From the article: "in short an era which—if you had to be stranded in some other epoch of history—you’d be likely to choose." This seems like quite a ridiculou

From the article: "in short an era which—if you had to be stranded in some other epoch of history—you’d be likely to choose." This seems like quite a ridiculous requirement, as first there really was no such era ever globally applicable, it depended not just on epoch, but very much if you were lucky to be born in certain location and in certain family/status/religion/ethnicity/race. And even then, even if you could pick exactly who you'll be, it's still very unlikely that any modern person would really enjoy any old times if the criteria is "safety", "stability" or "days when hard work pays off" from a perspective of a modern person living in the industrial age. It's just not comparable. When we discuss if one epoch was better or worse, question is was it better than the previous one, not what modern people would think of it ("on average it would suck to them" is the correct answer for pretty much any previous period of time more than 50 y/a). And Renaissance was a time of many improvements, not necessarily in safety or stability or hygiene, but it was marked with the beginning of Humanism as a philosophical stance, and wealth accumulation in aftermath of the plague, which together resulted in a new investments and vigor in education and art and science, and the whole attitude toward people's lives and importance of educations - and that just had to influence and add some value to the lives of commoners too. Even though living conditions in general were not significantly different to "the dark ages", especially when looking it from todays perspective, they still lived in time of great progress and increased liberties.