[javajosh]

I have witnessed the same change in the zeitgeist, and also wondered about it's source. My hypothesis is that it's rooted in the trend toward environmental sustainability, local and human-powered production (e.g. hand-made things from locally acquired materials).

It seems reasonable to me to believe that life wasn't that bad even for a Christian peasant, assuming: good health, good weather, no plague, no war (to be conscripted in), ugly daughters (to avoid prima nocta). Sure, you didn't own anything but life was simple, food was good, the world was understandable (even if your understanding was primitive and wrong), and the countryside must have been beautiful to explore. Plus you had the remarkable benefit of dreaming about truly foreign and far-away places, like Africa, India or China. Even countries within Europe were so distinct from each other as to make travel a real adventure.

There's an interesting take on going back to something like this in Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Windup Girl_[1]. The world has undergone a "Contraction" and oil is incredibly scarce. Travel is difficult and expensive; the world has grown large again, and human and animal power are once again the staples (although military and governments still use oil for some things).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl

[mjmahone17]

The reason Feudalism came about was because it was a good deal for the average bloke. You weren't constantly threatened by slavery, you were mostly protected from raiding, etc. by your landlord, and you only had to work on someone else's land (in the beginning) 1 or 2 days a week. The reason we hear about it being so awful is because we hear about the last legs of Feudalism: when peasants were expected to work 8+ days a week (children counted for a half day, so this was actually possible) on the lord's land, and because of a rise in population had their labor devalued, and the average acreage for individual plots reduced.

[a8da6b0c91d]

The Roman empire was a disaster for most people. It ran on slave labor and high taxes. The early middle ages was a period where organizations scaled back to what was feasible without mass slavery. This involved a lot less literate types in urban centers. So to a modern urbanite it looks like things got worse after the empire, what with the decline of literacy and nice buildings. In reality, health and welfare improved.