Am I correct in understanding that the OP’s cite is the Unabomber? Oy…
I had intended to write a more detailed reply previously but I had to run. If I miss out when the drug store opens they sell out of Diet Pepsi and I become a very unhappy BeepKillBeep. 
The work day for the town laborer in the middle ages was the from sunrise to sunset. The bell would toll in the morning, and then toll at sunset. Then, yes, the laborer was free to pursue leisure activities. This was a direct descendant of the rural day and so pretty much how the rural farmer worked as well. The very idea of extra leisure time would have sounded very odd to these people. In Le Goff’s book below, he talks about how this was period where time was transitioning from the belonging to God to belonging to man as man started to schedule and regulate it. This lead directly into the period where man invented the clock and the transition was complete. In any case, you can probably see how the idea of wasting the time of God might be culturally taboo.
Also, some of these feasts days (holidays) were really market days. So the farmers would bring product to market and sell their excess and buy what they needed. Then they would celebrate at night. So it isn’t quite the same was as we think of a holiday today. Sure, you’re not toiling on the farm and so this probably felt like a “day off” but really, they were working.
[1] Le Goff, J. (1982). Time, work, and culture in the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press.
[2] Blainey, G. (2003). A short history of the world. Ivan R. Dee.
Well, in previous threads he cited Charles Manson. So… yeah… :rolleyes:
Yup…that’s why I said he was and is a nut. I don’t think that’s going to phase the OP, however. 
[QUOTE=kambuckta]
Says kambuckta, sitting on her comfy lounge in a heated room (that I didn’t need to find wood for), connected to the world via a TV AND a computer, and about to cook some pork for dinner on a GAS stove (and I didn’t need to hunt down the pig in the forest either). Bonus is that I didn’t need to bash a rug to smithereens either when I cleaned today
[/QUOTE]
And this underscores the irony of the OP…the OP is sitting in a home with electricity somewhere connected to a world wide internet where he can ask these sorts of questions to people all over the Earth while he pines for a simple and good, wholesome life like our ancestors lived in ye olden dayz, while using Teddy boy as his information source. He’s probably going to the fridge right now to make a sandwich and grab a cold soda so he can fortify himself to start replying back how we are all wrong.
The issue isn’t society or technology but our inability to adequately adapt to the environment they have left us in.
And be without rock music?! Nah, I’d rather stay complacent.
If modern civilization is a mistake, the OP should stop posting on the Internet right now.
Theodore Kaczynski was and is a very disturbed individual (this RadioLab is informative about what might have contributed to that state and worth a listen) but at least he was no dummy. FWIW.
Still the whole way of looking at the way humanity has developed as potentially “a mistake” is a bit naive as it implicitly suggests that there is some conscious decision that was made. It is much more like evolution than that. The cultural idea (“meme”) that works to help a group either produce more members (either by increased survival to next generations or by accreting other groups) or that by way of its advantages spreads between groups, is the more “fit” idea. If the idea has those advantages and a group chooses to not take the idea on while others do then the odds are that group will soon be vastly outnumbered and a culture very quickly will flirt with extinction.
Now “the selfish meme” framework still lacks the mathematical rigor of population genetics and I suspect even the best serious academicians could get bogged down fast as the cultural ideas also impact genetic evolution in complex nonlinear manners with memes able to act faster than genes do … but the fact remains that ignoring a meme that would give your group an advantage (or at least avoid a disadvantage) would be choice with consistently poor fitness results.
There was no option for humanity to not develop technologies.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Theodore Kaczynski was and is a very disturbed individual (this RadioLab is informative about what might have contributed to that state and worth a listen) but at least he was no dummy. FWIW.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, I agree…I said he was a nut, not stupid or dumb. I also said he was wrong, and I stick by that as well.
People can be really smart in some areas and complete dummies in other areas.
What we see as civilization in the West is the culmination of a long historical process. The historical era in which we live is the Era of Imperialism. I know, this makes no sense to most people, but basically industrial capitalism began to become finance capitalism in the latter part of the 19th/early 20th century. Finance capital became dominant, but finance is extractive, producing nothing. It differs fundamentally from profit, and in many ways resembles feudalism. It is decaying capitalism. The great crisis of 2008 has pretty much finished the system of capitalism. It cannot get its motor started again. Finance sucks all the energy out of the system. This is why the civilization appears to be on the skids. It was the same when feudalism was moribund before the capitalist revolution put an end to the rule of the aristocracy. So we limp along getting nowhere. Look at China. China calls its system “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”. It is roaring. No one can deny this. Even Trump sees it. We should learn from China.
I’ve looked at China. Serious question here…what do you think we should learn from them? From my perspective, China’s system sucks pretty hard. Their economy has been pretty flat (even if you go by the official CCP numbers, which are pretty much BS), their environmental damage is staggering, the levels of corruption are breath taking.
XT and John Mace - agreed … it was a more a thought in comparison to the last person of infamy Machinaforce was looking to for possible wisdom.
I’m still not comprehending why our op seems to preferentially look to deranged killers for intellectual insights.
I think everyone at every time has viewed where civilization is at that moment as “the culmination of a long historical process” … as the history of the world’s civilizations keep on limping along.
In any case China is most certainly part of modern civilization. Comparing and contrasting the last several decades to most recent years economic and well-being arcs of China and America, how the finance sector in America contrasts with the credit load as applied by Chinese central planners and the elite extremely wealthy owners of vast capital within China, what contributed to China’s rapid economic growth phase and why it has relatively sputtered, etc., could be an interesting discussion … but not much to do with a claim about how horrible modern life is in comparison with idyllic pasts and how not stopping the train (so to speak) at some other point of humanity’s path was a mistake.
Domestic radicalization?
That’s enough of the personal cracks, please.
Is it too stupid to qualify as civilization? LOL
Half-a-century after the Moon landing and we are supposed to get excited about useless variations in automobiles every year? With lower population and the elimination of consumerism it could be pretty nice, but we will probably have to have a serious crash for many people to see how ridiculous things are.
You mean like black Friday and Memorial day sales? I’d say we still do this.
OP, I invite you to follow your own advice and join an Amish convent, or an isolated village in Africa or the Amazon, or any number of other societies that don’t run off modern society. I personally wouldn’t. I like the knowledge that I’m not going to suffer and die from freakin’ Chagas Disease or some horribly unnecessary treatable disease like that. I like the knowledge that most of my children will survive to sexual maturity. I like being able to see - thanks, eyeglasses. I enjoy that, when I go to the bathroom, it’s clean, comfortable, doesn’t smell completely awful, and has implements available for wiping. I enjoy just about everything about indoor plumbing, honestly, and I like that I know that if I need a drink, it’s right nearby and probably not going to give me dysentery or cholera.
The advantages of modern civilization are so universal and so clear that we never even think about them.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, eyeglasses, a fresh water system, and public health, what has modern civilization ever done for us?
- with apologies to Monty Python