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Comment by eeZah7Ux | Hacker News Reader

> For all human history, the conditions of people were dire.

No. There's been societies based on slavery or indentured servitude and industrial societies treating workers much like slaves and there's been also almost idyllic, often agrarian, societies far removed from war, exploitation and hunger.

Furthermore, given the incredible amount of energy and natural resources that the average person in rich countries is consuming we should all be living happy and meaningful lives and work one our per week.

We should instead ask the difficult question - why are even the richest societies so unhappy?

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Citation needed.

My understanding of primitive agrarian societies are that they have hard work, hard lives, poor diet, and a population that is generally at the edge of starvation. (In good times, population grows. In bad times...) You might want to read Guns, Germs and Steel as an example of a reference backing this view up. Or read through random snippets of history like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931... and get a sense for the very real struggles that people faced.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

"Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's"

Nine inch nails. “We think we’ve climbed so far, on all the backs we’ve come down...”

I don't have a specific text offhand that addresses this directly, but Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms addresses this general point. It's part of a series of related works, edited by Joel Mokyr, including last year's The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon.

https://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-econ...

https://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/title/the-prince...

Whilst preindustrial societies did see variable subsistence, the floor tended to be higher than today (Clark's introduction, available online, notes that the poorest people who've ever lived, live now, and in great numbers), and cycles tended to be long-term -- decades or centuries, not years. Whilst life expectancy at birth was low, from age of majority it was generally far less abbreviated. Disease was far more prevalent in cities (London was a net population sink well into the 19h century), and major instances of famine and plague something experienced perhaps only by occasional generations within an area, though wth mortality rates from 10-90% (far more typically in the 10-30% range).

You're familiar with Laurie Garrett's wwork on healthxare, and the fact that 85% of mortality decline since 1850 materially predates modern medical practice, including antibiotics, vaccines, and organ transsplants. The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City chart highlights this:

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/wp-content/uplo...

These “idyllic” societies still had rough lives. Nature is not only a paradise. It’s ripe with disease, infections, predators killing you and your cattle, children’s and mothers dying during childbirth, droughts, and famines.

And wars exist also, and especially, among tribes.

Growing food without modern technologies, fertilizers and pesticides was also an extremely hard job. It’s not like growing tomatoes in your back garden.

This is something I have given a lot of thought to.

I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to hunt you down and kill you. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life.

But, watching the gazelle slalom and jump with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the gazelle was also born to run. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid getting caught. To master this state is to escape the predator, and it must feel incredible to outrun a cheetah. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom.

To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a gazelle. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, gazelle, cheetahs. It is a simple fact that you will die.

So, then, whose life is better? The gazelle's, whose time is spent performing in the most integrated and pure way possible? Or the human's?

The human's life, which is spent doing activities its body was not designed for, in social situations his brain is not built for, eating things his stomach was not designed for? And then, we die. Just like the gazelle.

Interesting to think about for sure. I myself have no option — synthetic insulin keeps me alive.

I saw footage of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah. My reflexive thought is -- how unimaginably horrible. Here is an animal which is evolved specifically to avoid your attempts to eat it. And every moment you spend trying to live is a moment lived in fear of this awful creature. What a life! My horror does not even compare to the horror of this life.

But, watching the cheetah cut off its prey and pounce with incredible precision and grace, there is another thought: that the cheetah was also born to eat. It uses its God given abilities to the absolute maximum possible extent. During the chase, it is in a state of complete flow, more complete than any Olympic athlete could ever hope for. The sheer concentration required, the exertion, the split-second decision-making required to avoid dying of hunger. To master this state is to capture the prey, and it must feel incredible to finally catch a gazelle. Incredible in a way that is impossible for a human living a modern lifestyle to fathom.

To fail means to die, of course, and that cannot feel good to a cheetah. But it's just death. We all die anyway. Human beings, cheetah, gazelles. It is a simple fact that you will die.

The gazelle is not self-conscious about it's life, and whether it's muscles are beautiful or not. It will never sense the beauty of what you're describing - from it's point of view, it will just feel fear, pain, then die.

Perhaps a higher-dimensional being would also see some beauty in our life that we cannot comprehend currently - like the gazelle can't comprehend it's Olympic flow, a human can't comprehend the long-term beauty of how they toil and work against the odds.

> whose life is better? If by better you mean, which being feels more emotion/happiness/satisfaction, it's an open question. But if better implies more progress and safety/longevity, then humans it is.

> The gazelle is not self-conscious about it's life

This is a popular assertion about animals, but I've yet to see someone prove it.

Also we shouldn't overestimate how self aware the average human is.

Much of our lives are lived in a disconnected fog, disconnected from our bodies, our feelings and our minds.

The gazelle may not be able to reflect on the meaning of its existence but it is certainly capable of experiencing its actions and environment. A lack of self-awareness is not a lack of enjoyment, it may even heighten it. Think of the droves of people working to afford some time to simply live in the moment, to experience the raw beauty of nature or a physical challenge. Without a self or ego projected into the future, every minute of the gazelle's life is like that. As you say, an animal can feel fear and pain but they are also capable of feeling relief, pleasure, and even joy.

If you attempt to quantify life in such terms you may run into issues, our longevity is meager when compared to a giant tortoise or a simple koi fish, for all of our progress and the safety it grants us we still succumb to the same fate, we still suffer and all of our works are washed away by rain and time.

In those idyllic societies that you mention, there are still teachers, senators, merchants, and diplomats who have to do work. The only people I can think of who don't do "work" in ancient history are religious monks and rich people living off of an inheritance.

It's not work itself that is the problem. Work actually should contribute to happiness, but the conditions must induce that. The negative atmosphere that exists in many work environments is terrible. Rather than leaving with a sense of achievement for your expended efforts, you leave feeling beaten down and unappreciated.

Monks were kept busy writing manuscripts preserving scientific and historical knowledge.

If you get too idyllic you get conquered by jealous neighbors

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