"But I read a book written by one of the few people who were privileged enough to read and write, and things didn't seem so bad!"
Literally me, fr fr
This is a real issue though. A lot of the writings on the actual lives of random people are from the perspective of "look what these weird foreigners do, instead of being normal like us". And that's not the most objective source.
This is what I dislike about most historical dramas. They focus almost entirely on the pampered (thought no doubt dramatic) lives of the rich and privileged, and lettered, ignoring the great majority of humanity that 1) were engaged every day with the drama of survival, 2) did all of the labour that allowed for those frilly few to write their letters all day.
EDIT: I write from the comfort of my home office on break at my WFH job... >_>
"You can't be angry at the people causing untold suffering, because actual everything's bad and that's just the way it is.
You can be angry, but being angry at things out of your control is not good for you.
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.
Ursula K. LeGuin
There's little that's legitimately out of your control. Of course, I don't mean 1 person can topple Capitalism or anything, but 1 person can set up a union, join a protest, or set up a co-operative farm, educate others, or make meaningful grassroots change.
1 person can make a big difference in the lives of the people around them.
I don't think that was the point of the post.
It was more "Never fall for a 'things were good back then' narrative because actually shit sucked even more in the past"
aright cool nothing matters
Back in my day we worked 28 hours a day and didnt complain!!
(They put cocaine in coca cola and lead in the water)
…and could afford houses and food
But now I sound like I’m wearing the same rose-tinted glasses as the folks I was making fun of
... as long as they were white.
The Amazon reviews are really bad. If anyone is looking for a book with this same idea, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker is really great.
Permanently Deleted
It's not plagiarism if you plagiarize yourself! 😎👉👉
(Disclaimer: this is a joke, pls don't tell hbomberguy I said the p word) (that was also a joke, no offense hburgerguy)
The other comments are quite sarcastic and I want to give you a bit of a less antagonizing response why Steven Pinker is kind of a hack.
He more or less "cooked the books" when it comes to explaining how much good capitalism helped the people around the world by doing very selective data analysis. In the end he really advocates for being complacent with the status quo and basically argues for the argument of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (which has been disproven a lot by anthropologists.
These videos are quite long but go into more detail:
And if you prefer to read: I'd recommend The Dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Thanks for the information, I had no idea that Pinker had such an anti-following. I've not read or even thought about him in years. I just vaguely remembered that that book did a lot to make me more thankful for the current state of things compared to how they used to be. I appreciate you letting me know that he is such a questionable fellow.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=fo2gwS4VpHc
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=zwXV71hF7cs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yeah. Enjoy the meme. Don't buy the book.
Boy I sure want to read a right crank known for railing against political correctness, identity politics, and gender equality, explain to me that actually everything is good and shouldn't change.
Love me some Steven Pinker. Should probably read one of his books. Does he do the reading of the audio books, does anyone know? He has lovely diction.
I didn't know Amazon review score of books can get so low
In the past everything was better, even the future.
Karl Valentin
There's a reason most historical fiction focuses on nobles and land-owners. You can tell interesting stories about them, and modern people can sort-of relate to their lifestyles. If you told stories about the common people, modern people wouldn't be able to focus on the story, and would get distracted by how brutal and awful their day-to-day lives were.
Now fairy tales, that's where the brutality comes in. Ever heard of "The Death of the Little Hen" collected by the Grimm brothers? The last line is, I kid you not, "and then everyone was dead". Gotta get those kiddos used to pandemics and family sized tombstones.
Not really
You tell stories of people who could have it recorded and preserved
Remember, they used to prescribe real drugs instead of placebo bullshit. Those were the good old days.
Yeah nothing wrong with a bit of prescription mercury to clear up the old syphilis
To be fair, if you take a sufficiently high dose of mercury, syphillis will no longer be your biggest problem.
That’s the spirit! You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
I’m reading The Way We Never Were and it’s amazing how much we get wrong about the good old days.
Ah the good ole days when children and infants were dying left and right, a splinter could mean a slow painful death by infection, and the local doctor prescribes drilling a hole in your head to release bad spirits
Don't forget the "bloodletting". Got to get that bad blood out along with the head spirits.
Some people today practice self-trepanation
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times."
You stupid monkey!
"He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink."
Nope. Just the worst.
It was the best of times
I'm not into the fantasy genre.
And yet it ends talking about going to a far better place than any before, so it must not have been all that 'best' after all.
Hawaii was great until the haoles fucked it up. So was a lot of pre colombian america. And parts of pre colonization africa.
Just because Europe was shit doesn't mean it was shit everywhere. Europe is pretty unique in that it has been total warring itself for over 2000 years straight. The streak ended in world war 2, but goes back to the bronze age.
Could those places I listed be improved by modern medicine and trains? Sure. Doesnt mean they were terrible.
Those areas are also wildly romanticized. Let's not forget that one of the ways that some Europeans got established was by trading guns to indigenous people so they could go off and kill other indigenous people for their land.
The idea that we were warmongers was made up to justify stealing our land. Who was it that welcomed the colonists with open arms until they spat in our ancestor's faces? Our stories talk about war parties going out and coming back home with zero blood shed. What conflicts we did have were extremely low intensity, we didn't have the numbers for the horrific wars like the ones waged against us by the colonists.
Many of the tribes were nomadic, we didn't have oil reserves to war over. We had hunting grounds and fishing spots and art, and just about everyone agreed that these things weren't worth dying for.
And yet, life is called a gift.
"Gift" is a German word that means poison
And Norwegian!
Yeah how’s that return policy on white elephants going
Life seems like the result of such an unlikely complex Rube Goldberg machine where everything was just right to let life start then survive for a very long time. Plus we are made of various elements that had to be created in some of the universe’s biggest explosions.
It seems then that life should be something to be cherished while we briefly have it. I try to do just that.
…then we get to watch people around the world working hard to make life worse for those around them.
Curses can be gifts
I like my entertainment violent and educational.
Was just having a conversation recently on whether things have always been this close to a complete existential crisis for humans or is the current global situation unique. Most people felt like things have always been bad but I still feel like, with everything going on in terms of global conflicts and climate change, things are uniquely, complexly and extremely bad on a global scale compared to the past.
Ugh. I totally get it. And I feel like my older family felt the same way about the Cold War. Like can you imagine sitting through Bay of Pigs listening for potential incoming annihilation?
things are uniquely, complexly and extremely bad on a global scale compared to the past
I’m with you. But also, has every generation said exactly this?
Yeah, I imagine a lot of people alive during the world wars thought things were going to collapse any second as well. But I just feel the added background anxiety of the status quo causing the Earth to heat up catastrophically but slow enough to be ignored adds a novel layer of messed up to everything.
Ancient Horrors Beyond Comprehension
