, pointing to plague, gruel and widespread dental disease as shorthand for the deprivations that defined daily life for most of human history. The piece, framed by the magazine as "a rip-roaring rebuttal of the idea that progress is a myth", pushes back on a strain of pessimism that treats modern complaints — about work, technology or politics — as evidence that life has gotten worse, not better.

What is the central argument of the essay?

The Economist's piece sets up a direct contest between nostalgia and evidence, and sides with the evidence. Its thesis, as stated in the magazine's own framing, is that the idea "progress is a myth" does not hold up once the physical realities of pre-modern life are placed next to the present day. The essay's title telegraphs its method: using concrete, visceral details — plague outbreaks, gruel as a dietary staple, and bad teeth as a marker of inadequate nutrition and medicine — to argue that people who long for "the olden days" are, in effect, longing for conditions they would not tolerate if they experienced them directly.

What historical evidence does the piece lean on?

The examples named in the piece's own headline — plague, gruel and bad teeth — function as stand-ins for a broader case about public health, food security and medical care before the modern era. The Economist does not treat these as isolated anecdotes but as representative of the baseline conditions most people faced before sanitation, vaccination and modern dentistry became widespread. The framing positions those conditions as the honest comparison point for anyone arguing that an earlier century offered a better quality of life than the present one.

Why do people idealize eras they did not live through?

The essay engages with a psychological and cultural pattern rather than a purely historical one: the tendency to filter the past through its surviving art, architecture and stories while discarding the lived discomfort that did not get preserved in the same way. The Economist's framing suggests this selective memory is what allows plague, gruel and bad teeth to disappear from popular images of "the olden days" even though they were central to the actual experience of most people in most periods before modern medicine and industrial food production.

How does this debate connect to arguments about progress today?

The piece's broader target is a modern pessimism that treats dissatisfaction with current conditions as proof that decline is underway. By reconstructing what daily life actually involved in earlier centuries, the essay argues that standard-of-living gains — in nutrition, health and basic physical safety — are real and measurable, even if they do not resolve every present-day grievance. That argument runs parallel to ongoing debates about whether new technologies are making life better or worse. A separate HTT News report on workplace reactions to artificial intelligence found similar tension between measurable gains in capability and unease among workers adjusting to change — a modern echo of the same instinct the Economist essay identifies in attitudes toward history.

Glossary of terms in the progress debate

Declinism — the belief that a society or civilization is on an irreversible downward trajectory, often used to describe pessimistic readings of current events.

Golden-age thinking — the tendency to view a past period as superior to the present, typically without accounting for its hardships.

Survivorship bias (historical) — the pattern by which only the most durable or celebrated artifacts, buildings and records of a past era survive into popular memory, skewing modern impressions of what ordinary life was like.

Standard of living — a composite measure of material well-being, commonly tracked through indicators such as nutrition, life expectancy and access to medical care, which the Economist essay uses as its comparison point between past and present.

The Economist frames its essay as a corrective rather than a triumphalist account of the present, arguing that acknowledging real gains in health and material security does not require denying the problems of today — only resisting the specific claim that an earlier century handled them better. Readers can find the full piece at The Economist's culture section.

Artiglio is A coming-soon iPhone chief of staff for briefings and drafts. Not on the App Store yet.