PM_ur_Rump t1_j69cfwf wrote on January 28, 2023 at 6:05 PM

Yeah, it was way better when we were working in the mines 10 hours a day without weekends from age 10 for an allowance at the company store.

unbibium t1_j69r17i wrote on January 28, 2023 at 7:44 PM

Demand for coal skyrocketed when the steam engine was developed to the point that it could be used commercially.

How much coal did society need before it was used to drive factories and locomotives? Certainly not enough to motivate people to send children into mines seven days a week.

PM_ur_Rump t1_j69zgps wrote on January 28, 2023 at 8:43 PM

I mean if you want to go back to hand gathering berries and roots and chasing prey down (no spears though, gotta kill and eat it bare handed), you can totally do it, there's still plenty of wild lands. No fire either though, unless it's wildfire.

Technology and modern society is definitely not without it's faults, but this sentiment is absurdly naive.

And I say this as someone who somewhat shuns a lot of the trappings of modern life.

It's just funny when somebody says "life is so hard these days" as they sit in their climate controlled dwelling, typing on a device that holds the sum of all knowledge, and work likely less than full time at a relatively easy, though possibly still soul sucking job.

unbibium t1_j6ab6f5 wrote on January 28, 2023 at 10:05 PM

>you can totally do it, there's still plenty of wild lands

No, no there aren't. You didn't invent the "go live in a cave" comeback.

I think I agree with the people who say that technology doesn't make life hard, we've just built a society that does not permit the benefits of technology to actually reduce the burden of "earning a living". We've increased productivity constantly since the microcomputer was invented, we've increased the efficiency of motors and lights, we've designed better ways to do everything. Yet jobs haven't gotten easier or shorter, and the cost of these "climate controlled dwellings" is becoming prohibitive to more working people every month.

If we're lucky, we earn enough at our meaningless job that we have enough time and energy left to volunteer for a job that gives us meaning or purpose. And if the productivity gains of technology weren't all sucked upward...

PM_ur_Rump t1_j6an1yb wrote on January 28, 2023 at 11:32 PM

I mean, I love my job and spend much of my free time in wild lands, of which there is plenty. My life is full of meaning and rich experience, and I'm pretty much a poor quasi-hippie with a dirty, blue collar job.

I mean, without technology, how would you not live a barefoot hunter gatherer "cave" life?

I know people who subsistence live off grid, and even they use plenty of technology to make life easier.

Yes, there is plenty of fault to find in our current system, but the "it's too hard" argument is silly. Is it woefully inegalitarian? Yes. Do lots of people struggle to find meaning? Yes. But even the "struggle to find meaning" is a sign of comfort and relative ease.