I understand, but I also have some things in mind like the ride Chile has had over the last century. The advances of the enlightenment and the industrial and technological revolutions coincided with world wars and imperialism. We pat ourselves on the back for the glorious rise of living standards and productivity, but do not often enough look at how equal the ratio is between productivity from a place and living standards raised in that place. Often it is more of a transfer, and only now is technology and globalization of business balancing it out, as we probably most see between the US and China/India.
Go to many places in the world and you will see metros surrounded by slums. For the most part in America we have minimized the slum part, but that is because entire nations are our slums, and have been. We were built on their backs, and the rise of the international conglomerate and centralized production have robbed much of the world of many of the benefits of our findings and developments that could have been shared in far greater equality. Looking forward, particularly in an ecological sense, the metropolis is clearly excessive, wasteful, and unjust. A model that knows how to be stable while scaling back will by nature have to be one that cares for what is wanted for the world rather than what is considered fair by tradition.
Basically, global self-awareness and empathy as a species of a shared home lagged behind our power of development, but now that we have both, we are capable of embracing the power we hold without holding sacred the methods by which is was attained. The future will require new methods, new structures, new systems, and we need not fear that and cling on to our old dreams just because chasing those dreams got us what we have now. I think if we were more open about that fact it didn't just create the benefits we have now, but also many of the messes, I think we would be more willing. It is inaccurate to think every problem are holdovers from the middle ages and that we've been on the right train just because it got us away from there.
Sorry for the tangent. Although, I do think it is perfectly applicable to the topic, as I really meant what I said about these sort of thoughts in regard to society (women are not dependent on men/marriage because we have advanced) and the world (overpopulation, economic downturn, etc) affecting what decisions we make in regard to the desired sort of love life and commitments to certain relationship and family models.
maybe that's why I'm 36 divorced and a serial monagomist.