At a guess they could at least imagine the concept of their kids not dieing before they were 5, or themselves not dieing horribly of some plague, disease, war, famine or a simple cut. I’m guessing they could imagine what it would be like to have access to the ability to travel faster than a horse (and not have to deal with the horseshit) and to be able to access more knowledge as well. Depending on when we are talking about they could probably imagine, at least, better sanitation and plumbing as well. No, they probably couldn’t conceive of having all the worlds music at their finger tips or the dubious pleasures of watching Survivor or Dancing with the Stars, or being able to surf to their little, um, hearts content all the porn they could ever want. They probably couldn’t imagine having their homes properly insulated, heated in the winter and cooled in the summer (instead of vice versa), or simply going to a store and picking up food stuffs from literally all over the world.
Still, I think that if you listed some of the benefits they COULD conceive of they would be at least mildly envious of even the poor (in the wealthier countries of the world today).
It’s all in how one defines ‘richer’…and who and when in the past we are talking about for ‘rich person’.
I think that, on a medical basis alone, the poor can reasonably be argued to be much better off than the rich of the past. Even if you’re living without medical insurance, and you can’t afford to go to see a doctor, and you don’t have access to the expensive experimental procedures that we consider “modern medicine”, you still have the following going for you.
[ul][li]Clean food and drinking water[/li][li]Herd immunity.[/li][li]Public Health resources that control the spread of epidemic disease.[/li][li]Knowledge of basic health-maintaining procedures, like hand washing and covering your nose and mouth when you sneeze[/li][li]Cheap and effective medication. Forget liver transplants and neurosurgery; aspirin and antibiotics save millions more lives than those ever will.[/li][li]Emergency medical care (even if you can’t pay for it)[/li][li]Toothbrushes[/li][/ul]
How much would you want to be “rich” if you’ve got bad chances of making it past 40, and that there’s a very decent chance that you’ll spend a significant part of your short life in pain or sick? Forget the wenches and the power and the slaves and the iPods and the travel and the social mobility. Can’t have any of that if you’re dead.
I doubt very much that many of them could imagine any such thing. They could imagine children not dying, but that would go against god’s obvious will. They saw the past and the future as pretty much the same, at least until Jesus returned. Check out how Chaucer had the ancient Greeks in armor jousting. They might think of fairy stories about seven league boots, but not as something they would wear. The idea of progress is fairly new.
I have personal experience that imagining something doesn’t make you yearn for it. When I saw 2001, when it opened, I thought how cool it would be to bring it home and see it on my own TV, and not have to wait years for it to show up on Movie of the Week. Not having the capability that we have today did not make me feel either poor or underprivileged, any more than not having the stuff I mentioned that we’ll have in the future does. I’m far more future-looking than average, and even I can stand not being able to beam up to an orbiting hotel. I know that’s trivial, and though we are pretty good on children not dying, we still have our real tragedies, like people dying young, people dying in unnecessary accidents, and losing our minds as we grow older. Death used to take the babies of both the rich and the poor. Alzheimer’s takes the minds of both the rich and the poor today. We cope.
I think the biggest difference between now and then is access to sanitation, running water, medical care and food. I wouldn’t trade places with a rich figure from the past to give up those things that I have with my modest salary I make right now, especially since people back in the day only lived on average from 40-60 years, depending on which era you’re talking about.
You are, IMHO, equating ‘rich person of the past’ as being ‘European, post-Christian nobleman’. Even then, I don’t think that it’s accurate to paint with such a broad brush wrt the whole ‘gods obvious will’ thing…there were a lot of Christian nobles who only paid lip service to the concept.
People back then had the same basic hardware as we do today…and I can imagine, say, living forever…even though our medical technology hasn’t caught up with the fantasy. Nobles, royalty, commons, whatever, they all went to the ‘doctor’ (or whatever) when they were sick or hurt…they didn’t simply sit around and pray that they would get well (not exclusively). By going to the doctor or whatever they had at least a concept that they COULD get well from being sick or hurt…so, it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that THEY could imagine better medicine (or magic) that COULD make them live longer, or have their kids survive their childhoods at higher rates.
But you are projecting here…because, you see, I DO feel unprivileged that I may not live to see real space exploration, trips to the moon or Mars…and if someone offered to me that I could trade with some future person things that they think are trivial (like, say, living 500 years, living on the Moon or Mars, etc etc) but I’d be ‘poor’, I’d take the offer in a New York minute.
We always assume people live in cities. There are plenty of places in America without indoor plumbing, running water ,decent schools and access to health care. There are some very poor people in America.
They are commonly studied by anthropologists and sociologists. The researches report back saying the Bushmen are happy. They don’t have schools or health care.
I always thought that the poor life expectancies of yesteryear were due to atrocious infant mortality rates and soldiering in the light of poor combat medicine which had a large downward pressure on the average age of a person (which isn’t really helpful in analyzing the sociological question posed by this thread).
If you made it into your twenties, you were looking at fairly comparable life expectancies (obviously not the same, but, come on, how useful are you when you pass 75?), I thought?
This is fairly true. Though diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s were pretty rare since usually people who survived to adulthood did still die younger than most in modern day.
The more important thing, though, is that even if you survive to be a wealthy, adult male, most of your children are going to die.* There’s sort of nothing worse in the world than that, by all accounts. Does that really balance having a buxom maid?
Alright, technically only 30% before the age of 5.
Nick | Kids Shows | Full Episodes & Video Clips Here’s a kids show with 3 stories on the poor in America.
On the other hand do you think the rich and successful in America are happy. Talk to your local bartender or coke dealer and get back to me. We are not at peace with the world or our place in it.
We chase ghosts.
I believe the philosophical/sociological questions of social equality and fairness presume that you made it into adulthood, though. The point (to me) is to ask if the material riches we cloak ourselves in today truly mean that the poorest person is “better off” than the richest person of centuries past in a life-enjoyment sense.
This kind of presumes that you weren’t a dead infant.
I mean if it wasn’t then the entire point of the comparison, and the questioning of peoples conclusions on that question, is moot - from both sides.
You’re missing my point. Whether you would have lived to adulthood or not, you’re going to have to watch at least one and probably two of your children die before the age of 5. I’d be willing to bet that each and every parent would choose anything else to not have to go through that.
Most people get married. Most people have children. If you want to limit our discussion to single wealthy men, then that’s not really representative.
People procreated constantly because they knew alot of the kids wouldn’t survive. It’s horrible, yes, but they’ll move on and deal as with any grieving.
I don’t think attempting to qualify different types of grieving and loss is really all that helpful, anyways… Is watching a child starve or emotionally suffer because of poverty a “lesser” type of pain for a parent?
Quantifying the suckiness of life is the point of this thread. And I’ll note that there’s a difference between hunger and starvation. Modern, impoverished Americans are generally overweight, and at any rate don’t starve to death barring extreme circumstances.
Well would you choose to have your child miss one meal a week living in a small apartment, but have TV and internet. Or would you choose to watch your child die while living in a mansion, and nothing to do all day but hunt foxes and beat your wife?
Even those on Social Security won’t be getting a raise next year. Not everyone getting SS is poor, but some of them have to work to stretch a dime. And I know that some of them go without medications they need.
We have fellow Dopers who go without medical help and medications that are needed.
Actually I’m not. The average poor American has a TV, he has internet, he has a car, he has a microwave, he has a washing machine and dryer, he’s likely got a bigger living space than most Japanese people of average income, and he’s overweight.
He’ll miss a meal a week, bounce checks often, and worry about his future, but otherwise he’s doing quite well compared to even the wealthy of the past.
You’re wrong; at least about the hunting. Historically, hunting was always one of the chief joys of the rich. You can still see today tomb paintings of Egyptian nobles enjoying themselves on the hunt, for example. Check out this page for images of European nobles, women in particular, hunting.
WRT wife-beating, I’d say that the wealthy practiced it. It’s ludicrous to assume they had servants do it for them. The social gulf was so wide between servants and masters that it would have been perceived as an incredible obscenity for one of the servant class to lay hands on one of the aristocracy, even at the direction of another aristocrat.
Read up on duelling sometime. One of the interesting insights it will give you is just how enormous the gulf was between the gentry and the rabble.
