Human Suffering.

For the most part and largely the world of the past involved much more suffering than the present world.  Farmers were once strong and hardy individuals forced to live off of their own physical strength and abilities.  For much of history since the end of the Stone Age, man lived such an existence.  Disease was widespread and man had to endure far more pain on a daily basis without the benefit of modern medicine or the designer pharmaceuticals of today.

In the world of today, only literature from previous eras reflect this level of suffering.  For example, the biblical account of Christ's Passion reveals the suffering of the God-man on the Cross.  In today's world most of classical literature is not read, but when it is read it is frequently censored and banned altogether.  Political correctness  sees any mention of brutality in the past as  barbaric and thus attempts to negate all such mention of suffering as such.  This is a large part of the movement behind censoring the past.  In Huxley's _Brave New World_ all literature which dealt with human suffering was banned altogether.  Superficiality and mindless hedonism has taken its place.  This is further revelation of the fact that we are living in a world which is increasingly becoming exactly like the world that Huxley described.