Big Think

Ezekiel Emanuel: I read a recent statistic which just blew my mind away; that today, the average American has 10 times as much material resources as the American . . . that Americans had in the Civil War, which is just a phenomenal thing when you consider it. And it’s all because of technological . . . scientific and technological advances. And the ability to harness energy, the ability to transform energy . . . just phenomenal driver in society. And again, both positive and . . . You know, we have better killing machines too. And so both of those things are, I think, phenomenally important. And you know, we didn’t have much progress in terms of improvement in living standards for millennia until really the developments in the 16th, 17th century of science, and the ability to transform science into technology. And sometimes I think we don’t appreciate the flushed toilet enough. You know, it’s just . . . indoor plumbing, indoor heating. I – in the late 1970s and early 80s – lived in Oxford in rooms that had no central heating. We had a heating coil. And I think you get to appreciate central heating – and the fact that you can actually live at 70 degrees all year around – a lot more when you are freezing and you can’t actually get to sleep because you are shivering so much. And I think that’s just a phenomenal thing to take for granted in our society. And it’s been a very short time since that’s been possible.

Recorded on: 7/5/07