[carlosjobim]

In almost every place in the world, at almost any point in history, the propaganda will always tell you that you've never had it better than you have it now.

But once you start digging and thinking, you start realizing that it's not true.

I understand that most hackers reading the above sentence are already raging, but were you actually there to know that things were worse in the past, or has it been hammered so strongly into you that you're now greatly offended at suggestions that it isn't true?

[bluGill]

There are a lot of factors. Some things are worse than the past. However other things are better. There is no universal correct weighting of these different factors.

In general I think that nobody would be willing to go far back in time. You don't need YouTube, but would you want to live without it? How about electric lights? Safe drinking water? Flush toilets?

[carlosjobim]

It depends on what your situation would be and where, when you go back in time. Most people in the world today live in absolute misery, so that's not much argument. The enormous abundance of game animals in the past is just one factor which is mostly forgotten today.

In a world without clocks, no electric lights are needed. The safest and highest quality drinking water comes from springs and streams, still today. Flush toilets aren't needed if you live rurally. And so on.

Not to forget, that the less you are used to comforts, the more physically and mentally fit you will be as a person.

[bluGill]

Game animals were rarely that in abundance. It happened after plagues but then populations rebounded and life was a constant struggle.

[carlosjobim]

You've been told that life was a constant struggle, you weren't there. Many would say that life today is a constant struggle.

But we have abundant evidence in art, architecture, inventions, and every fruit of human creativity, showing that people weren't in a constant struggle.

Especially, we have evidence in literature from the past, giving a more nuanced picture than that of constant struggle for everyone everywhere.

[bluGill]

Literature only happened in agricultural societies and mostly by the elites. While it gives us a picture historians have to work really hard to read between the lines to figure out what life was really like for most people. If you were the elite in any time your life is much better than typical.

Many would say life is a constant struggle. However few have any clue what others experience is like. Even the filthy rich consider life a struggle.

[carlosjobim]

> Literature only happened in agricultural societies and mostly by the elites.

How far are you going back now? I'm not for groping in the mists of pre-history, when we can read literary descriptions from the last 500 years. That is a more relatable past than the little we can know from ancient days.

> If you were the elite in any time your life is much better than typical.

Yes, and that is just as true today.