Really enjoyed the look back into tue 1700’s. I think a similar useful endeavor would be to do the same exercise with a much more recent date, like the 50s or 60s.
It seems very few people genuinely think life in 1770 was better than today; though to your point they likely are not aware how much worse.
However, it seems many people do legitimately think the golden age of relative modernity was their parents/grandparents time.
Every time I read an interesting statistic (usually economic) about that era and foist it on my friends (who are not necessarily the “the past was better” types) they are shocked.
Things like how much of their income families spent on food, what percent of households still lacked either regular electricity or running water, what percent of families had to be dual income (that last one reallly shocks people).
I’ve seen a few of these over the years, but I’d love a piece from Derek that explores this general idea that life is worse now than it was before, which is pervasive on both the left and right but in different flavors. It does feel like things are backsliding at the moment with Trump, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, etc., and I know climate change looms large above the discussion, but the framing doesn’t sit right with me overall, especially when you start to encounter statistics and stories about the past like what you mentioned.
Hannah Ritchie’s book “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” had a profound effect on me in this regard. It’s quite staggering to see how much things have improved in a number of arenas over the past 50-100-200 years. It also activates fury that we aren’t moving faster to continue the trends, but I find it helpful to sit with the numbers nonetheless.
I absolutely loved this piece! There's something about it that feels totally unique. I can't imagine reading it in a magazine or a newspaper (for a number of a reasons). It's delightful, informative, surprising and fascinating! Thank you for an awesome read.
“Many of my favorite history books describe in detail what life was like several hundred years ago”
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Robert Caro’s LBJ biographies are his detailed descriptions of life in the Texas Hill Country before electricity reached the area in the 1940s.
Even in the 20th century, life was so incredible hard for so many people.
“Sometimes these women told me something that was so sad I never forgot it. I heard it many times, but I’ll never forget the first woman who said it to me. She was a very old woman who lived on a very remote and isolated ranch–I had to drive hours just to get out there–up in the Hill Country near Burnet. She said, “Do you see how round-shouldered I am?” Well, indeed, I had noticed, without really seeing the significance, that many of these women, who were in their sixties or seventies, were much more stooped and bent than women, even elderly women, in New York. And she said: “I’m round-shouldered from hauling the water. I was round-shouldered like this well before my time, when I was still a young woman. My back got bent from hauling the water, and it got bent while I was still young.” Another woman said to me, “You know, I swore I would never be bent like my mother, and then I got married, and the first time I had to do the wash I knew I was going to look exactly like her by the time I was middle-aged.”
Nice work, a note on killing marine mammals for their oil. Whales and Northern elephant seals were decimated by the harvesting of their “oil.” By the early 1900’s there were about 20 Northern elephant seals left. Two things happened to prevent their extinction, the discovery of oil in the 1800’s and the prohibition by the Mexican government of hunting them. History is teaching me that technology and innovation are complicated issues .
This is a thoughtful concept, and for me, timely. I am in my sixth year managing aggressive prostate cancer. I have just completed a second read of THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES. I urge everyone diagnosed with cancer to read the book. I think it helps put the disease in perspective. Cancer is a complex amalgamation of cellular changes that almost everyone will experience at some time during their life span especially in our old age. Humans are learning how to cope with the knowledge that their own cells are mutating and some mutations may cause their demise. Oncologists are slowly discovering how to postpone cellular mutations that are initially defined as uncontrollable and raging cancers. It is an agonizingly slow process for those diagnosed with any cancer. But, progress is being made everyday. The research docs are finding interventions to arrest the development of mysterious cellular mutations one by one.
Really enjoyed the look back into tue 1700’s. I think a similar useful endeavor would be to do the same exercise with a much more recent date, like the 50s or 60s.
It seems very few people genuinely think life in 1770 was better than today; though to your point they likely are not aware how much worse.
However, it seems many people do legitimately think the golden age of relative modernity was their parents/grandparents time.
Every time I read an interesting statistic (usually economic) about that era and foist it on my friends (who are not necessarily the “the past was better” types) they are shocked.
Things like how much of their income families spent on food, what percent of households still lacked either regular electricity or running water, what percent of families had to be dual income (that last one reallly shocks people).
I’ve seen a few of these over the years, but I’d love a piece from Derek that explores this general idea that life is worse now than it was before, which is pervasive on both the left and right but in different flavors. It does feel like things are backsliding at the moment with Trump, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, etc., and I know climate change looms large above the discussion, but the framing doesn’t sit right with me overall, especially when you start to encounter statistics and stories about the past like what you mentioned.
Hannah Ritchie’s book “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” had a profound effect on me in this regard. It’s quite staggering to see how much things have improved in a number of arenas over the past 50-100-200 years. It also activates fury that we aren’t moving faster to continue the trends, but I find it helpful to sit with the numbers nonetheless.
I absolutely loved this piece! There's something about it that feels totally unique. I can't imagine reading it in a magazine or a newspaper (for a number of a reasons). It's delightful, informative, surprising and fascinating! Thank you for an awesome read.
“Many of my favorite history books describe in detail what life was like several hundred years ago”
Perhaps the most memorable aspect of Robert Caro’s LBJ biographies are his detailed descriptions of life in the Texas Hill Country before electricity reached the area in the 1940s.
Even in the 20th century, life was so incredible hard for so many people.
“Sometimes these women told me something that was so sad I never forgot it. I heard it many times, but I’ll never forget the first woman who said it to me. She was a very old woman who lived on a very remote and isolated ranch–I had to drive hours just to get out there–up in the Hill Country near Burnet. She said, “Do you see how round-shouldered I am?” Well, indeed, I had noticed, without really seeing the significance, that many of these women, who were in their sixties or seventies, were much more stooped and bent than women, even elderly women, in New York. And she said: “I’m round-shouldered from hauling the water. I was round-shouldered like this well before my time, when I was still a young woman. My back got bent from hauling the water, and it got bent while I was still young.” Another woman said to me, “You know, I swore I would never be bent like my mother, and then I got married, and the first time I had to do the wash I knew I was going to look exactly like her by the time I was middle-aged.”
Nice work, a note on killing marine mammals for their oil. Whales and Northern elephant seals were decimated by the harvesting of their “oil.” By the early 1900’s there were about 20 Northern elephant seals left. Two things happened to prevent their extinction, the discovery of oil in the 1800’s and the prohibition by the Mexican government of hunting them. History is teaching me that technology and innovation are complicated issues .
Hello Derek,
This is a thoughtful concept, and for me, timely. I am in my sixth year managing aggressive prostate cancer. I have just completed a second read of THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES. I urge everyone diagnosed with cancer to read the book. I think it helps put the disease in perspective. Cancer is a complex amalgamation of cellular changes that almost everyone will experience at some time during their life span especially in our old age. Humans are learning how to cope with the knowledge that their own cells are mutating and some mutations may cause their demise. Oncologists are slowly discovering how to postpone cellular mutations that are initially defined as uncontrollable and raging cancers. It is an agonizingly slow process for those diagnosed with any cancer. But, progress is being made everyday. The research docs are finding interventions to arrest the development of mysterious cellular mutations one by one.
Great piece! Are you already familiar with the work of Dr. Thomas Seyfried at Boston College? https://tinyurl.com/seyfried-bc or Sam Apple's book, Ravenous, about the Warburg effect? https://tinyurl.com/otto-warburg
nope i'll check it out!
Wow. I used an AI tool to create those links and didn't test them before inserting them - that's embarrassing. Apologies. Here are complete links:
Dr. Seyfried:https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/morrissey/departments/biology/people/faculty-directory/thomas-seyfried.html
Ravenous by Sam Apple: https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/06/04/ravenous-otto-warburg-sam-apple/