The lens of history doesn't have much to say about the resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, nor about the giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world...
Imagine yourself in 100 years discussing that present (i.e. what the issues are in 100 years, not in 2016). You will have the same perspective, of now, the same level of urgency, the same levels of complexity, because you are living in the now.
Thinking about how someone in the future will think of their present does not say anything about the facts around our present or future, but it speaks volumes about how humans perceive their present. Thus I would say that "resource consumption and environmental destruction issues, giant population, advanced weaponary and technology in general, the implications of a hyperconnected world" are making now as the most crucial of times. Rather they are things that happen, as usual which because we are living in the now we take for being the most crucial of all time.
We always look back 100 years ago and think "oh, they had it easy"
And "Oh, they had it easy" doesn't mean that life is progressively bad, from garden of eden to the present day, that would mean that 100 years from now it will be worse than it is now. No, what it means is that we are humans who don't usually have perspective.
You are the only person I've ever heard saying that 'in 1916 they had it easy'.
I agree that if we are facing new challenges 100 years in the future, they will seem critical whereas the solved challenges of our present will appear solved and therefore not as challenging as they seemed at the time. This seems tautological.
I don't see how this is informative, or different from a platitude like "our problems don't seem so bad after we've solved them".
