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> Would they still have wanted to "experience the create comforts of modernity" if modernity hadn't presented itself to their doorstep? Yes, absolutely. Withou

by mantap 7y ago

> Would they still have wanted to "experience the create comforts of modernity" if modernity hadn't presented itself to their doorstep? Yes, absolutely. Without either hospitals or contraception, it's quite common for women to have lost multiple children in their life. Without other sources of income, you are a crop failure or drought away from hunger. It's easy to romanticise pre-modern life from the comfortable position of a developed country. It's much harder for the people who live it.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
> Yes, absolutely. No, not even close. Pre-modern tribes don't even have language or concepts that define "hospital" or "contraception". If you don't have ideas, it's improbably that those will emerge out of themselves. The fact that it happened in our Western world wasn't a wilful act. Society didn't wake up one day thinking "let's build a hospital". Our present situation is the result of hundreds of years of evolving thinking and so having those concepts today is more attributable to happenstance then anything else. It's incorrect to assume that any human tribe can and will come up with those ideas all by themselves and somehow "want them because that's what they want". I stand by my comment. > Without other sources of income, you are a crop failure or drought away from hunger. Of course. Nobody is debating that. We're debating the biased notion that "progress" - Western modernity - is the primary and only way how to solve this; and - more importantly - the underlying, false, assumption that "progress is by definition good". A slew of researchers, philosophers, politicians, writers, artists,... have moved on from that point of view since the 1940's and shown that this is a naive way of thinking. It's called "Post-Modernism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism > It's easy to romanticise pre-modern life from the comfortable position of a developed country. It's much harder for the people who live it. Of course it is. We're not debating that either.

by mantap 7y ago

CaptArmchair 7y ago

> Yes, absolutely. No, not even close. Pre-modern tribes don't even have language or concepts that define "hospital" or "contraception". If you don't have ideas, it's improbably that those will emerge out of themselves. The fact that it happened in our Western world wasn't a wilful act. Society didn't wake up one day thinking "let's build a hospital". Our present situation is the result of hundreds of years of evolving thinking and so having those concepts today is more attributable to happenstance then anything else. It's incorrect to assume that any human tribe can and will come up with those ideas all by themselves and somehow "want them because that's what they want". I stand by my comment. > Without other sources of income, you are a crop failure or drought away from hunger. Of course. Nobody is debating that. We're debating the biased notion that "progress" - Western modernity - is the primary and only way how to solve this; and - more importantly - the underlying, false, assumption that "progress is by definition good". A slew of researchers, philosophers, politicians, writers, artists,... have moved on from that point of view since the 1940's and shown that this is a naive way of thinking. It's called "Post-Modernism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism > It's easy to romanticise pre-modern life from the comfortable position of a developed country. It's much harder for the people who live it. Of course it is. We're not debating that either.