Ever long for simpler times?

[Damelon]

There was an ad for some type of "natural" cereal a couple of years ago where a fellow from a general store from the 19th century gave a "modern" shopper a sack of his cereal, as though in a dream. The implication being that that was a purer time, with pure ingredients. The problem I saw with the ad was that they didn't take into account the rat droppings that would be found in the 19th century cereal that you would not find in the "modern" cereal. All in all, I'll take today.

[bossk]

Every generation seems to yearn backwards as well. Afterall, Thoreau's Walden was written in the mid-1800's or so, about a return to a simpler life.

An EXCELLENT point.

[bossk]

I do like to experience history, but only in a book or a movie or on the History channel--not to relive it in person. I shake my head whenever I hear people who, after seeing a charming period movie, gush about how romantic and innocent that past age was, and how they wish they could live back then. Oh really? What they really mean is that they want to live in the fake, Technicolor, idealized celluloid version of the past.

Exactly! I notice in these "historical" movies, the hero always respects a strong and independent woman, and thinks racism is just awful. Somehow our filmmaker has found the only progressive thinker of his entire era to focus on.

[Worm of Despite]

Lord Foul, I can understand you desiring the calm and stability of a time like the Pax Romana, but using the Patty Hearst abduction case to illustrate your points is, shall I say, pretty damn morbid.

I don't see how. My sociology teacher brought up the Hearst story in her class, and nobody was offended. Why let something like that lie fallow if we can learn from it or gain something valuable and lasting? I think it can be a teaching tool in various ways. Further, even if it does strike one as morbid, I think the point still stands strong, its foundation/integrity unaltered.

[ChoChiyo]

Patty Hearst was a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, I believe...here is an explanation of it from a yahoo site.

Stockholm Syndrome describes the behavior of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of six days of captivity in a bank, several kidnap victims actually resisted rescue attempts, and afterwards refused to testify against their captors.

While some people are suggesting the recent Elizabeth Smart kidnapping sounds like a case of Stockholm Syndrome, the most famous incident in the U.S. involved the kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. Captured by a radical political group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, Ms. Hearst eventually became an accomplice of the group, taking on an assumed name and assisting them in several bank robberies. After her re-capture, she denounced the group and her involvement.

What causes Stockholm Syndrome? Captives begin to identify with their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of violence. Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified, since finding perspective in a hostage situation is by definition impossible. Rescue attempts are also seen as a threat, since it's likely the captive would be injured during such attempts.

It's important to note that these symptoms occur under tremendous emotional and often physical duress. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors.

It's a very interesting phenomenon.

[duchess of malfi]

The here and now is so much better.

I love to go camping, but I refuse unless there are flush toilets and showers available. Electricity to run my small kitchen appliances is also a must. While we do grill over a fire, I also enjoy my electic griddle, my water boiler for tea, and my toaster.

[matrixman]

My sociology teacher brought up the Hearst story in her class, and nobody was offended. Why let something like that lie fallow if we can learn from it or gain something valuable and lasting? I think it can be a teaching tool in various ways. Further, even if it does strike one as morbid, I think the point still stands strong, its foundation/integrity unaltered.

I'm not questioning the integrity of your argument, I was just expressing my feelings. The Stockholm Syndrome, eh? Thanks for the info, Cho.

[Kinslaughterer]

I'm an archaeologist; believe me there were no simpler times just periods of less material culture. In fact in several cases thing were much more complicated.

[bossk]

I just know a day would come when I needed to warn someone I loved of an impending catastrophe and would be absolutely horrified at my lack of a telephone.

[ChoChiyo]

The so-called simpler times involved a lot of hard physical labor for the majority of people. I don't know that I would want to kill and butcher my own meat, chop wood enough to last for the winter, or can the thousands of quarts of fruits and vegetables that my mom and grandmothers did when I was a kid. Not to mention planting, weeding, and harvesting the garden!

Of course, if I were landed gentry, and my peasants did all that, it might not be too bad. But I know my luck. I'd be a peasant. And a poor one at that.



heh heh

[Plissken]

These discussions always remind me of my favorite line from the abysmal Back to the Future III:

DOC: "In the future, people only run for recreation."

That about sums it up.

[Loredoctor]

I wish I was alive in the early 19th century. It would be marvellous, well if I was a landowner.

[Avatar]

Yeah, when people imagine living in an earlier time, they never see themselves as the malnourished, flea-bitten, louse-ridden, toothless disfigured peasant trying to scratch a living from what he didn't have to give in tax to keep the wealthy elite, well, wealthy.

Good posts folks. I particularly liked Kins and Cho's. Simpler does not mean easier.

And Duchess-- That's not camping! When you camp, you do not take a toaster!

--Avatar

[ur-bane]

And Duchess-- That's not camping! When you camp, you do not take a toaster!

Ain't that the truth!

I think that when we speak of living in simpler times, and think about a time period we may want to live in, it is not a permanent arrangement.

Personally, there are many eras I would like to live in, but only temporarily. Just long enough to experience what life was truly like in that time.
I would always want to come back to this time, the time with which I am most familiar and comfortable.

For me, more than anything else, I would like to go back about a thousand years to Long Island and Manhattan. I would like to see what my region looked like [before we overran it with steel and concrete. I want to see the Algonquin Indian trails on the north shore of Long Island that are now Route 25A. I want to see the verdant coastline before land was cleared for huge million dollar estates on the East End. I want to see the Great South Bay before boaters oil discharge and waste dumping tainted the water. I want to see the waters of the Long Island sound before Connecticut, New York and New Jersey used them as a landfill and sewage treatment facility.

I want to see a city of trees on Manhattan Island, undisturbed by man, and rife with wildlife.

I want to see my area as it was; as nature intended. Then I would want to come back to my house and go online to tell you all about it.

[Avatar]

A beautiful list. I've felt the same about my own country, imagining tracts of bush, even vaster than they are today, perhaps the first proto-hominids wandering the savannah, just figuring out that if they stood up, they could see threats from further away. (Of course, there are drawbacks. It's no fun trying to cover any significant distance on foot, I assure you.)

--A

[Zarathustra]

I want to see my area as it was; as nature intended.

Not to be nit-picky (though I'm going to anyway ), but nature didn't intend anything. What about the time when that island was under the ocean? What about the future geological state when it's again submerged, a mountain range, or under an ice sheet? Which of those states is the one nature intended? Why single out the forested one as more natural?

We are part of nature. Our buildings are part of nature--just as much as a beaver's dam or an ant's hill. Our structures are just better. The math and the engineering involved are all part of nature; the buildings' shape and structure are examples of our awareness and interaction with the laws of physics.

In my opinion, nothing unnatural can exist, because if it exists, then its potential-to-be lies within nature itself, and it is brought forth into being in accordance with the laws of nature.

"Unnatural" is usually just a word we use to refer to things we don't like, not things which are in fact unnatural. In describing them as "unnatural," we are merely alienating ourselves from the real world--the world as it exists--in an inauthentic attempt to diminish the real world in favor of some idealized, imagined, "more real world."

[Lord Mhoram]

Malik,

How natural is car exhaust pollution?

[Plissken]

So every bit of that Big Mac is natural? I find that hard to believe. Although I agree with the idea - at least from a philosophical point of view - that anything that exists is therefore natural, in reality there are things that upset the natural balance and can therefore be described at the very least as "anti-natural".

(I agree that the word "unnatural" has been abused - like most words. However, it is more than just a word "we use to refer to things we don't like". People like to point at the way a term they don't like has been abused to negate that word. "Values" for instance, has been stretched in some arenas, and squashed in others, to the point that it is unrecognizable for all of the connotations attatched to it. However, the word itself is still valid, no matter what we do to it.)

[Zarathustra]

How natural is car exhaust pollution?

Quite natural. Organic material naturally burns, producing natural exhaust.

How natural is the smoke from a forest fire? How natural is the exhaust from a volcano?

The CO2 released through the burning of fossil fuels used to be in the atmosphere to begin with--before plants extracted it. Where do you think they got it? Conservation of matter and energy, remember.

People think that if something is the product of man's tinkering, then it isn't natural. They think this because they don't think man is natural (how else could they think it?). To think that we--and our works--are not part of nature is EXACTLY what I meant by "alienation from the world." We alienate ourselves from reality by conceptually removing and separating ourselves from "nature." But this is impossible. You can't extract us from nature, nor can you take nature out of us.

Also, the idea that we are somehow taking the world "out of balance" assumes (incorrectly) that the world was in balance to begin with. It is not, nor has it ever been, "in balance." It is in a constant state of flux, a state of chaotic forces achieving temporary equilibriums. The continents are constantly moving, storms are constantly whirling, volcanos are constantly erupting, and global climate is constantly changing. Deserts appear where rain forests once stood. Ice covers areas that used to be lush with life. There is no balance. I've never heard anyone who can explain what this means. What is "in balance?" What are the scales measuring?

The universe is running down, heading to the great Heat Death required by the laws of thermodynamics. This cannot be staved off by any measure of conservation. It's entropy. Everything is dying. Why do you think this is Eden? It's not. The ONLY hope for the universe is for intelligent beings to evolve enough to find a loophole.

We are the greatest achievement of the universe, we sentient, intelligence bits of it--not these lumps of rock floating around the stars. And yet people want to think we're not worthy of it? We are the unnatural invaders whose very deeds stand outside of it? I say the universe is not worthy of us. We are the universe coming to life, and yet everywhere we look around, it's all dying. What a place for sentience.

[Lord Mhoram]

Malik,

I agree that it is a habit of humanity to think itself somehow above the rest of the natural world - hence the inability of some to grasp the concept of evolution. We feel ourselves better than animals in every way, when some are physically better or evolutionarily more advanced.

That being said, I cannot, myself, agree that nuclear or waste, or some such thing, is "natural."