3 ms·

Things started “working out” pretty recently, once we started applying more rigor to our thinking. Life in the thousands of generations before was pretty rough

• coldtea 8y ago
  That's a naive oversimplification -- the kind of modern thinking that considers history some kind of shit-hole and ours the first enlightened era. People had extremely rich lives, deep thoughts, and interesting problems to solve, throughout the 3-4K years of history. So Joe Sixpack today, or even a Joe IvyLeagueDegree today is no more sophisticated than e.g. a citizen of ancient Athens or Rome or Bagdad in most everyday matters.
  • dabbledash 8y ago
    Pre-industrial society was a shithole for most people compared to the present. And I’m not basing that on metrics like literacy or access to political franchise. I’m talking about things like “how likely are you to bury half your children?”, and “how likely are you to be raped or murdered?” We’ve made ourselves so comfortable now (which is great) that we’ve forgotten how unusual our circumstances are and lost interest in how we created them. It’s not a comment on the intelligence of the average historical person, or the richness of their emotional life. It’s just an acknowledgement that the tools we used to try to improve our lot for most of human history (including “common sense”) were not very successful, at least compared to the ones we’re using now.