Lecture 44: The World That the Modern Revolution Made
has been painful, as it has forced communities with diverse ethical and social
norms into close proximity. Modern weaponry has ensured that such conÀ icts
can take highly destructive forms.Entirely new types of lifeways have evolved. Most people today are no
longer foragers or self-suf¿ cient, rural-dwelling peasants. They are wage
earners, integrated into modern market systems and living, increasingly, in
large towns and cities. Modern lifeways have transformed life experiences.
For example, they are transforming gender relations by freeing increasing
numbers of women from the lifetime of childbearing and child rearing that
was their lot in peasant societies and allowing them to take on many new
roles. Though many forms of gender inequality survive, traditional forms of
patriarchy are being undermined. The material wealth generated by modern
societies has raised the living standards of billions of people. Today, more
people eat well and live without chronic suffering than in any other era of
human history. The human life span has increased. As rates of child mortality
have declined, average global life expectancies have risen from the Agrarian
era norm of about 30 years to 65–70 years in 2000. This momentous change
may prove a foretaste of future extensions in the span of a single human life.A fourth striking feature of modern communities is the changing role
of coercion. Within the tribute-taking states of the later Agrarian world,
coercion was a widely accepted way of controlling behavior. Slavery,
coerced labor, and domestic violence À ourished. Today, behavior is steered
more effectively by market forces rather than by coercion, and modern states
increasingly frown on the private use of violence. Yet when they choose to
do so, modern states can wield coercion far more effectively than traditional
tribute-taking states. Even the most democratic states maintain signi¿ cant
prison populations (0.8% of the population of the U.S. was incarcerated in
June 2006). And modern states maintain levels of military power that threaten
the future of human society. Even after the Cold War, several thousand
nuclear weapons remain on “hair-trigger” alert, and false alarms have led to
several close calls.