When was the last time you heard someone long for the past, for the good old days when life was simple and people were nicer? When did you last hear someone lament the loss of the individualism and self-sufficiency our ancestors enjoyed?

When did someone tell you that life in the United States was going to the dogs and they feared for their children's future? Well, friends, I have the book for you: "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley. The first chapter alone ought to change the way you look at the world. Life, says Mr. Ridley, is getting better, and he seems to have the facts and figures to prove it.

Even more intriguing are the reasons Ridley gives for the world's steady climb toward prosperity. The first step occurred thousands of years ago with the most basic of acts, the division of labor. Man hunted while women tended the hearth, but food sharing and support between group members is not confined to the human species. The higher apes understand reciprocity. They exchange like for like — grooming and food — within their own group.

What they do not do, and mankind does, is to exchange items of one kind for items of a different kind with outsiders. In other words, they trade or barter goods and services of unequal value with strangers; for instance, a stone ax for a clay pot.

One group has access to obsidian and produces an abundance of useful tools. The other group knows where the best clay can be found and has become proficient at producing cooking pots.

These two different groups of people, often living many miles apart, exchange something they have in abundance with something they needed and both have a better life. Thousands of years later, specialization and trade have become worldwide, and wherever they have gone, prosperity has followed.

We've been told that everything is connected and that we're all dependent upon one another, but we fail to understand the degree and complexity of this interdependency. Furthermore, we have become so accustomed to prosperity that we don't even recognize it when it is all around us.

Ninety-nine percent of American's poor have electricity, flush toilets and a refrigerator. The vast majority have television and a phone. None of the "poor" had these things 100 years ago.

Americans take pride in personal independence. The cowboy is our hero, an American Icon. But the cowboy did not make his own gun or his own saddle, and when he had a toothache, he paid a barber a dollar to yank the tooth out. Today, we pay a highly trained dentist with expensive instruments to save the tooth, but the dentist didn't build his own office or make his own equipment. It was built or manufactured by other specialists. And so it goes.

Furthermore, Ridley says, interdependency produces better people - kinder, happier and more virtuous. He agrees with 18th century economist Adam Smith, who in "Wealth of Nations" wrote that turning strangers into trading partners transmutes self-interest in benevolence. (It also makes loving your enemies a bit more realistic.)

Any number of practices common at one time — child labor, oppression of women, a caste culture — have become unacceptable as people became better educated and more affluent. Even the worst racist can't use the "n-word" in mainstream media. The editors won't allow it, if for no other reason, because African-Americans now share in the nation's affluence and have a certain degree of economic clout.

The rich are certainly not more virtuous than the poor, but when the poor have more options, and they do in economically advanced societies, they are less vulnerable. Even if they mow lawns or wait tables for a living, there are more lawns and more tables; and thus more employers and greater opportunity to negotiate wages and working conditions.

So there you are folks. Feel better now?

Joan King lives in Sautee. Her column appears biweekly on Tuesdays and on gainesvilletimes.com.