For the same reason that I think it's good for people to live in a different culture for a while, I wish it were possible for people to live in a different era

For the same reason that I think it's good for people to live in a different culture for a while, I wish it were possible for people to live in a different era for a while. There was a time when it wasn't smoking and obesity that killed people, but smallpox, plague, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. When a single epidemic could kill a double-digit percentage of the entire population of whatever unlucky region got it. For reference, COVID killed maybe 0.2% and HIV killed 0.4% over forty years. To quote Munroe, our heroes have slain one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and here you are complaining about sitting in a cubicle. Forty percent of the people in your office would have died before the age of five. Many of the rest would have died young of now completely avertable causes. Perhaps something as small as a cut that got infected, or fucking diarrhoea. The natural maternal mortality rate is something like 1.5%. That's per birth. Because half your children will die, most women will have half a dozen children (modern estimates for hunter gatherer fertility rates). Do you feel lucky? Another reason women had half a dozen children because reliable birth control wasn't a thing. You know what else wasn't a thing? A working justice system. You may fantasize about a just and noble justice system that runs on tight-knit personal connections in a small village where everyone knows each other, but everything we know about criminal justice tells us that small insular groups of people are actually terrible at justice. My people mete out justice, your people punish on whims and gut feelings, they are extrajudicial lynchers. Actually we're all extrajudicial lynchers, because no judicial system, remember? I could go on, but I have to finish reading my printed book teaching me the fruit of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom. (I'm a grad student and I'm trying to learn quantum field theory). It took me two hours of my underpaid grad student labour to make enough money to buy the book. I bought it because I like reading paper books. I could actually just download it and read it on my LCD display connected to the entire world's knowledge. That laptop was a bit more expensive. Maybe two weeks wages. For reference, it took maybe ~500 hours labour to make a shirt in medieval times. When they had division of labour and looms. Hope you don't mind wearing the same animal hide for years on end.