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The past was not that cute

(juliawise.net)
430 points mhb | 8 comments | 06 Dec 25 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.009s | source | bottom
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venturecruelty ◴[07 Dec 25 00:04 UTC] No.46177867[source]▶
No, the past was not "cute", but it also wasn't entirely a Dickensian disaster, either. There are parts about the past we can miss: shared public spaces, authenticity, quality goods and services, ritual, deeper connectedness to each other. Why does it have to be this dichotomy? Why can't we have both now? In fact, we ought to have both. It's not like it's impossible. We just have to user the power we have to build that world. It won't be easy, but it isn't a choice between "Little House on the Prairie" and "Bladerunner".
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1. nradov ◴[07 Dec 25 04:45 UTC] No.46179209[source]▶
Most of the goods and services in the past were total crap, unless you were wealthy enough to afford the really good stuff. People have distorted memories of what things used to be like. Or they're fooled by survivorship bias: only the best old stuff is still around while everything else is in a landfill.
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2. djtango ◴[07 Dec 25 06:45 UTC] No.46179707[source]▶
Au contraire, when my mother was growing up most ingredients were organic and free range by default and all your meals were hand made and free of synthetic additives.

There are charts which show the cratering of nutritional content of fresh produce over time so maybe not all goods and services of the past were total crap.

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3. SpicyLemonZest ◴[07 Dec 25 17:52 UTC] No.46183550[source]▶
What people mean when they say farming in the past was “organic” is that crops would be grown in actual, non-metaphorical crap. You would collect a big pile of it, let it sit there stinking up the area, and then when it dried and decomposed enough you would spread an even layer of crap across your fields.
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4. techblueberry ◴[07 Dec 25 20:57 UTC] No.46185087{3}[source]▶
Are you trying to imply this is bad? This is what I romanticize modern organic farming to be?
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5. SpicyLemonZest ◴[08 Dec 25 01:06 UTC] No.46187170{4}[source]▶
I am. I think that organic farming is based around the same kind of fake nostalgia discussed upthread, and there's really no coherent reason to avoid chemical fertilizer. Manure contributes nothing better other than a pile of contaminants and pathogens. (I'm more sympathetic to people who want to avoid herbicides, even if the best evidence is that they're safe.)

Even if you like modern organic farming, it's carefully regulated to control the risks and environmental costs of using crap. The US National Organic Program (https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/5006.pdf), for example, requires 90-120 days between the application of raw manure and harvest; only properly pasteurized manure can be used in the months before harvest.

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6. djtango ◴[08 Dec 25 06:44 UTC] No.46189163{5}[source]▶
So when I was a chemist at university I saw one of those silly chain mail claims that cigarettes have polonium 210 in them. I thought "that's dumb" let me fact check that; it turns out that phosphates enrich the soil with radionuclides and radon in the soil enters plants and decays to Po210.

So actually yes I am generally in favour of archaic methods for making food because our biochemistry and the environment has had a lot longer to find equilibrium with non-synthetic solutions.

That isn't to say that we should throw away science and give up 200 years of progress on hygiene, but I also don't believe that packing chickens into their own feces then pumping them with antibiotics and washing them in chlorine is all that great either.

Maybe this solves for food scarcity and I'm all for that being available to other people but I'm perfectly willing to pay a premium on alternatives methods that eschew the use of synthetic products in my food chain.

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7. SpicyLemonZest ◴[08 Dec 25 18:26 UTC] No.46195815{6}[source]▶
Again, I’m sympathetic to some arguments against unnecessary synthetic products in the food chain. I’m just not sure how you get to the intuition that packing chickens into feces is bad but packing plants into feces is perfectly OK.
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8. djtango ◴[09 Dec 25 03:37 UTC] No.46200986{7}[source]▶
Because they're not equivalent, in one system there are inbuilt mechanisms to recycle and incorporate feces into nutrients. In the other there is no such system and instead the build up of urea(?) gets so severe it ends up burning off the feet of the chickens who have no means of vacating from their filth.