I don’t know what Machinaforce is talking about. Moving the furniture and rolling up and lugging outside all but the smallest rug is a huge pain in the ass and a hell of a lot more work that vacuuming it.
Still, I’d try to live a healthy lifestyle and not put off saving for retirement.
Meh. The same facility of argument upthread that warns against painting a rosy picture of any time period could equally be applied to the present. I very much don’t think that the combination of humans and environment was ever designed by mother nature, no matter the epoch, to make the average human subject miserable. Especially when the concept of misery itself changes. Not enough leeway is being made here for our brain’s adaptive capabilities (and relative pleasures). Are all animals, since their lives are “nasty shortish brute” and so forth, miserable? (I keep using the word miserable, but feel free to substitute whatever negative word you’d like. As another bit for thought, going back in time and telling some human ancestor we now spend several hours a day parked in front of static two-dimensional chunks of plastic that emit little dots of light might result in some, perhaps zen-like, guffaws of sad amusement.)
And given the absolutely fantastic technological leverage humans now enjoy today, is it not true that that leverage comes with a greater potential for planet-ending outcomes?Yes it is also written that Jesus came to restore all things.
Yes it is not true.
I was properly corrected for hyperbole when making a similar statement earlier.
Modern civilization ending? Sure greater potential. And no question that the Anthropocene is causing a major extinction event … could we even catch ourselves into that extinction net? Not impossible. But at least at this time we do not have the ability to destroy the planet and all life on it.
The hyperbole was unintentional. Call it human-species-ending if you like--at the very least in the sense of either directly extinguishing all human life (microbes etc. may still be around), or making it so rickety for humans to survive, that they die out. Public scientific figures such as Hawking have provided several unfortunate possibilities. No great stretch to come up with others. For anyone interested, here's a [list](http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8069533/end-of-the-world) from another source. For example, nuclear war followed by nuclear winter, an engineered supervirus, or, say, someone in future deciding to steer an asteroid into the earth. Technology gives us many good things, true, but the potential for smaller and smaller groups of careless or malicious actors to wipe us out isn't one of them.
They would likely revere you as some deity since much of modern life would be considered black magic to them. The fact that we trivialized food production while they exert such effort might boggle their minds. But I think that once the issue of food, shelter, water, and clothing are handled, we are faced with the greater question of meaning and whether life is worth continuing. Our ancestors were too focused on survival to ponder that thought, never questioning why they did what they did. The mere thought would drive them crazy, not that they’d likely understand.
Not to mention that’s a drastic underselling of TV. Might as well call books just staring at a piece of paper for hours
You can still choose to live like that. The fact nobody does is all the evidence you need. Try it. You may want to take an incremental approach, though. Start with giving up air-conditioning.
Maybe the internet of things, too.
Not to mention that in “nature” the average seems to be starvation or parasites and being eaten by other animals. But I guess every time has its problems. Thought when I comes to what we have today, our ancestors would think us gods in some manner.
Ha! Knew it. And no, in general, we are not faced with the question of whether life is worth continuing. This is a question some very small percentage of people are faced with on a serious basis.
Do you have any proof of this? Cite?
I can save you the trouble, because as with so many of your facts, you are once again quite wrong.
I would suggest that rather than continue to being factually wrong and then coming up with flawed conclusions from your facts, you might try learning first and then see if your conclusions change.
Proof of that would require mind reading powers, it would be just as fallacious to think that I need evidence to show it is t true. It’s something one can infer, especially given suicide rates in a time where life expectancy is at its highest. We are faced with the question of whether life is worth continuing but most don’t give it any serious thought. The narrative (as with our ancestors) is that it is and that’s that. The fact that Christians had to invent hell so people wouldn’t off themselves is some indication of that. Or the invention of eternal paradise after death. Only now that religion and spirituality seem to loosen their grip does it make on wonder whether life should continue.
But I was mostly responding to the comment that people in the past would think it sad we sit in front of tvs. Though if they think that it’s because they cannot fully grasp the magnitude of what such a device does. The same with books. If you think it’s staying at pieces of paper for hours on end, then it shows how little you know and understand. Anyone can make an activity seem sad by drastically watering does what it is.
Nope just staring at paper for hours. I mean reading. Believe it or not, there’s quite a bit written about many of the facts you routinely get wrong about early humans, medieval humans, etc.
Which means we aren’t actually faced with it?
I mean good grief man, give a little bit of thought to all the evidence around that your premise is wholly, 100% wrong. You may think this way. That’s quite sad, but the entirety of human history and human thought shows you that you’re quite wrong.
Anyway, I am once again done with one of your threads. It just goes round and round until one of us stops, I have the good sense for it to be me.
You keep stating evidence but have failed to provide any, it’s like those quacks telling you to “do you research”. Just saying I’m wrong doesn’t make me wrong, you have to actually give proof.
I still maintain we are faced with it, that fact that when the subject is brought up that people dismiss it is some indication of that.
Where is this, quite a bit? You keep saying it like it exists and yet don’t provide data for it. The idea that hell was created so people would not just off themselves to heaven is pretty well supported, in fact hell was created as a means of control and to capitalize on the fear of death. Otherwise no one would listen to religion.
If you’re just going to say “wrong” with no evidence then I’m going to have to write you off as wrong.
I’m done doing your research for you. I’ve provided plenty of citations to show you are wrong. You don’t acknowledge them and I’m fairly certain you don’t look at them. My evidence for this is that you keep making the same mistakes over and over.
Also, YOU are making the claim YOU’RE supposed to provide the proof not the other way around. So if you like, you can replace my previous reply with:
Cite?
What about the electric grid … that’s pretty cool …
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Yeesh … the OP is a little misguided … the commoners were pretty much illiterate and the aristocracy couldn’t be bothered to write about the lifestyle of those low-born … so most of what was written down in the middle ages was all about the wealthy … the low-born sure as hell didn’t live that way …
Just simply skipping mass on Sunday … on Monday your head came off and was nailed to the church’s fence as a warning to anyone else who thought they could skip mass … Vlad the Impaler (Count Dracula) carries the notoriety but even as late as the 18th Century there were still dozens of heads nailed to the gateway to London Bridge …
When’s the last time the Plague killed 1/3 the population of Europe?
The OP and his citations have never bucked firewood … now consider bucking a winter’s worth of firewood with a goddam handsaw …
Queen Mary II of England bore seventeen children … all of whom died in childhood … oh you bet, technology sucks … especially for the gravediggers …
The main downside of living in cities is burning fossil fuels to truck all the food in … then using the atmosphere as a sewer … that’ll come back and haunt us someday …
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, eyeglasses, a fresh water system, public health, and the electric grid what has modern civilization ever done for us?
(with further apologies to Monty Python)