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I think we all agreed it means the 90s.
I’m getting old and my hearing isn’t what it used to be…
did you say 80’s?
In the 80s there still was communism where I lived.
So yes.
GOD I MISS BEING INFESTED WITH ECTOPARASITES AT EVERY CLASS OF SOCIETY
I WISH I COULD HAVE LICE AGAIN
Being either cold or sweating 24/7 unless you won the geography lottery
Persia out there inventing windcatchers and icehouses tbf
Persian luxury tech OP, please nerf
True. There were a lot of construction practices that were much better suited to their environments than what we have now as well. But as someone who lives in the US southeast… yeah I wouldn’t have wanted to be here.
I wish I let a new religion control my once incredible society and drive it into the ground!
Oh, wait, that’s current Persia.
Persia’s successes include a significant period under Islam.
When you don’t live in constant AC you can tolerate a surprisingly wide range of temps. Houses were also built to have better airflow and adaptability (removable shutters, awnings, textiles, isolated room heating, etc…). There was also more emphasis on personal temperature regulation: layering, hats, airy/sun blocking robes, heated stones, hot water containers, etc…
Outside of extreme weather events, people were probably just as comfortable but with more inconvenience.
My dude 90F+ with 100% humidity suuuuuucks even if you’ve spent your whole life in it
True, but if it was a truly excruciating habitat humans weren’t likely to live there or would have an adapted lifestyle. For example your community is only active around dawn/dusk or travels to better climates in certain seasons or is restricted to coastal villages.
Climate control has convinced us it’s totally normal to build homes in hell-scapes where humans have no business living. Like Death Valley CA or anywhere in Ohio.
But the open steppe… the great khan at my head… freeing the people from their shitty leaders…
Are you saying it’s all just shitty pastrırma and arak to drink, as I ride until my ass falls off and I have to sleep in a freezing yurt?
So I imagine myself at the future factory in karma heaven trying to decide what I get to be and when.
Humans are interesting, they experience much over a short time, and deeply. Early humans have a visceral and satisfying life, hunting gathering and reproducing. Late humans, which is most of them, have safe stable lives with infinite opportunities around infinite stars.
Middle humans struggle. They multiply and have disease. They reach resource limits and have war. They are a brutal combination of technology and animal tendency which wipes out other humans and predators.
And their triumphs are glorious. From steam to electricity to transistors to space flight in a few generations. They take poetry and teach machines to sing. They make their universe larger by finding how much space is between atoms. They smash the atoms and fuse them together again on the way to their future.
I make my choice. Right there. Right at the middle of the change point. That’s when, that’s where.
Hello friends. Im here for the positive change. Im struggling, its what we do. Enjoy
If you could go back to any point in time, when would it be?
My first question is always “can I be a man?”
I think it backwards time travel is on the table then getting whoever is sending you back to assist you with transitioning to a dude before leaving shouldn’t be a huge deal.
Every time period in history including the one we’re in now is only ever good for a very small segment of the human population.
In ancient times it was a very small group of very privileged people … but in terms of percentage of the overall human population, I don’t think the percentage has changed, just the quantity of people.
About 10% of the human population have enough wealth and privilege to be very comfortable and say things like ‘I wish for the good old days’ … and 90% have some small benefits to their quality of life but absolutely do not wish for the good old days because they were much worse than they are today.
It’s always been like that and it’s still like that … most of us online making these comments just never notice because we are part of the 10% of the world’s population that actually have a bit of a good life. And if you think your life is not that great, try living the lives of the rest of the 90% of the world that have less than you.
It depends on how far back you go. In the Roman Empire they had a GINI wealth index of almost 1. Meaning only around 1000 people in the whole empire had 99% of the wealth.
You had the slaves which didn’t have any rights and made up a large portion of the early empire, freemen which got grain subsidies and basic assistance which was still not enough to feed the family, plebs that had a job which didn’t qualify them for basic assistance but still barely surviving, the top 10% that were just a tad more than surviving, the 1% which could afford a “middle class” lifestyle and rich senators. On the top if it was the emperor that owned something like 90% of everything.
Middle ages until early modern had serfs be around 90%, not too shabby since they got some land to do with as they please but they were overworked and taxed whether or not they made money.
2025 is pretty nice in Europe since the median wage affords you a middle class life with luxuries, shelter and food security but 1950s US after WW2 looked pretty good IMO. Work as a waiter, buy a house in 5 years and feed the family? That’s something almost nobody can do today right out of high school.
So financially in history it’s been shit, it wasn’t good for the top 10% either way back before modern times and lavish lifestyle was never the norm at any point. I still think that with better wealth redistribution, taxation and building a crap ton of housing could make 2025 people way better off than almost all periods in history.
I grew up listening to both sides of my grandparents’ stories about the old days (which they were fond of, but did not characterize as good).
Having families who remembered the struggle really helped put my own life in perspective. Being called ‘okay for a foreigner’ despite being born and raised in the USA, or packing up and moving away from your lifelong home and all your family and friends to escape creditors, or having your dad steal a goat so the family could eat for a while, or having 12 people living in a two-room house without running water…
As shitty as my life in a leaky apartment with a negligent landlord and a precarious financial situation is, I always try to keep in mind that it could be much fucking worse.
My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and they thrived there most of the time. But they also reminded us that their lives were very precarious. Mom had an uncle that died as a child because he ate the wrong plant. Dad had a relative die of infection from cutting their hand with an axe. Both of them remember a period in the 1950s when they were children when a famine occurred in the wilderness when animals literally disappeared everywhere - it’s a natural phenomenon where animal populations rise and fall over periods of years or decades. The animals in the forest just disappear, birds migrate elsewhere and even fish stocks deplete. It’s not so much from overhunting, it’s just a cyclical thing that happens due to weather, environment, disease or other factors. When animals grow scarce in the wild due to natural cycles, people just starve. Dad had stories of seeing people boil hide moccasins to make a soup just to eat anything. Women became so frail they couldn’t produce breast milk anymore so they resorted to spoon feeding babies fish broth.
So they were both always quick to mind me and my siblings … life is good today, no matter how bad you think it might be.
Where did they grow up?
History books are racism all the way down. Every time period. What was happening in that time period? Conflict with foreigners.
That is an incredibly biased and unhinged take on history.
