321–330 of 419 posts
Read The Undefeated by George Paloczi-Horvath. He's a 20th century writer who lived through the tail end of the feudal system in Hungary. The lives of the peasants were not great. They were mal-nourished and lived at the whims of their lords.
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That's partly what I assume. I think our social side came from survival in harsh condition. Falsely comfy society remove the need to live together, while subjecting us to a strange chaos. Some war veteran said they preferred the battlefield because even with the threat of death, the life in those times were closer, more intense. Now that's an extreme case but it's telling. And even about art/leisure.. you don't need…
This debate -- noble, enlightened savages vs. modern culture -- comes up again and again on the internet. To me it seems to miss the point. Modern life is not something that was intentionally designed. We're talking about the emergent output of different complicated systems, with wonderful things and horrific things enabled by both. Undoubtedly we've sacrificed some of the best aspects of the past for dubious gains.…
Wouldn't this result in exactly the global culture? A compromise by taking the “best” aspects from everyone minimizing everyone's unhappiness from that?
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I believe we can to some extent have both: a culture that supports all people and also produces high end medical equipment. The point of mentioning other cultures is to point out that human nature allows it.
I'm willing to believe that we could continue to produce the equipment we do today. But what's the motivation to advance? Take programming: we could all easily cut down our work hours by just maintaining current systems, which do a huge amount already. There are artificial forces that make us continue to trade one-time innovations for the same living standards as yesterday. Why not automate food production etc, and s…
Similarly, the developers of Blender are able to get paid for their work, but it seems that they choose this particular task because it interests them. If they had all of their material needs met, they might take a break and work fewer hours but I’d bet they might still work on blender for fun.
That’s what I’m trying to do. I’m just obsessed with designing new robots because it’s fun. In the last three months I’ve created a four axis robot arm from scratch (each gearbox is custom designed and integrated with the 3D printed frame)[1]. Nobody is paying me. The only reason I do paid work is that I need money for survival. But I would still be working on robots if all my material needs were met by machines. And I’d also teach classes on how they work and how to design them, and I’d be in the shop making new designs because that’s already what I spend all my time on.
And we can automate food production! See my profile for the open source farming robot I am designing. And the robot arm I am working on as a personal project is something I hope I can use in a free food production system. You can make a super healthy vegetable and lentil curry for $2 per dish in raw cost. The machine that makes it can be the size of a van and it doesn’t need human workers. If a community owned such a machine they could all eat a really healthy diet for a few dollars a day.
[1] https://twitter.com/tlalexander/status/1453238105230675976?s...
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Before there were artificial lights and other things there really wasn’t much you could do when it was cold and dark. Factory workers at the end of the 19th century definitely had a horrible life. They had to fight for 6day weeks and often had to work away hours a day under very dangerous and unhealthy conditions.
"Artificial lights" were a thing as far as pre-recorded history (and for rural illiterate peasant activities, much of middle ages is essentially pre-recorded history relying on oral tradition, artifacts and e.g. 18th century documentation of old-at-the-time practices instead of contemporary writing) - especially in northern areas where during winter months you get sunlight for a quite limited time, if you look at the…
This feels off. Farming today is a seven day, every day work week. There is no day off with livestock, no matter what century, and what season. If the sun sets, or the weather is bad outside, there are plenty of work to be done indoors. I would presume it was even harder without all the automation and technology in the Middle Ages. Maybe they did not labour for the employer all the time, but all the 'free time' was s…
So I'm not sure your comparison holds, maybe a better analogy would be a hobby farm? Usually those involve people who have primary jobs and choose this as a lifestyle. My guess would the the farming hours in that context cannot be too many; it would interfere with their day jobs.
My father had a blast in a farm, because he is the boss and the manual work he has done is symbolic.
Swinging a machete (blade) under rain and sun for days on end is not fun, I can tell you from experience.
I only hear the opinion manual labor is "better" from some people who have never known any alternative, politicians who won't have to do any, or desk workers who can afford doing some manual "work" when feeling like it.
Any work you don't like will be tagged as bad, but I personally took the desk bad alternative over the manual labor alternative.
Manual labor is so bad that you have to import immigrants to do it. You could truly argue the wages are lower. I will elaborate realistic higher wages aren't enticing enough to get more nationals to embrace that work. That is happening in England right now, by the way.
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This debate -- noble, enlightened savages vs. modern culture -- comes up again and again on the internet. To me it seems to miss the point. Modern life is not something that was intentionally designed. We're talking about the emergent output of different complicated systems, with wonderful things and horrific things enabled by both. Undoubtedly we've sacrificed some of the best aspects of the past for dubious gains.…
> If we had drastically different systems and experiences, we could try and marry the best aspects from each. Wouldn't this result in exactly the global culture? A compromise by taking the “best” aspects from everyone minimizing everyone's unhappiness from that?
Yes-- that's exactly what we've done: mostly selecting for efficiency. And now we're so locked into a local optimum of efficiency, diversity in business culture and mainline economic practices is difficult.
> minimizing everyone's unhappiness from that?
While capital markets try to optimize return on investment, and happiness is one component of economic preference that drives ROI... they hardly try and optimize happiness, per se. They are also relatively short-sighted, don't foresee all consequences and externalities, and tend to fall into local rather than global optima.
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Thats too romantic - physical labour isnt funny when its repetetive and continuous, which most are. Also not using your head is frustrating / degenerative. What helps me most is keeping a balance, making mid day breaks for long runs outside or a nap does miracles. But I agree, it also needs mental relief to regenerate, but doing sports gives at least minimal breaks.
You're right, I think I need to be more specific, assembly line work in some factory might count as physical labor, and that might not be any better, I can't say as I've never had that job. I'm thinking more in terms of the article, construction work, farming, and the more pre-industrial kind of physical labor. For me specifically, it was construction work, bus boy, landscaping, janitorial work and military training.…
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>> Common people had almost no sports, no games (beyond precursors to Bocce or backgammon), no literature! >No literature, sure, because they were illiterate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_literature (I know you mentioned storytelling in passing, but that rather downplays it. Oral literature was a big deal.)
It has never occurred to me before your comment that literature could include oral stories. Thanks for adding that!
These were finally recorded in written form around the 6th century or so in much of Europe and Asia. Subsequent scholars (Idries Shaw who's 1970's World Tales is a collection of such stories being an exemplar) has found that the same stories occur again and again across cultures.
The etymologies of Zeus and Jupiter (*dyeu-peter- "Zeus Pater", literally Sky Father) are from Sanskrit, and similar / related names are shared and found across Eurasia.