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I feel like the golden age of civilization was pre internet. Text based communication too easily devolves in to flame wars, but the time it took to receive, rea

I feel like the golden age of civilization was pre internet. Text based communication too easily devolves in to flame wars, but the time it took to receive, read, contemplate and respond to a letter seems to moderate tempers.

meowface 5y ago
I believe written letters actually weren't much of a thing back in 1000 BC. However, there was still real-time in-person communication, which can certainly lead to heated arguments no matter what year you live in. It seemed to have no problem generating persecution, pogroms, and genocide back then. Maybe I'm a naive futurist, but I think the best time for a person to be alive is right now, if you're fortunate enough to be born in a developed country. And also maybe even if you weren't, as long as you weren't born somewhere awful like North Korea.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > I believe written letters actually weren't much of a thing back in 1000 BC. That very much depends where you were. We have lots of surviving letters from that time period.
FpUser 5y ago
>"I feel like the golden age of civilization was pre internet." https://youtu.be/nS5_EQgbuLc https://youtu.be/nS5_EQgbuLc
Mikeb85 5y ago
More like instead of Internet flame wars villages simply waged wars against each other over petty bullshit. The world has less war than ever.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  That's not entirely true - pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to have had any kind of wars at all for all we've been able to find out (obviously they would have had murder and such human-to-human conflict). This actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it - Only with the advent of agriculture did war make any sense, as before it would always be advantageous to just move to a different area rather than risk the few members of your family/tribe in a fight with another family/tribe, especially in the endless forests that populated much of the environment where humans lived.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    Don't know. It's true that an all-out battle is too risky a proposition. But Chimps e.g. are known to patrol the border areas of their territory in order to catch and kill stray members of neighbouring troupes. You can call that a murder, but I'd go with low-intensity warfare.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to have had any kind of wars at all for all we've been able to find out Its not because it did not leave any trace that it did not exist
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    Ummm, we've discovered tribes that were/are still at that level of technology. They definitely engage(d) in warfare.
  - eru 5y ago
    Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      Yes, that book mostly confirms what I'm saying l, at least as far as the wikipedia summary can be trusted: > About 90-95% of known societies engage in war. Those that did not are almost universally either isolated nomadic groups (for whom flight is an option) This perfectly describes hunter-gatherer societies. All of the other examples cited in the wikipedia summary, going back as far as the Mesolithic, are settled agricultural societies.
      - eru 5y ago
        Hmm, ok. See perhaps https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Violence_and_Warfare_Among_Hunter_Gather.html https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Violence_and_Warfare...

meowface 5y ago

I believe written letters actually weren't much of a thing back in 1000 BC. However, there was still real-time in-person communication, which can certainly lead to heated arguments no matter what year you live in. It seemed to have no problem generating persecution, pogroms, and genocide back then. Maybe I'm a naive futurist, but I think the best time for a person to be alive is right now, if you're fortunate enough to be born in a developed country. And also maybe even if you weren't, as long as you weren't born somewhere awful like North Korea.

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I believe written letters actually weren't much of a thing back in 1000 BC. That very much depends where you were. We have lots of surviving letters from that time period.

FpUser 5y ago

>"I feel like the golden age of civilization was pre internet." https://youtu.be/nS5_EQgbuLc https://youtu.be/nS5_EQgbuLc

Mikeb85 5y ago

More like instead of Internet flame wars villages simply waged wars against each other over petty bullshit. The world has less war than ever.

tsimionescu 5y ago
That's not entirely true - pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to have had any kind of wars at all for all we've been able to find out (obviously they would have had murder and such human-to-human conflict). This actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it - Only with the advent of agriculture did war make any sense, as before it would always be advantageous to just move to a different area rather than risk the few members of your family/tribe in a fight with another family/tribe, especially in the endless forests that populated much of the environment where humans lived.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  Don't know. It's true that an all-out battle is too risky a proposition. But Chimps e.g. are known to patrol the border areas of their territory in order to catch and kill stray members of neighbouring troupes. You can call that a murder, but I'd go with low-intensity warfare.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > pre-agriculture hunter-gatherer societies don't seem to have had any kind of wars at all for all we've been able to find out Its not because it did not leave any trace that it did not exist
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Ummm, we've discovered tribes that were/are still at that level of technology. They definitely engage(d) in warfare.
- eru 5y ago
  Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Yes, that book mostly confirms what I'm saying l, at least as far as the wikipedia summary can be trusted: > About 90-95% of known societies engage in war. Those that did not are almost universally either isolated nomadic groups (for whom flight is an option) This perfectly describes hunter-gatherer societies. All of the other examples cited in the wikipedia summary, going back as far as the Mesolithic, are settled agricultural societies.
    - eru 5y ago
      Hmm, ok. See perhaps https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Violence_and_Warfare_Among_Hunter_Gather.html https://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Violence_and_Warfare...