this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Still better than what most of the people before us lived through. It's just that our parents were especially lucky with the time period they lived in.
The idea that people before us lived worse lives is one often used to obscure the clinical nature of standards we attribute to quality of life such as lifespan, infant mortality, food security, and housing. This is because it allows corporations to trivialize the impact of doubling the workload by normalizing the 40 hour work week and housework and child care, what used to be two people's worth of work, into one.
Are we living 'better' lives? On paper, sure. Are we living happier lives? That's hard to say.
Most of the people worked 24/7 on their farm and had to give most of their crops to their feudal lord from which they were completely dependend for land and protection against bandits. And later people worked 7 days a week 10-12 hours in factories.
And alone the medical development clearly is a great improvement in happiness. Just imagine that newborns surviving until infancy was the exception rather than the norm. And women died regularly during childbirth. Tooth problems were causing tremendous chronic pain and often lead to death. Only cancer was a lesser problem because people simply didn't live long enough for it to be very prevalent.
I am not saying things could be better now. But we don't have to romanticize the past. For me it is rather motivating to see how far we have come already and that we also can overcome the challenges of our time.
I dunno I prefer not being murdered for practicing (or even converting from) the wrong religion, dying of plague or famine, or being enslaved for economic convenience. But maybe that's just me.
That really doesn't narrow it down, if we are talking about the past or present.
Yes but I'd much rather prefer wandering through a bountiful forest to a stream crammed with fish, build a lean-to from what's around me, and sleep cozy and warm under pine boughs on a moss mattress.
Agriculture broke us.
And be always afraid of being killed by a tiger or other predators. Constantly worrying about not finding enough food. Having insects crawl all over and inside you while sleeping or a snake choking you to death.
Yeah I call bullshit. What's stopping you from living your dream if it's that great?
Private property laws and the collapse of the biosphere
R.I.P. saimen choked to death on a larger than a average black python one Saturday night in the truck stop.
And squandered the shit out of it.
The rise of the middle class was definitely a historical anomaly. Most of history has been the top 1% oppressing most everyone else.