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200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes...
This clip illustrates exactly why when someone starts talking about the 'good old days', I tend to downgrade them in my estimation of their intelligence and common sense.
Also, when fiction writers complain about how awful the 20th century was (I'm looking at you, SPN), I know that they don't have a clue -- there were many things wrong with the 20th century, but people not dying of measles, mumps and polio in childhood and actually managing to make it out subsistence poverty? Not a bad thing, at all.
Yes, there were awful, horrible wars. Otoh, most people thought that war was a bad thing, instead of an exciting chance for the elites to prove their bravery, and there were not roving bands of discharged-soldiers-turned-brigands destroying the countryside, holding towns hostage for go-away bribes, or actual class warfare where the workers killed the landowners, or religious figures proclaiming crusades to distract people from the fact that they were selling church benefices. I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century, and 14th century France had all that *and* the Black Death.
Anyone who thinks things were better 200 years ago is invited to go live the life of the average person in the UK or the Netherlands (the richest, healthiest countries) of that time period, which still means a life expectancy of 40 years, and annual income of under $4000.
This clip illustrates exactly why when someone starts talking about the 'good old days', I tend to downgrade them in my estimation of their intelligence and common sense.
Also, when fiction writers complain about how awful the 20th century was (I'm looking at you, SPN), I know that they don't have a clue -- there were many things wrong with the 20th century, but people not dying of measles, mumps and polio in childhood and actually managing to make it out subsistence poverty? Not a bad thing, at all.
Yes, there were awful, horrible wars. Otoh, most people thought that war was a bad thing, instead of an exciting chance for the elites to prove their bravery, and there were not roving bands of discharged-soldiers-turned-brigands destroying the countryside, holding towns hostage for go-away bribes, or actual class warfare where the workers killed the landowners, or religious figures proclaiming crusades to distract people from the fact that they were selling church benefices. I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century, and 14th century France had all that *and* the Black Death.
Anyone who thinks things were better 200 years ago is invited to go live the life of the average person in the UK or the Netherlands (the richest, healthiest countries) of that time period, which still means a life expectancy of 40 years, and annual income of under $4000.
