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That's a totally backwards take. Most of these things are modern labor-saving devices that replaced even worse drudgery. Sweeping takes longer than vacuuming. W
by knzhou 7y ago
That's a totally backwards take. Most of these things are modern labor-saving devices that replaced even worse drudgery. Sweeping takes longer than vacuuming. Washing dishes by hand takes longer than a dishwasher -- especially if you don't have unlimited running water, or dish detergent, or if you need to start a fire to get hot water. Ancient Romans didn't have to deal with rush hour traffic, but research says their commutes were just as long as ours.
To put it another way: we used to required half of all human beings to attend to household tasks. That setup wasn't put into place because of malice, it was there by necessity. Managing a household used to take as much effort and thought as running a small business does today. Modernity has saved us from that.
- chrisco255 7y agoThe most stressful thing about modern commutes is that you can easily die if you take your eyes off the road for one second. Romans on horseback certainly didn't have that problem.
- pshc 7y agoDriving to work doesn't fit with the others--it can be replaced with riding the subway to work. The automotive status quo is tragedy and farce.
- jdnenej 7y agoI find taking the bus to work quite relaxing. I can put on my noise cancelling headphones and rest for the whole trip
- knzhou 7y agoBack then you probably couldn’t afford even a horse, plus if your feet got a little scratch while walking you might have just died of infection a week later. Come on, any claim that antiquity had better living standards is absurd on its face.
- Doxin 7y agoClearly the living standards were better, but I imagine there definitely were less things considered to be chores. Gathering food hardly gets boring if you're hungry. That said I highly doubt if that's a preferable state of affairs.
- kiliantics 7y agoAncient Romans were not hunter-gatherers so you are not making the right comparisons here. In fact, it's estimated that hunter-gatherers only do/did about 15 hours of productive labour a week, so doesn't seem they need our "labour-saving devices" since they already have much more free time than us.
- knzhou 7y agoWell, OP was complaining about modernity, so I compared to what came right before modernity. Hunter-gatherers might have actually had it better, under some measures -- but the world can't support that many of them.
- ascorbic 7y agoIf anything, you're underplaying it. Beating a rug takes far longer than vacuuming or sweeping. Before the washing machine, doing the laundry could easily take a whole day (which is why people wore clothes far longer between washes)
- c3534l 7y agoSure, but even before that we didn't have rugs or floors to clean, we just died in damp caves and made stone blades.