In the 1800s, it was commonplace to have 8 children. Did they all lived in huge houses?
The house had been built before 1920 when expectations were less grand; those rooms were much smaller than nearly any home I've been in built after 1980. When my grandpa came to visit each summer, it meant all five boys in one room, the two youngest in sleeping bags and occasionally getting stepped on in the middle of the night when one of my older brothers would get up and forget we were there.
There was also no air conditioning, nor ceiling fans. My parents had a box fan in their bedroom window during the summer. It was a big deal when the bedroom I shared with my next older brother got a box fan too; that was in high school.
We shared EVERYTHING. And strangely, it didn't kill us! In fact: it just motivated us to go to sports and clubs and stay out of the house.
Obviously less extreme, but I do not understand this "every child must have their own room" thing. They don't! And I grew up in an incredibly poor rural area, imagine living in a city where there was actual shit to do.
We all shared rooms and had less than a few square meters to ourselves. It was fine. People these days are too attached to the idea they need massive homes to live their lives.
This is a bit of segue from where we were. To brings us more in line with the topic: In the early 20th century, large and extended families lived in commonly built row housing.
Their roomier accommodations were one piece of communities that were more affordable and an overall better fit for larger groups & families (than modern housing and communities).
I always found this extraordinary because they certainly weren’t rich. I grew up in a 1200sqft house fwiw lol
Edit: Since HN contrarians who'd never want their children living in some particular conditions find it so confusing how others might not too:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01452...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805127/
Overcrowded living quarters is a well known vector for a huge array of problems. Academic underachievement, sexual abuse, substance abuse, mood disorders, abusive relationships, the list goes on. Even after controlling for socioeconomic status!
… traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems
Putting aside how true such a claim is... just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues.
I suspect they had far more important things to worry about - like getting enough food.
Do you think that rape and slavery is also not going to affect people? Because those were both pretty prevalent in most of human history too, yet here the human race is - alive, with different views on those things as we did in the past.
Oh my god yes, and we’re doing such a great job of that aren’t we? We have gratuitous violence on demand now.
Public hangings are fine compared to what I see on TV/Netflix.
But sex? Other people being able to see sexual depictions literally gets people's panties in a twist.
I would prefer to ride a Unicorn to work. This is pure fantasy. There will always be human violence. Preparing children for it is a lost art in sections of the world.
In many civilized/industrialized places, these children (sometimes already matured) are immediately traumatized or pretend it is of no consequence through various rationalizations. It's a cycle that repeats in throughout history.
Similarly my older relatives keep saying “but they can’t do that!” About a lot of what’s happening in the US without realising that they very much can. Because nobody is physically stopping them. The exception is my grandfather, who is an honest guy but says he got in some fights in his navy days and ended up better for it.
Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.
I want my own daughters to know how to protect themselves with diplomacy-or- violence if the former fails.
Superheroes don't exist and never have. People who work tirelessly to chip away -- often imperceptibly -- at sources of badness exist. That's it.
No.
Two simple questions:
1. Do we want a world without violence?
2. If yes, is public hanging a step towards that world, or away from it?
2. I'm refusing to indulge your strawman. Let's use something like "is teaching your kid how to deal with bullies a step towards that world or away from it"
I didn't say it was possible. I said it's worth striving for, and then you stated the same thing with different words. We agree.
Ah so you think societies that did public hangings tended to have a strong and reasonable sense of justice.
You are wrong.
Justice in the sense of "punishing people who are legitimately antisocial" tends to yield less indulgent punishments because they recognize that true justice must be dealt cold and with solemnity.
Or do you think it's only a coincidence that the most abhorrent justice systems on the planet do public executions and "civilized" justice systems do not?
Does the fact that you can't ride a unicorn to work compel you to settle for walking 7 miles barefoot? Or is the sensible thing to do to constantly chip away at sources of badness in the world, even if you can't achieve unicorns?
It cracks me up how you try to assert the "realist" position while holding an opinion that only makes sense in a university ethics course. Public hangings don't "prepare" a child for a world with non-zero levels of violence, obviously. Living 4 adults and 8 children to a single-room household doesn't "prepare" a child for anything you'd willingly sign them up to do.
Bad things are bad. They should be avoided. You actually think this too and will take action to avoid most bad things that you can. But alas, the Internet comment box is here for you to wisely consider: Maybe bad things are not bad. Very smart, lol.
If I choose other conditions, it’s not because of trauma but because comfort is good.
We have decades of research to show that more space and privacy is not merely a matter of comfort. Or, if it is, that "comfort" affects more things than one would expect.
I've already linked to them above.
Either I am inherently an übermensch or my methods are better. You have your loneliness epidemics, your PTSD, and your therapy. I don’t.
Or to put it evocatively:
But for the claim you're responding to, this appears to mostly just be some cringey self-aggrandizement?