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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   28916 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Various threads lately have had me thinking about how incredibly wealthy we are as a country, and how it definitely was not always so. For example, I made this comment a couple days ago about how everyone was just flat super poor back in 1900, and we're literally at least 10x richer now. I had likewise told the following story in the old place, in context of wealth to afford vast quantities of food (and how that may interplay with societal obesity):

Even coming from Canada, my wife was shocked by how cheap food is here in America. Historically, it just was not this way. We are one generation removed from stories like, "In the fall, dad made his semi-annual trip to the market in the city and brought back some quantity of 50lb bags of flour and 5lb chunks of lard, having a huge smile on his face, saying, 'We're gonna eat reaaaal good this winter!'" (I don't actually remember the exact quantity he said, but it was a low number, and we can easily scale by a small multiplier.) Like, this was a level of abundance in preparation for the winter that they were not used to (obviously, this was not their entire supply of food for the whole winter; they had some other food stored, but it is indicative that it was, cost-wise, an absolute treat). I checked a nearby grocery store's website; 50/5lbs would cost me $26.85. Like, pocket change. (Even if the multiplier was 5x, that's like nothing.) I probably have that much in random cash sitting around in my car. If I lost it or it was stolen, I'd be sad about a violation of my property, but literally wouldn't give a shit about the monetary value. This was a wonderful blessing of food abundance to some people in first-world countries not very long ago.

I didn't completely spell it out, but that was my wife's father's story when he was a child in Canada. (I also hedged on the number; my best memory was that it was precisely one 50lb bag and one 5lb chunk). That was not that long ago.

Yesterday, I read an obituary for a 95 year old who was born in a homestead dugout in New Mexico. Literally born in a hole in the ground.

Perspective on how utterly ridiculously quickly we went from basically universal poverty to nearly universal wealth is often lacking in many conversations where it could be quite beneficial. Sure, some in the capitalism/communism debates (or more generally the sources/causes of wealth and how it interacts with society's choices/governance), but also in obesity conversations (as mentioned) and even fertility conversations. Born in a homestead dugout. And you don't want to have a kid because of a car seat?!

I still don't properly know how exactly to craft an argument that comes to a clean conclusion, but I really feel like this historical perspective is seriously lacking in a country where the median age is under 40 and many folks no longer have communal contexts where they get exposed to at least a slice of history from their elders.

This sort of presentism is common in a lot of threads. I have frequently commented about how divisive and violent American politics were in previous centuries (even before the Civil War). And how in previous civilizations, contrary to some of our DreadJim-posters, women did not live like chattel under the absolute rule of their Patriarch. It often comes up in discussions about race (I wonder how many of these young black Millenials and Zoomers saying that racism is "as bad today as it was under Jim Crow" have actually asked their grandparents if they agree?)

As you say, previous generations were much poorer than us, relatively speaking, though that goes to the common argument about medieval kings having fewer luxuries than a modern American teenager. "Would you rather be a Roman emperor, or a poor person in 21st century America?" I think a lot of people would prefer to be a Roman emperor, even if they would miss smartphones and flush toilets.

It's very hard to avoid seeing yourself relative to the rest of the world you live in.

I think a lot of people would prefer to be a Roman emperor, even if they would miss smartphones and flush toilets.

Only the first year. By my second year of my reign we would be firmly into the 1860 technology wise. And probably catch up with ww ii tech by the end of the first decade.

I assume this is a joke, but Rome didn't have the steel-making and cylinder boring technology to have steam power, and training the skilled personnel to actuate those technologies takes more than two years. But, of course, it's irrelevant, because Roman agriculture wasn't good enough to support sufficient numbers of specialists to have an industrial base that makes those technologies do any good, partly because of techniques(high medievals were wealthier than the Romans largely because of better agricultural technique) but also in large part because of a worse crop package. And Roman society didn't have the institutional basis which spread superior agricultural techniques in our universe, because that institution was the medieval church- and building a replacement for that one is a task which is not the work of a single human lifetime.

also in large part because of a worse crop package.

This makes me wonder how feasible it would be to reach the Americas with Roman-era ships. Of course, you'd have to make sure your Romans copy the nixtamal technique after bringing back maize, so your poorer citizens don't wind up with widespread pellagra like happened in real life.

A genuine and reasonable question. I know psuedohistorians keep claiming classical/late antiquity transatlantic voyages, and real historians usually don't claim that Roman and Punic ships couldn't have made the voyage. I also know the vikings did it. I assume that means the ships could probably cross the Atlantic in good weather, although navigation technology might not have been up to snuff(I know the vikings had a few navigational techniques the Romans didn't). Hell, the Polynesians made lengthy voyages across the Pacific in the stone age, and there are a few recorded cases of Eskimos showing up in medieval Europe in kayaks.

My off the cuff opinion is that Romans who knew about trade winds and where the Americas were could have gotten here, assuming they had infrastructure built up to launch those expeditions at the right time of year. But they didn't have that kind of knowledge and they didn't try. It raises an interesting question about how the Algonquian Indians in Canada were more able to resist viking settlement than the natives of Ireland, Russia, etc.

It raises an interesting question about how the Algonquian Indians in Canada were more able to resist viking settlement than the natives of Ireland, Russia, etc.

My first guess would be that Ireland is much closer, the Vikings raiding Ireland already had bases in Scotland and you can see parts of Scotland with the naked eye on a sunny day on the Antrim coast.

The distance would make any big setback or defeat fatal, it’s not like the Vikings in Canada could go seek refuge from Saxon kings or with the Norse in the Hebrides if they lost a battle.

Viking greenland was pretty close, and Iceland wasn't that far either.

If we're counting the distance from Newfoundland Iceland was still closer to Ireland by about 1100km. There were single battles in Ireland where more Vikings died than the total population of Greenland (6,000), it does seem like it was just easier to send more people to settle Ireland than Canada.

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