Happier now or in the Middle Ages?

[SneakySecrets]

Compare your life to that of the median medieval peasant.

Would you pick your life or theirs?  Why?

[GAY]

I’d pick my current life because anesthesia.

[ungzilla]

if i have to see another geoff rowley part where he skates nothing but moats i am going to hurl

[EXTRA SPICY]

I’d pick my current life because anesthesia.

I’ve got no wisdom teeth and two metal implants holding limbs together permanently. Agreed. Now>then.


Although I’d be down suck grog and smoke ancient marijuana. Being cross faded 1,500 years ago would be sick.

[SneakySecrets]

Expand Quote

I’d pick my current life because anesthesia.

[close]

I’ve got no wisdom teeth and two metal implants holding limbs together permanently. Agreed. Now>then.


Although I’d be down suck grog and smoke ancient marijuana. Being cross faded 1,500 years ago would be sick.

When would you estimate we discovered marijuana?  Like your best guess?


Wish I had some right now.

[Mean salto]

How does it work tho? Am I still me so some 6 and a half foot tall white guy but in Australia or do I get warped to some place in Europe?

(Assuming Europe) Basically id have the same job but have to work like an extra 40 hours a week and be forced to go to church on my one day off.
No medicine or entertainment but the clothes look pretty cool

[TastyBurrito]

Happier now.

Skateboards weren’t invented back then.

[botefdunn]

How does it work tho? Am I still me so some 6 and a half foot tall white guy but in Australia or do I get warped to some place in Europe?

(Assuming Europe) Basically id have the same job but have to work like an extra 40 hours a week and be forced to go to church on my one day off.
No medicine or entertainment but the clothes look pretty cool

made me wonder about average midieval peasant work load. This article suggests about 20h/week of harder labour, but it only cites one source. No doubt the environment was cleaner back then, but teeth maybe not.

[j....soy.....]

I did some of my best skating in my 40's.......

[Weededed]

Happier now.

Skateboards weren’t invented back then.

[pugmaster]

Expand Quote

I’d pick my current life because anesthesia.

[close]

I’ve got no wisdom teeth and two metal implants holding limbs together permanently. Agreed. Now>then.


Although I’d be down suck grog and smoke ancient marijuana. Being cross faded 1,500 years ago would be sick.

[TheLurper]

Expand Quote

How does it work tho? Am I still me so some 6 and a half foot tall white guy but in Australia or do I get warped to some place in Europe?

(Assuming Europe) Basically id have the same job but have to work like an extra 40 hours a week and be forced to go to church on my one day off.
No medicine or entertainment but the clothes look pretty cool

[close]

made me wonder about average midieval peasant work load. This article suggests about 20h/week of harder labour, but it only cites one source. No doubt the environment was cleaner back then, but teeth maybe not.

Good point about cleaner environment, but I wonder if the global environment was cleaner and in better shape, but the local environment the peasants lived in was worse and less clean that our worlds (even accounting for all the plastic in our bodies today). I mean peasants were forced to deal with shit and piss in ways we can't imagine without a solid understanding of how illness came about via germs.

And, wasn't the standard peasant life 4 days of work for their feudal lord, then 2 days to sustain themselves, and finally one day of worshiping baby Jesus?


I'm probably happier now than I would have been then, but I do feel something went wrong and we aren't using all this technology in ways that could result in a nearly ideal life.

[Mean salto]

^my (limited) understanding was yes six days a week sun up till sun down working otherwise punishment and then Sunday is do NOT go to work and all around best behaviour otherwise punishment.
England also had some crazy mandatory extra arrow manufacturing and learning archery laws for a long while but not sure if that applied to proper shit covered parsnip pullers.

I'm also imagining living out in the country so I think I'm less worried about the shit and piss but there's a decent chance some kind of ruffians will just turn up and glaive my head off

[botefdunn]

apologies, forgot the link on the last one, here it is. Touches on the feudal and religious aspects you mentioned @Mean salto and @TheLurper

Although I love the comforts of electricity, I feel like you could sleep so good if it just didn't exist. Also the medieval night skies must have been something.

https://thehistoryace.com/the-amount-of-hours-medieval-peasants-worked-per-week/#:~:text=During%20the%20medieval%20era%20peasants%20would%20work%20an,the%20demands%20of%20the%20lord%20and%20the%20season.

[Mean salto]

apologies, forgot the link on the last one, here it is. Touches on the feudal and religious aspects you mentioned @Mean salto and @TheLurper

Although I love the comforts of electricity, I feel like you could sleep so good if it just didn't exist. Also the medieval night skies must have been something.

https://thehistoryace.com/the-amount-of-hours-medieval-peasants-worked-per-week/#:~:text=During%20the%20medieval%20era%20peasants%20would%20work%20an,the%20demands%20of%20the%20lord%20and%20the%20season.

It's interesting. I wonder if they mean significantly harder just compared to all non physical jobs of today or just because all the tools are shit and you have no water etc. you might just spend the day walking skins of water back and forth but ive done plenty of idiot labouring work so it's prob not too different and they'd have to still have a reasonable expectation of what a person can actually do.


Maybe the move would be to try to pass yourself off as some kind of traveling monk and just constantly be traveling town to town eating free soup. Altho you'd probably end up having to help someone who has the plague or something

[addie pray]

breh the middle ages lasted like a thousand years?! would you be happier under the ummayyad caliphate or 500 years later under the kievan rus? all of these groups had different social structures and coinage and stuff.

do you just mean "peasant/laborer roughly around the time of the english civil war"?

[SneakySecrets]

breh the middle ages lasted like a thousand years?! would you be happier under the ummayyad caliphate or 500 years later under the kievan rus? all of these groups had different social structures and coinage and stuff.

do you just mean "peasant/laborer roughly around the time of the english civil war"?

Haha, you’ve got a great point.  The “Middle Ages” could mean 10,000 different things, all of which are potentially radically different.

For the purpose of the thread, I just meant an un-plugged, feudal kind of life.  Whatever your brain conceptualizes as the mean experience of the peasant.  It’s an imaginative workout to think of how people (biologically identical to us (as is my understanding)) understood and interacted with the world ~1,500 years ago.

[skate_or_dingus]

 Yeah I'm down for wizards and dragons and shit

[manysnakes]

You are a serf. Bitch, you live in Alsace. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin' lord the grain. Your fucking children, you've had 15 children. You've never taken a bath. You've literally never. washed. your. penis. You've never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You've had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are child soldiers in the Duke's army.

Bitch, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the old age of 36. You fucking can't read. You don't know what TV is. If you were transported into today, you would be the worst gamer of all time. You don't know shit. You literally probably don't even know what the direction 'left' is. I'm sure some Medieval guy is gonna get mad at me for this, bitch I've been to the Renaissance Fair. I've eaten a large turkey wing, which the Juggalos call 'bitch beaters', which I think is problematic but a funny thing to call them.

Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get passed that. You gotta be unemotional. You can't sink into this hole. You live in the oubliette. Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker. You live in the HOLE. You're in the HOLE. You are a RAT. And the rat, when he's in the hole gets fucked. People only throw trash in the hole.

You need to eat a body. And you need to carry the plague. And you need to carry a plague around this whole world, that will change this whole fuckin world. And all your enemies will vomit black bile and will choke on blood and will grow boils and die. But only if you get together with your other RATS. And you come up with some kind of super plague, to fuckin end your enemies and...

End. This. Nightmare.

[JM]

You are a serf. Bitch, you live in Alsace. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin' lord the grain. Your fucking children, you've had 15 children. You've never taken a bath. You've literally never. washed. your. penis. You've never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You've had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are child soldiers in the Duke's army.

Bitch, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the old age of 36. You fucking can't read. You don't know what TV is. If you were transported into today, you would be the worst gamer of all time. You don't know shit. You literally probably don't even know what the direction 'left' is. I'm sure some Medieval guy is gonna get mad at me for this, bitch I've been to the Renaissance Fair. I've eaten a large turkey wing, which the Juggalos call 'bitch beaters', which I think is problematic but a funny thing to call them.

Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get passed that. You gotta be unemotional. You can't sink into this hole. You live in the oubliette. Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker. You live in the HOLE. You're in the HOLE. You are a RAT. And the rat, when he's in the hole gets fucked. People only throw trash in the hole.

You need to eat a body. And you need to carry the plague. And you need to carry a plague around this whole world, that will change this whole fuckin world. And all your enemies will vomit black bile and will choke on blood and will grow boils and die. But only if you get together with your other RATS. And you come up with some kind of super plague, to fuckin end your enemies and...

End. This. Nightmare.

/Thread

Is that how it’s used?

[Frank and Fred]

A more interesting question might be happier now or pre-civilization (before domestication/ agriculture/ religion, hierarchy/ mass society etc.) ?

The Middle Ages were probably among the darkest times for many. but there were certainly come blissed out nomadic Gatherer-Hunters in Northern Tanzania (and many many  other places where humans were not stupid enough to settle permanently) jamming with the universe in the most wonderful way.

As for post-civilization (ie the last 10,000 years- a mere blip in our existence), some people now say those of us privileged enough to live a certain lifestyle in certain countries lived 'peak civilization,' which was arguably from when the Berlin Wall went down until recently....

and we are now on the downward curve...

so hold that thought....

[kook1234]

VERY RARE

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2024/01/archaeologists-find-intact-medieval-gauntlet/150272

[L33Tg33k]

No I would not want to wipe my ass with my left hand and eat with my unwashed right.

[BartHarleyJarvis]

I got an ingrown toenail once which means I would be fucking dead in the middle ages. so I think now.

[Lenny the Fatface]

Hell the fuck no on the middle ages. Tons of people died back then because Europeans didn’t understand the health benefits of routine hygiene.

[Mean salto]

^Tons of Americans die right now because they don't maintain their hygiene


The boredom would be one of the hardest things. When did people start getting depressed? It's bad enough in modern times but you'd have to assume just knowing your life is wake up, walk to field, work all die, walk home, eat some water soup, pray and repeat knowing nothing good or interesting will ever happen to you would have to be pretty hard to deal with.

[botefdunn]

^Tons of Americans die right now because they don't maintain their hygiene


The boredom would be one of the hardest things. When did people start getting depressed? It's bad enough in modern times but you'd have to assume just knowing your life is wake up, walk to field, work all die, walk home, eat some water soup, pray and repeat knowing nothing good or interesting will ever happen to you would have to be pretty hard to deal with.

I've felt this way travelling in poor agrarian places, looking out a train window at lives that seem hopeless cause they have no options/mobility.  But I think modern mental health issues are very tied to alienation. In preindustrial society it seems like communities were very tight and people must have had pretty rich social lives. Working alongside your friends and neighbours, being involved with your family throughout your life, sharing meals and gossiping in the market, everyone going to the same occasional dance or fair... in some ways less depressing than chatting with people ill never meet across little screens.

[smellsdead]

i dont know, that one monty python movie was good

tough choice

[Lenny the Fatface]

^Tons of Americans die right now because they don't maintain their hygiene

Not even close. The black plague killed about 50 million people in the 1300’s, and it’s spread is mostly attributed to how filthy people and living conditions were in Europe at that time. Average European bathed around 3 times a year.

There’s some filthy fuckers in modern United States for sure, but the extra space makes it nowhere near as gnarly.

[Mean salto]

Expand Quote

^Tons of Americans die right now because they don't maintain their hygiene

[close]

Not even close. The black plague killed about 50 million people in the 1300’s, and it’s spread is mostly attributed to how filthy people and living conditions were in Europe at that time. Average European bathed around 3 times a year.

There’s some filthy fuckers in modern United States for sure, but the extra space makes it nowhere near as gnarly.

The plague went from Portugal to China and from up in Sweden down past Sudan in Africa. Billions of completely different people didn't all just decide to not wash anymore. Every other week they're digging up old bathhouses and shit.
It's just overpopulation always causes problems. Modern Paris, Japan and Korea would be considered as advanced as possible but they're all having massive bedbug outbreaks and shit. We were gross then we're still gross now.