Why? Because I like living in the modern world. (OK, make that the modern, developed Western world.) It’s not perfect, but it seems to suck less than all previous ages. There is nothing “romantic” about the good old days. It was mostly death and heartache and filth and ignorance.
- Up until, oh, about a good third of the way into the 20th century, there was a pretty sizeable chance that either the mother or her infant would die in childbirth. If the baby made it past obstacle #1, it had a good chance of dying of pretty banal things by today’s standards, like dysentery. Or cholera or yellow fever or rubella or you name it. Or getting polio. And if they made it past that, there was a good chance they’d never go past 1st grade and would spend their childhoods tilling fields and milking cows or putting their nimble little fingers to work on looms or in sawmills.
- I think the Internet and recorded music and the radio and movies and TV and all our fancy-schmancy dancing sounds and lights and other information that travels across various wires and mediums to our brains are just fantastic. You know how shows like I Love Lucy just aren’t all that hilarious by today’s standards, but they were huge hits back then? That’s because they were the only shows on TV, so there wasn’t much competition. So when you think about it, that’s why the Bible got so popular. It was pretty much the only book in town, b/c the monks were the only literate people, so they had a monopoly on the information. The Gutenberg press gave direct rise to the Protestant Reformation. Suddenly, printed Bibles made their way into people’s hands, they started reading them, and were like “whoa whoa whoa, *that’s* not in there!” So, more info = more freedom.
- Back to diseases. Today, we have toothpaste. Back then, you had pliers. The barber *doubled* as the dentist. Today, we have anesthesia. Back then, you had a stick to bite on (if you still had teeth). Today, we have sterile surgical instruments. Back then, you had hammers and chisels. Today, we have pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy. Back then, you had leeches and basins to catch the siphoned blood in.
- Mental health treatment? Not perfect, but at least I can just take pills and go on my way, as opposed to being tied to a wooden stake and either being burned, or having the townspeople standing on the shore to see whether I sank or floated, or having some priest trying to beat the demons out of me with a mace.
- Women’s rights? Sexual freedom? In a previous era I would already be lying under a pile of rocks in a public square, if I weren’t already dead from giving birth to a child. Better yet, a child that resulted from a rape, which wouldn’t be prosecuted because I’m a whore because I’m no longer a virgin, because duh, I had already had sex, because I had been raped! Better still, this guy would be my husband now, because I would *have* to marry him by law! Because it’s in the Bible! Don’t believe me? I’ll find the verse if you’re interested.
- OK, the whole plumbing/clean drinking water/sanitation thing. Back then? If you were lucky you lived in the clean country and got to piss and shit outside. If you were an urban dweller, you dumped your chamber pot out the window, onto the sidewalks, maybe onto people’s heads. And if you were on said sidewalk, you got to walk in it. Like Bourbon Street the day after Mardi Gras, times 10, day in, day out! While dodging plague-carrying rats the whole while! You know why they invented perfume in Paris? Because you had to soak a hanky with it and stick it over your nose just to walk around outdoors!
- Water? Ha, drink beer or wine or mead. Or die. Plumbing? The Romans mastered it. Too bad they drank out of lead pipes. And then along came Nero …
- Food? Like most people you may have been a farmer and did nothing but till and milk and scratch together your sustenance by the sweat of your brow, all day, every day, from before the crack of dawn. Now? We have a grocery store every half mile that contains more fresh, safe, delicious food than many third world villages may see in a month. And I’m grateful for it. I always get a rush every time I walk into a Publix or a Target or a Wal-Mart and see the vast array of choices, of any kind of food I could ever want, of ready-made clothes that I don’t have to weave myself, of vacuum cleaners and microwaves and computers and toys and movies and people so prosperous, by many many standards, that even in their lower middle class-ness, more of them than not are lugging around an extra 50 pounds. And, well, it kicks ass.
Epilogue
I think those who lived in the clean country, with clean air and water, and could live off the land, probably had it best of all those who lived “back then.” As far ago as, well, my grandfather, who was born in 1921. Of course, it still wasn’t all that great. Again, the whole previously mentioned lack of medicine stuff. That, and nothing much social going on but your cousins and church. (Of course someone is going to make a crack about the South still being like that … and you may not be far off, haha, though we *do* have cities here too.) My grandpa was so frustrated with being stuck on a farm that he lied about his age to join the army and go fight WWII.If you have the ability to live off the land, the bad economy won’t affect you a whit. Lose your job? What job? Your job is surviving. There is something to be said for the message of Hank Williams Jr. and his ballad of the country boy making his own way by hunting, fishing, and farming. The reason the “bad economy” is so bad is because we are all so vulnerable. If the jobs and the technology and the infrastructure and the electricity and the fuel that propels the machines were to be suddenly wiped away, most of us coddled Westerners would be in a world of hurt. We get our food from the grocery store and wouldn’t know how to grow it if, well, our lives depended on it. Many *would* survive the transition back to rural life/third world conditions, but many would perish under the weight of their own, well, wussiness.Which is why this coddled wuss is going to enjoy our marvelous modern world while it lasts, before the nukes/terrorists/global warming/rapture/armageddon blows it all to kingdom come.
