[null_object]

> full of pedantic tripe like that.

Ah here was me thinking this was an uncontroversial and enjoyable discussion on HN.

Anyways. Once again, just to underline what I wrote before - my comment wasn’t supposed to suggest that there was a golden age of Elysian harmony in the pastoral landscape of Europe, somehow superior to the ‘terrible’ existence we have now, with our hospitals, antibiotics, electronic gadgets, space travel etc.

Over the last few years there’ve been quite a few studies linked on HN that have begun to give a nuanced image of life in the ‘Dark Ages’ - albeit one that was ravaged by conflict and disease.

I thought these interiors gave another dimension to this new perspective. That’s all my post was about.

[germinalphrase]

Perhaps we should all be required to live for some period of time in the cold, hungry, dark pre-modern world such that we can return to modernity and be appropriately enthused.

[pessimizer]

Maybe we should examine why we think that the past was darker and colder than the present.

[bjelkeman-again]

For me it has been enough visiting subsistence farmers. I really don’t want to live like that, and have spent a decade trying to help at some useful scale.

[_a_a_a_]

I consider that a damn good suggestion