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Life was dirty, difficult, and dangerous for almost everyone who ever existed
- codevark 2y ago[dead]
- qarl 2y agoAnd it would be extremely naive to think that people 100 years from now won't think our lives were dirty, difficult, and dangerous too.
- gazook89 2y agoOn the other hand, this may be the cleanest we will ever be
- qarl 2y agoSure, if civilization collapses, it may take us a while to get back to this point. But my point is, essays like these assume we are peak humanity. We're not. Given enough time, we'll look like primitive barbarians too.
- Jcowell 2y ago> But my point is, essays like these assume we are peak humanity. Do they? the might assume we’re peak humanity right now but they don’t make the claim that we’re are the peak there ever will be
- qarl 2y agoSeems like his argument is about now. The truth is that every now has been the peak so far, so his words apply to all points in time. It seems to me he's missing that. Does it sound like he's urging people 2000 years ago to appreciate how clean their lives are? No?
- tempestn 2y agoThis is the conclusion of the article: > This world and the standard of living we enjoy are the gift they left us. We can never pay it back. But we can pay it forward: we can keep progress going, and build an even better world for the generations to come.
- qarl 2y agoI guess I'm put off by how horrible he repeatedly describes the past, seemingly ignoring that those people of the past had it extremely well compared to the people of their past. And how people of the future will look at us with that same horror.
- The_Colonel 2y ago> The truth is that every now has been the peak so far, so his words apply to all points in time. That's a very strong statement and I have some doubts. There were periods of relative calm abd prosperity, then hit by plague (killed of one third of Europe's population in 2 decades), famines, little ice age, decades long wars etc. where it seems absurd to claim that now is better than before.
- qarl 2y agoYes, of course, I'm speaking approximately. But given the various evolutionary processes, the trend is improvement over time.
- riversflow 2y agoI’ve become less clean in my life because I believe too much cleanliness is bad for your immune system. Could be a placebo, but I haven’t had allergies since.
- downvotetruth 2y agoOn the contrary, our civilization has never before had to deal with so much shit.
- DaoVeles 2y agoWhy would they think that? Please ignore all the microplastics, ecological destruction and wildly altered climate due tot dumping 2 trillion tons of carbon in the atmosphere.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- silverquiet 2y ago"We really did have everything, didn't we?"
- bee_rider 2y ago> the ballpoint pen, invented in the 1930s, saved many clothes and tablecloths from spilled ink I used an inkwell and dip pen for a couple years to take class notes. Don’t really know why. Spilling the ink was never a problem, but really they are just worse than pencils in every way. Can’t erase, the nib doesn’t want to go backwards, and ink smudges.
- DaoVeles 2y agoSorry we all know the real inventor of the Ball point pen. From Black Adder Back & Forth. ;) Blackadder: Well, this is the title page for Macbeth, signed by Shakespeare himself. [The guests look at Blackadder like he's grown a second head] Melchett: No, no, wait, you all remember Shakespeare. He's the fellow who invented the ballpoint pen! Blackadder: Well, I might have affected one or two things,
- eternityforest 2y agoMost mechanical pencils never seem that reliable. The leads break after a month of jostling in a bag and then it doesn't work when you need it. This could also just be because I used 0.5 and never thought to try 0.7 back when I was taking long paper notes daily, in the pre phone era.
- bee_rider 2y agoI keep mine in a little box. .3 2B!
- number6 2y agoHow old *are* you?!
- bee_rider 2y agoMid 30’s. It got comments, haha.
- mathieuh 2y agoSo what, we should just sit back and not try to improve things? I’ve never understood this perspective. It just seems like a way to try for people who have done well in the current system to justify to themselves the fact that in reality people in wealthy countries do still struggle with poverty. There are millions of people living hand-to-mouth. Not to mention the fact that the reason wealthy countries have got to this stage of development is often because they are exporting the negative externalities associated with this lifestyle to poor countries.
- tonygrue 2y agoFor me the point of thinking like this is to remain centered and not freak out. I see some people who feel like ‘everything is going downhill and this is the worse time ever’ and that’s just not very grounded. The benefit is that you can be optimistic that the hard work we’re putting in, more likely than not, might continue the progress. Even if there are blips along the way.
- DaoVeles 2y agoI was just talking about this today. There was a political comedy TV show here in Oz 'Shaun Micallefs : Mad as Hell'. I cannot remember the details exactly but the general idea was something like this. There was a dinner party with all these people talking about how bad they have things. One was complaining about how they had poor service at a restaurant. The next talked about the pain of the Covid lockdowns. The next spoke of rationing in the war time of the 1940's. The last one was a 10th century peasant that goes on about how "the skies turned dark and winter came and it never left. All the crops died and then the people. And then came the plagues..." It was done as a way of saying, yes, we have issues but put into context, we are still doing fairly well.
- DaoVeles 2y agoExactly. My (mild) fear it that we ignore those kinds of issues and they blow back on us to start doing real harm to the overall system. To ignore the externalities like running up a credit card. As to the second point, this is what empires do. They pump wealth away for their own gain until they are almost completely drained. And there still many countries that are empires in everything but name.
- jellicle 2y agoWhen you're an empire being supported on the labor of a couple billion people in other parts of the world, yes, life for you and yours can be pretty okay. Not as okay for the imperial periphery, the sacrifice zones, but they don't really count. > You can amass a closet full of outfits, in a variety of styles and colors, with no knowledge of the spinning machines, the dyeing vats, the automatic looms, the sewing machines, or the tremendously efficient factory system they are a part of—the system that has turned this kind of product from a luxury for the rich into a commodity available to the average worker. When I read things like this, I really understand how the lack of a liberal arts education has crippled a lot of people. I want to post that angry goose meme: "Who made the outfits, buddy? WHO MADE THE OUTFITS?"
- atleastoptimal 2y agoIndustrial revolution and automation still makes amenities far more accessible for all. The material conditions of the average factory worker in Thailand is still miles ahead of the condition of someone of that percentile of the worldwide socioeconomic strata in any other period of history.
- DaoVeles 2y agoIts complicated. If you are on the very lowest rung of the industrial structure, you are probably in worst conditions that working on the family farm with the local village. Things will look better monetarily, but the overall life quality will be diminished. There would be a point that as your wealth grows it does get better but that is depended on there being others to fill the lower rung to support that. You aren't wrong but there is also additional nuance. Clothes for everyone on the planet is just so simple nowadays due to massive excess for instance.
- DaoVeles 2y agoImperial wealth pumps, the drive engines of empire. There is a reason why the military is so heavily funded.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
- boredemployee 2y agoThis text only makes sense if you are in a privileged position. For the majority of the population in many countries, the world is not that wonderful.
- jstummbillig 2y agoIt's actually still is, comparatively to what was. I took that to be the point.
- quantified 2y agoThe Ambari wedding this year is a wonderful illustration of the range available.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- geodel 2y agoPreviously it used be to nasty, brutish and short. Dirty, difficult and dangerous seems little polite and gentler version of it.
- xk_id 2y agoEnduring the misery is not even the impressive thing; that’s just the default condition of every animal on earth. What is extraordinary is that, despite their misery, somehow enough humans have managed to contribute to the incremental creation culture.
- loasn 2y ago[flagged]