Quote Originally Posted by Tallmo View Post
GETTING-SO-MUCH-BETTER-ALL-THE-TIME

I am listening as I'm writing this post. Let's see what comes of it.

Ok, so it's obvious that life has become so much better in many ways if we look at health and material stuff.



Excuse me, but long-drop toilet is my favorite. I always use one if I am in the countryside without water and electricity. That's when I feel close to Mother Earth. There is something perverted with flush toilets.

Anyway, but life WAS simpler, more tranquility, more natural, social and spiritual. If you lived in a rural area in 1800 in Europe you probably lived in the same village where your ancestors had lived for centuries. Working with things that hadn't changed much. Imagine the connection to earth and nature that those people had. Imagine the local culture uninfected by state pedagogy. The village was a part of their psyche. Not just any place where you "happen to live". You knew everyone, you knew their background, and stories about what had happened in the village in the past. You knew your place and there was no existential worries on what to do with your life etc. Folk culture was still rich in 1800. Mythology, folk tales, lots of superstition (can be compared with art), dancing and singing. Traditional craftsmanship. All this as a living reality, not some museum stuff.

People in the past had a better connection to the symbolic / artistic side of life. That's the problem today, we have all the things we need but spiritually we are lacking. Modern life killed it.

Of course there were lots of hardships like the ones mentioned. But the spiritual side and naturalness of life was better in the past. At least in rural areas. Today the individual has a big responsibility to himself create the meaning in his life. But that's hard. And many people don't know how to do it. It's a burden.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Anyways, I think life and society rarely completely improves or degrades over time. We constantly gain and lose something as time passes by so society simply changes through the decades and centuries. Each generation having plusses and minuses compared to the preceding and succeeding generations.

Obviously, it is not completely equal in those plusses and minuses when you compare one time period to the other and some time periods are better than others. However, to say that life is completely improving or degrading is either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. Life and society is just constantly changing for the better and for the worse IMO.