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So people had lower expectations and those were heavily enforced, fewer temptations to long for more, and their time and energy was used to survive.
I'll bet people who were physically exhausted living hand to mouth had less time to worry about whether they were depressed or not. Even if they decided they were depressed there wasn't much they could do about it...they had to keep on keeping on. They also probably didn't admit to or talk about their depression along the way. Appearing stoic and capable were virtues. How would we even know how depressed they might have been unless they left a journal or wrote a book about it?
Last edited by Parnassia; 01-06-2022 at 05:11 PM..
For example, say you have 10 grand cash. If this calculator is correct, that would mean in 1872, one would have around $439. Is one rich by standards of the past? https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inf...2&amount=10000
BUT then again, with that amount of money, how much personal energy would it take to live with the goods available back then...or would one need to hire a servant or two?
Still, if one did take a time machine back then and came back, come back with 439 silver dollars. As fine coins, one could be looking at around $26000.....at least.
In it, one of the characters in the future, a minor med tech, travels to the 20th century....and is easily qualified to be a doctor. Or how about seen The Time Tunnel, "The Revenge of Robin Hood" where one of the leads impresses the locals with his medical knowledge but yet to him, it is just simple battle field first aid.
Long story short of it all, what it was like in one era does not necessarily come across in another era.
Why, those at the start of the spice trade who saw the spice row in HEB would probably be like Lewis and Clark walking into a 70s air terminal.......flat on the ground in shock.
What do you feel are the root causes of this?.
I feel, for starters; most no longer have a sense of truly accomplishing anything meaningful.
We've become domesticated, and unchallenged; dead to our primordial senses.
For some, they need something more than self to live for; hence having children or becoming involved in religion.
These 2 things have been on the decline.
We are simply choking on our own success.
Farming provided food for explosive population growth. Farming has constantly improved and yields have never been higher. Farming is the most efficient it has ever been. That food supply supports many billions of people.
Astounding medical advancements have caused far more babies to live, allowing most people to live into their 40s if not 60s and up.
Ditto, technological advancement.
So there are just way too many of us. I an not calling for a die off, just noting that the very success of the human species has caused overcrowding, especially because most people like living near the coasts or near water. Living near some water source or another is pretty much a requirement. Many businesses need to be near a water source.
All of the above are large scale reasons. General reasons. More specifically, we have changed.
90% of Americans lived in farms before WWII, with much of the entire extended family living on and working the farm. Farms surrounded small towns. There was no privacy and no anonymity. Everybody knew everybody. Everybody kept tabs on everybody. Morals were higher, people were more religious, more strict, and bad behavior was stigmatized to the point that severe violators were ostracized. They were bannished from farm or town.
Today, we can hide behind our anonymity. We do lack a sense of purpose in our lives. Women are nurturing by nature. Women who remain single or never have children feel an instinctive lack of purpose whether or not they admit it or even recognize it. Sometimes you see women treat pets like children. This is must misplaced nurturing. The need to nurture is there, and without children to nurture they transpost this need onto pets.
Men now can have all the sex they want outside of marriage. Who needs to get married?
Women now can out earn men. What woman needs a husband for sustenance?
We are consigned to a rat race where we get deep in debt in order to consume, and then spin our wheels trying to pay off our soaring debts. This is by design. Everything we are taught from kindergarten through college is to turn us into economic machinery for GDP, to consume and borrow and work to pay off our debts. That is why America has the highest productivity of any nation.
It is insane and distracts us from a more basic, grounded, more spiritual life of people and God, rather than leisure and materialism.
One of the lines in that song is "go and spend some more when you get bored.". In relation to this thread, maybe that is part of it, that when survival isn't as difficult as it was in the past, there is more time to think of other things, like boredom, like unfullfillment.
I thought of another thing that's missing - a sense of personal power, a sense that we can influence what happens around us.
Rural culture provided that in a larger way and for more people than it did for our city cousins.
The more global our perspective the more helpless we feel.
Except if you were a farmer or lived off the land -- which more people did decades or hundreds of years ago -- and your crop got wiped out one year by Mother Nature I bet you might feel pretty helpless.
THAT is actually a reminder that we do can NOT influence what happens around us.
Except if you were a farmer or lived off the land -- which more people did decades or hundreds of years ago -- and your crop got wiped out one year by Mother Nature I bet you might feel pretty helpless.
THAT is actually a reminder that we do can NOT influence what happens around us.
Not to get too political, but conservative mantra tends to be that we are in full control of our destinies--or maybe god is, while liberal mantra tends to be that things aren't always in our control and therefore we need to help one another when we're down. I just bring this up to examine some of the different mindsets in comparison to one another. Personally, I think there is wisdom from both mindsets. I mean, at the end of the day no one is going to advocate for you as strongly as you are. So you gotta start there, with taking care of yourself. However, I'm not naive to think for one second that getting help from others, pooling together resources, doesn't significantly advance your chances at success. The saying is that it takes a village. When you look at communities that are tightly woven and strong, it becomes very apparent why they are also quite successful. They look out for one another, they help one another, they provide opportunities to one another. In other words, no one goes it alone.
Except if you were a farmer or lived off the land -- which more people did decades or hundreds of years ago -- and your crop got wiped out one year by Mother Nature I bet you might feel pretty helpless.
THAT is actually a reminder that we do can NOT influence what happens around us.
On the balancing side when that happened to someone the rest of the community pitched in and did what it could to help them out for the year. And when it happened to you you had that safety net.
That's hands-on welfare that probably works better than the way our government does it now. And it gave people a sense of satisfaction that their efforts were not being wasted but were used constructively.
I'll concede none of us have control of the weather. Good point.
Goods don't make people happy, lack of goods can make people unhappy if it contrasts with what they need or feel they need to live. That's an important distinction.
What makes people actually happy is a sense of accomplishment and approval (from themselves and others). The ability to lead a life that brings you that has little to do with your access to consumer goods or high quality food and drink. Someone with an existence devoid of meaning and direction will be depressed whether he eats a heel of bread each day or some top notch meals from a top of the line restaurant.
On the balancing side when that happened to someone the rest of the community pitched in and did what it could to help them out for the year. And when it happened to you you had that safety net.
That's hands-on welfare that probably works better than the way our government does it now. And it gave people a sense of satisfaction that their efforts were not being wasted but were used constructively.
I'll concede none of us have control of the weather. Good point.
Perhaps you have a point there, about the efficacy of the hands-on welfare over governmental welfare. But the thing is is that one is guaranteed (to some extent) while the other is not. It's the same reason we trust banks with holding on to our money. FDIC insures up to $250,000 of my cash assets if the bank gets robbed. My neighbors don't though.
On the flipside of the coin, I suppose we do see a lot more GoFundMe pages out there that are quite inspiring about communal support. But again, if I ended up becoming deathly ill or lost my job, I prefer knowing that I have some guarantee to get me through until I can get back on my feet. That's where insurance or social safety nets play a bigger role IMO.
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