Sorry, arthritis and [in my case] femoral acetabular impingements don’t work that way. Actually many joint problems are worsened by sitting on floors and the ground - damp cold just sinks into the joint and stiffens it, making it purgatorial. I stopped floor sitting several years before my joints got bad enough to need a cane to aid me in moving.
And FWIW, I am actually still flexible enough to get into a half lotus, popping joints, locking joints and all. I just can not get down onto the floor or get up afterwards. One of my main ways of spending time is sitting on my bed in a half lotus working on my laptop on a hospital table.
Well, I’m open to being corrected. Do you not wear shoes indoors, so to not track outside dirt inside? Do the bathrooms have slippers, so to not track bathroom dirt to the rest of the home? Are floors wiped with a damp cloth daily? Because that is what many Koreans do (or at least the ones I know).
Having grown up in the USA with a Korean best friend, I can guarantee that the Korean families definition of a “clean” floor, far exceeded that of even the most OCD American household.
The tiled ones are washed daily, but not with a wet cloth on your knees: with a fregona, or mop, a wet-cloth-on-a-stick. Wood floors should not get water on them frequently; they mostly get brushed or vacuumed. And how would you be tracking “bathroom dirt” to the rest of the home? It’s tiled and gets washed almost as often as the also-tiled kitchen. I even find it strange when Americans talk about “washing the shower” - I don’t need to wash the shower because I leave it clean when I shower!
At Mom’s (tiled except for the living room and two of the bedrooms), we wear houseshoes (zapatillas). These are soft-soled and intended to be worn exclusively in the house. While she doesn’t keep houseshoes in a closet at the entrancehall (many other people do, but she just doesn’t have a convenient closet), she of course has a “shoe-cleaning rug” outside her door, which is very rough and must be used to “brush” your soles before you enter the home. And the home is a flat, so by the time you reach it you’ve already brushed your shoes on two other similar rugs and walked over several yards of tiled, washed-daily floors.
In my house: three shoe-cleaning rugs at the building’s entrance before you even set foot on the stairs; another one in front of my flat; most of my flat has wood floors and if I’m shoed in the house it’s with houseshoes, although I’m more likely to wear socks or go barefoot.
Both of us have guest houseshoes, as do most of the people I know.
I’d always heard it was because of rodents as well. It was common in the past to have infestations of pests. See the Nutcracker Suite for an example of a story that takes it for granted that even a very fancy upper-class home in the old days would be infested with mice.
A lot of cultures will have raised beds that allow for airflow in hot weather- like the Indian charpoy, the West African stick bed or hammocks.
Other cultures aim to retain heat. The Chinese kang bed is elevated to allow for a clever heating system that allows heat generated from cooking to heat the bed. The kang, FWIW, also serves as a sitting and dining area- truly the center of household activities. During the cold winters, it may be the only truly comfortable part of the house. Some European countries have a tradition of fully-enclosed, cabinet style beds.
But plenty of people have no real need for raised beds, and are happy on mats (which, when placed on deep, clean gravel, can be quite comfortable) or futons. I think it’s really just a matter of cultural preference- is the bed going to be just for sleeping, or do people perform daily activities on it? Does it need to be portable? How many people share a sleeping space?
I couldn’t help myself.