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It's not the spacers that make me break into tears a year after I read the book though. Realistic or not they had thousands of years more freedom than the Digg

• kbenson 9y ago
  It's harsh and it's sad, but is it really all that much worse than the many tens of thousands of years where humans lived in small tribes, sometimes in harsh ecosystems, with disease and pain and local conflict? For the vast majority of our history, humans have lived far worse off than now. Sure, it's easy to tell yourself they were happy living in a simpler time in and some cases a tropical paradise, but losing most your siblings in early childhood and passing away yourself at the old age of 32 because you scraped your leg and tf got infected doesn't sound all that great to me. That said, people of the past probably were happy. Happiness at your condition and situation seems to be highly relative. To us, it looks like a horrible punishment, but to them, it's just life, and losing your friends and family to illness and accident was likely as accepted as the fact today that you'll at some point die of old age.
  • Avshalom 9y ago
    Ten thousand years ago they could walk away, they might die but they wouldn't kill everyone that they could conceive of. The resources weren't obviously limited, the idea that everything they could conceive of would be lost wouldn't have occurred. The absolute limitation, the sacrifice, the need to keep sacrificing for un told generations... THEY HAD NO SKY. They had no future but theory... I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just saying: it was traumatizing to me.