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My grandmother was born in 1900 and every time I asked about her childhood she would say nothing and when pressed she would cry. Her parents died on consumption

by e40 1y ago

My grandmother was born in 1900 and every time I asked about her childhood she would say nothing and when pressed she would cry. Her parents died on consumption in the first decade of the new millennium. I think suffering was so much more common back then.

alabastervlog 1y ago
The time before antibiotics and vaccines is alien to modern people. Basically everyone suffered trauma we'd call fairly extreme, these days. The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. The TV show Dickinson has fun with this, juxtaposing its modern-sounding and often flippant dialog with things like whole families you knew dying of disease being a pretty common piece of news to receive.
- vik0 1y ago
  >The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. Do you think people just dropped dead? Humans are not that fragile. The reason the average Roman age was relatively low is because of high mortality at childbirth. If you got to 20, chances were in your favor that you'd get to at least 60. This applies to non-roman, pre-vaccine societies too. >Basically everyone suffered trauma we'd call fairly extreme, these days. Eh, maybe. But at the same time, I don't agree that they would be "traumatized." Heck, I bet if you could place a modern human who has lived his entire life in a developed Western country even a couple of thousand years back, I think he'd get pretty acquainted with that way of life in no time. If there's one thing we're good at it's probably adapting to our environment. Life is a collection of habits. If you're used to death and destruction (though I am not saying that death and destruction were as common as you make it out to be), it won't phase you. Montaigne talks about this when comparing European society and moral norms to New World (Indian) societies and moral norms. >The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. No data proving this to be true, whatsoever. Plus it's a vast overgeneralization. More violent where? In what today we would call France? China? Canada? Turkey? Chad? Argentina? Was there even a single event nearly as violent as World War 2 pre-vaccines, which happened 80 years ago? Your postulation is on very shaky legs, at best.
  - derektank 1y ago
    >Do you think people just dropped dead? No, they intentionally killed each other. If I recall correctly from the last time I read Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature the murder rate in pre-Industrialized Northern Europe is estimated to be between 50 and 500 per 100K which is anywhere from 10 to 100x as violent as the global rate today. And that's not including inter state or inter tribal warfare.
    - tim333 1y ago
      Indeed. Also an eye opening little bit of history is "The Forgotten Prehistoric War That Killed 95% Of All Men" https://youtu.be/NoFQjAHsWE8 https://youtu.be/NoFQjAHsWE8
      - vik0 1y ago
        https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf
    - vik0 1y ago
      >I read Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature I don't think you realize just how funny of a source that is I will just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... and this: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pd... And the following is from Pinker himself(https://web.archive.org/web/20201026010157/https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201026010157/https://stevenpin...): "The upshot is that each of the following two assertions can be true: (1) the chances of war are lower than they were before, and (2) the damage caused by the most severe imaginable war is greater than it was before. That makes it meaningless—an issue of semantics—to speculate about whether the world is “safer” overall; in one sense it may be safer, in another sense, less safe. That is exactly why Better Angels does not claim, contra Taleb, that the world is “safer” across the board"
  - Spooky23 1y ago
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Century, I think
- e40 1y ago
  Yep, thanks. Too late to edit.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
readthenotes1 1y ago
My family has a tape recording made in the 1960s of an old country doctor. Asked the most difficult period was, he answered without hesitation the Spanish Flu, not any of the mass grave yellow fever epidemics. "I would see an old friend in town in the morning, be asked to go check on him in the afternoon, and find the whole family dead".

by e40 1y ago

alabastervlog 1y ago

The time before antibiotics and vaccines is alien to modern people. Basically everyone suffered trauma we'd call fairly extreme, these days. The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. The TV show Dickinson has fun with this, juxtaposing its modern-sounding and often flippant dialog with things like whole families you knew dying of disease being a pretty common piece of news to receive.

vik0 1y ago
>The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. Do you think people just dropped dead? Humans are not that fragile. The reason the average Roman age was relatively low is because of high mortality at childbirth. If you got to 20, chances were in your favor that you'd get to at least 60. This applies to non-roman, pre-vaccine societies too. >Basically everyone suffered trauma we'd call fairly extreme, these days. Eh, maybe. But at the same time, I don't agree that they would be "traumatized." Heck, I bet if you could place a modern human who has lived his entire life in a developed Western country even a couple of thousand years back, I think he'd get pretty acquainted with that way of life in no time. If there's one thing we're good at it's probably adapting to our environment. Life is a collection of habits. If you're used to death and destruction (though I am not saying that death and destruction were as common as you make it out to be), it won't phase you. Montaigne talks about this when comparing European society and moral norms to New World (Indian) societies and moral norms. >The world also tended to be far more violent in the past than it is now. No data proving this to be true, whatsoever. Plus it's a vast overgeneralization. More violent where? In what today we would call France? China? Canada? Turkey? Chad? Argentina? Was there even a single event nearly as violent as World War 2 pre-vaccines, which happened 80 years ago? Your postulation is on very shaky legs, at best.
- derektank 1y ago
  >Do you think people just dropped dead? No, they intentionally killed each other. If I recall correctly from the last time I read Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature the murder rate in pre-Industrialized Northern Europe is estimated to be between 50 and 500 per 100K which is anywhere from 10 to 100x as violent as the global rate today. And that's not including inter state or inter tribal warfare.
  - tim333 1y ago
    Indeed. Also an eye opening little bit of history is "The Forgotten Prehistoric War That Killed 95% Of All Men" https://youtu.be/NoFQjAHsWE8 https://youtu.be/NoFQjAHsWE8
    - vik0 1y ago
      https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf
  - vik0 1y ago
    >I read Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature I don't think you realize just how funny of a source that is I will just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... and this: https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pdf https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pd... And the following is from Pinker himself(https://web.archive.org/web/20201026010157/https://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201026010157/https://stevenpin...): "The upshot is that each of the following two assertions can be true: (1) the chances of war are lower than they were before, and (2) the damage caused by the most severe imaginable war is greater than it was before. That makes it meaningless—an issue of semantics—to speculate about whether the world is “safer” overall; in one sense it may be safer, in another sense, less safe. That is exactly why Better Angels does not claim, contra Taleb, that the world is “safer” across the board"
- Spooky23 1y ago

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

Century, I think

e40 1y ago
Yep, thanks. Too late to edit.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

readthenotes1 1y ago

My family has a tape recording made in the 1960s of an old country doctor. Asked the most difficult period was, he answered without hesitation the Spanish Flu, not any of the mass grave yellow fever epidemics. "I would see an old friend in town in the morning, be asked to go check on him in the afternoon, and find the whole family dead".