Subjectively, though, the human experience has not changed much at all: the experience of love, loss, fear, ambition, in/security, friendship, community, excitement and so on
In e.g. the Middle Ages, the average person might have spent their whole lives on the countryside in a small community where everyone knew everyone, people rarely heard any news from the outside world, there were relatively strict sexual morals and never very much to do on one’s limited spare time, and most people inherited the profession of their parents and basically knew their place in the world from birth.
Compare this to someone living in a large modern liberal city, whose daily commute might already involve traveling a longer distance than the middle age peasant would travel in their whole life and who also has the option of traveling around the world, who may be in daily contact with more people than the peasant knew in their whole life, who has never known for certain what he would do in her life and has already changed careers three times, who may sleep with different people every night, etc. etc.
I would claim that these people would have vastly different experiences, even in terms of love, loss, fear, friendship, community, and so on. Yes, there are some elements which are the same, but the overall experience is still different enough that the peasant would have been literally incapable of imagining the modern urbanite’s life.
Yes, there are some elements which are the same, but the overall experience is still different enough that the peasant would have been literally incapable of imagining the modern urbanite’s life.
I think the reverse is also true- modern Western societies are so individualistic that I imagine most moderns can’t imagine what it was like to be in some of the communities or hierarchies of the past.
In e.g. the Middle Ages, the average person might have spent their whole lives on the countryside in a small community where everyone knew everyone, people rarely heard any news from the outside world, there were relatively strict sexual morals and never very much to do on one’s limited spare time, and most people inherited the profession of their parents and basically knew their place in the world from birth.
Compare this to someone living in a large modern liberal city, whose daily commute might already involve traveling a longer distance than the middle age peasant would travel in their whole life and who also has the option of traveling around the world, who may be in daily contact with more people than the peasant knew in their whole life, who has never known for certain what he would do in her life and has already changed careers three times, who may sleep with different people every night, etc. etc.
I would claim that these people would have vastly different experiences, even in terms of love, loss, fear, friendship, community, and so on. Yes, there are some elements which are the same, but the overall experience is still different enough that the peasant would have been literally incapable of imagining the modern urbanite’s life.
I think the reverse is also true- modern Western societies are so individualistic that I imagine most moderns can’t imagine what it was like to be in some of the communities or hierarchies of the past.
Agreed.