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The past was not that cute

(juliawise.net)
430 points mhb | 4 comments | 06 Dec 25 21:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.022s | source
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MarkusWandel ◴[07 Dec 25 17:01 UTC] No.46183130[source]▶
The present isn't all that cute either. But if from the view of 100 years in the future, all you saw was the idealized lives of everyone as posted on social media, you'd think it was a lost, happy time too. That's how nostalgia works. You preserve the good stuff, you let the boring and crappy stuff be forgotten. At least relatively.
replies(1): >>46183382 #
woopwoop ◴[07 Dec 25 17:30 UTC] No.46183382[source]▶
If the Canterbury Tales had been actually representative of the time in which they were written, it would not have been the Knight's Tale, the Miller's Tale, the Reeve's Tale, etc. It would have been the Subsistence Farmer's Tale, the Subsistence Farmer's Tale, the Subsistence Farmer's Tale, etc.
replies(1): >>46187453 #
1. nephihaha ◴[08 Dec 25 01:58 UTC] No.46187453[source]▶
The Canterbury Tales were trying to show the viewpoints of people from a wide variety of social backgrounds.
replies(1): >>46188640 #
2. woopwoop ◴[08 Dec 25 05:16 UTC] No.46188640[source]▶
But in this world the distribution of social backgrounds in the population had very low entropy. Over 90% of people were just working the land.
replies(1): >>46190746 #
3. nephihaha ◴[08 Dec 25 10:37 UTC] No.46190746[source]▶
If Chaucer had just had subsistence farmer after subsistence farmer telling their tales it would be very boring. Even in such a society, there were a number of different roles at the bottom of it. Some people were shepherds or drovers rather than just scraping the soil, others were producing cloth and clothing, others were fishermen, others were midwives and so on. All these were useful at the time and used by peasants.
replies(1): >>46192598 #
4. woopwoop ◴[08 Dec 25 14:28 UTC] No.46192598{3}[source]▶
Yes, Malthusian society was very boring, that's my point.