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I think the article and the book tend to forget the terrible living conditions in cities back then, and instead psychologize them. More than half of people in
by culebron21 1y ago
I think the article and the book tend to forget the terrible living conditions in cities back then, and instead psychologize them.
More than half of people in big American cities lived overcrowded -- that is, >2 people in a room, INCLUDING KITCHENS! Many rented just a bed for half a day! They slept, and the other half the other person, who worked in night shift, slept on it.
In big cities, the traffic in the streets, with horse carriages riding on cobble stone, and cars, started at 6:00 and lasted till midnight. Steam locomotives made a lot of noise and smoke. That's cortisol, lower immunity, more other consequences.
And bear in mind, not everyone had electricity, not to speak of central heating. You had lots of chimneys everywhere. Not everyone had sewer, tap water and so on. I guess, a good deal of these people migrated to cities from more quiet places, and since there was no notion of harmful environment.
We tend to be surprised why modernism got so much traction, and even the best architects hated cities (e.g. Frank Lloyd Wright, who wrote something like "a city plan is a fibrosis"), but the reasons were everywhere, real and brutal.
So I'm pretty sure the reason for people being nervous, is quite physical, not "people were scared", as you may conclude from the article (although this is not explicitly stated).
[EDIT] Forgot about the social environment. When you move to a big city as an adult, without the college/university to give you social fabric, you're quite lonely. And in big cities this fabric was getting thinner with urbanization. And you're short on money, can afford only a bed, and count every cent. I think it's a more serious reason to get neurotic than times changing too rapidly.
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago> Many rented just a bed for half a day! They slept, and the other half the other person, who worked in night shift, slept on it. This is not unheard of for south Asian immigrants in European cities, which typically do hard, low paid work (car cleaners, gig economy delivery "partners" etc). All that for what ? So people can order take away in Berlin from a place that's 10 minutes away from them by bike, because they clubbed too hard last night. And the profit finds its way to America (doordash owns Wolt).
- culebron21 1y agoYes, I forgot to add this. I saw some shocking examples from Honk Kong, I think, where immigrants rent just a bed-cell.
- leosanchez 1y ago> All that for what ? So people can order take away in Berlin from a place that's 10 minutes away from them by bike, because they clubbed too hard last night. And the profit finds its way to America (doordash owns Wolt). But at least people are getting paid right? The alternative is people staying in their hometown and not making any money.
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoI'm not so sure about that. Accepting the existence of such working conditions for marginal (if not questionable) benefits lowers the working conditions for everyone, and in a system with social benefits & free healthcare it could arguably be net negative in total. Regarding unemployment in people's hometowns, unfortunately this is not a problem that can be solved with shitty jobs. Even if xxx people find a shitty job, there will be 100*xxx people left over.
- salawat 1y agoEveryone talks about unemployment when what we should be talking about is the inability to get seed capital or expertise to start a business, and given you actually get one started the casting of value moats by hyperscaled firms that bring the taint of diversified, hyper-optimization, and consequent elevation of the barriers to entry for everyone else. We all want to talk the investor/capitalist game, but nobody wants to recognize the fact the world we're in Washington built on much greater levels of competition, less consolidation, and more fiscal risk/insecurity. .arguably, in capitalism, it seems to me that the velocity of money is most important, and we've got massive amounts of it bottlenecked at the top of the pyramid instead of at the bottom where the actual organic distributed optimizers are.
- sevenseacat 1y ago
- somenameforme 1y agoWe were also completely coked out of our mind. An issue oddly ignored by the article given they literally mentioned Coca Cola and so are presumably aware of its history. It wasn't until 1903 that Coca Cola removed cocaine from its recipe, but its use and abuse was absolutely widespread everywhere. People were using it recreationally, people no less than Thomas Edison remarked that it (in Vin Mariani [1]) "helped him stay awake." Popes were using it, generals were using, factor owners were pumping their laborers with it to maximize productivity, and much more. It wasn't restricted until 1914 and then defacto banned in 1922. That's already going to increase anxiety dramatically amongst users, let alone the rest of society walking around in extremely crowded cities where a sizable chunk of the population was completely coked out of their minds at any given moment. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vin_Mariani
- tim333 1y agoI always wondered why WW1 started. Maybe they were coked up?
- gattilorenz 1y agoWW1 started (among other things) because the "superpowers" in Europe had been arming each other for quite a while in fear of aggression from the other superpowers (not completely unreasonable, given the wars of the previous century). This, in turn, forced the other superpowers to invest more in armaments and army. To top it off, they made treaties of alliance/military intervention (the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente). The assassination of the archduke was like flipping a light switch in a house saturated with gas. Austria declares war to Serbia, which is defended by Russia, so Germany has to declare war to Russia; Germany expects France to join Russia so they declare war to France, but their battle plans to conquer France require passing through Belgium. The UK needs Belgium to remain neutral, so they declare war to Germany... and so on. Once the wheels are in motion, and everyone is ready for war, war just happens - whether coke is there or not.
- tim333 1y ago
- LAC-Tech 1y agoAnd bear in mind, not everyone had electricity, not to speak of central heating. You had lots of chimneys everywhere. LMAO is this most houses where I live in New Zealand. Smoke coming out of chimneys for people to keep warm, often burning coal. They have electricity of course but it's too expensive to heat their houses.
- freedomben 1y agoIn remote Alaska it's the same way (though more commonly with wood than coal). When the temperature gets low enough, the smoke doesn't rise either, so air quality in villages (and even cities like Fairbanks sometimes) can get pretty terrible waiting for a storm to come flush it away.
- Arn_Thor 1y agoIt’s a matter of degree. It all adds up. Surely you’ve heard of the great smog in London? That’s an extreme example but all major cities had appalling air pollution. Bad air alone killed untold numbers of people every year.
- LAC-Tech 1y agoChristchurch has smog every winter. But yeah, just pointing out how backward my country is. Maybe we'll reach 1940s US smog levels eventually.