[Spooky23]

Speak for yourself. My ancestors pre-industrial revolution were half starved tenant farmers making a subsistence living on too small plots of farmland in colonized Ireland, subject to random slaughter when the English changed their plans.

Now, our extended family is prosperous in the US, Australia and Ireland. We’re taller, healthier and mostly in professional or skilled trade jobs.

The past is often seen through a sepia tinted idealized slant. The past was full of suffering and brutality. Even warfare was just as brutal - in ancient times, Caesar slaughtered 1-2% of the global population in Gaul. In the 17th century, marauding armies picked regions cleaned and left thousands to starve.

[deeptechdreamer]

War, disease, famine were the norm for eras past. For those who lived during those times, I reckon their level of perceived suffering was no more than ours today. Humans are tragically skilled at adapting to new standards and shifting the threshold of struggle. People today get frustrated over a delayed plane departure likely just as much as people in the past were over a storm delaying their caravan by a few days.

As much of a proponent of technology as I am, I often reflect on whether we are truly bending the arc of suffering in a positive direction, or if it has remained far more constant than we’d like to believe.

[Spooky23]

When the English army or paramilitary militia came to burn the ancestors out of house and home to make room for settlers, I doubt their level of suffering was “adjusted”.

If they were lucky, they starved in the woods, hiding like animals.

[Iulioh]

Everyone is unsatisfied with what they have but some people are more right than others in the complaints they make.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>too small plots of farmland

Small plots are _still_ a problem for most people . 'We' sort off worked around the small plots problem by having the industrial revolution come along and then made jobs available for those who had only small plots.

Hypothetically, if every human had an equal part of earth, relatively fewer would have been in the pathetic state that you mentioned in the per-industrial era, and even less so in the post-industrialization era.