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[Frumple]

... I mean, sure. Congrats, you can die alone in the deep woods without anyone knowing you're there? That's one hell of a luxury. Also just about it, near as I can recall.

Past just kinda' sucked, really. Maybe it wins slightly on privacy, never mind that victory gets you nothing but being forgotten. Loses on everything else.

[itisnotlogical]

Oh, I beg your pardon, wierd, I meant itisnotlogical's post. I ought to have quoted it, and made it more clear.

I do know what you mean, and I do think it is a fair and intriguing point.

I was responding to LW's post though. I agree with the point of the statue story. People did violent things in the past because that was how to survive. But on the other hand, I hear far too many arguments praising the past as some sort of awesome ideal that we should return to, and that's what I read in LW's post and was replying to. I admit I have a hair trigger for it. I hear it every day in my real life, some 30something who has always lived a modern life in the center of town, the kind of person that's never touched a farm tool before, airing the thought that it'd be awesome to cut ties with everything and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

[Loud Whispers]

So, we should consider that it might not have been bad to live as an uneducated peasant and die of horrible disease because nobody knew about germs or viruses yet?

No, and this is exactly the arrogance of today that is being exhibited - that everyone back then were uneducated peasants wallowing in offal unaware of infection or viruses, when in reality empirical medicine was being practiced by the Greeks and Chinese to such a meticulous extent that we still use their disease categorization systems and ethical standards 2,500 years later.

Important things happened in the past. It doesn't mean that it was a super awesome fun time to live in feudal Japan, or medieval Europe, or the American Deep South when segregation was legal and violently enforced. A lot of the important things that happened in the past happened because shit sucked and people didn't want it to be that way anymore.

"The contemporary decries the modern and medieval as a dark time to escape, not the foundation of their bright civilization. A pity, the past still has more lessons to teach us."
There is no merit to be gained in being ignorant of the past, nor in falsely characterizing it as a time of continuous stagnant suffering - The hardship of the past in no way is a justification for the arrogance of the present. That we eat the fruits of trees they planted does not imbue us with inherent superiority.

I was responding to LW's post though. I agree with the point of the statue story. People did violent things in the past because that was how to survive. But on the other hand, I hear far too many arguments praising the past as some sort of awesome ideal that we should return to, and that's what I read in LW's post and was replying to. I admit I have a hair trigger for it. I hear it every day in my real life, some 30something who has always lived a modern life in the center of town, airing the thought that it'd be awesome to cut ties with everything and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

I do not know where you live that your country's past is rooted in isolated agrarianism. That is not my argument, and I am unsure of how one's existence can be so fragile, that it would necessitate excising the past as all but a dark mess of cave men and ignorance. The past is a foreign land everyone leaves and can never return to, it's folly to pretend one can return, having forgotten its flaws or merits.

[Silverthrone]

Oh, I beg your pardon, wierd, I meant itisnotlogical's post. I ought to have quoted it, and made it more clear.

I do know what you mean, and I do think it is a fair and intriguing point.

I was responding to LW's post though. I agree with the point of the statue story. People did violent things in the past because that was how to survive. But on the other hand, I hear far too many arguments praising the past as some sort of awesome ideal that we should return to, and that's what I read in LW's post and was replying to. I admit I have a hair trigger for it. I hear it every day in my real life, some 30something who has always lived a modern life in the center of town, the kind of person that's never touched a farm tool before, airing the thought that it'd be awesome to cut ties with everything and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, I see! I beg your pardon, as well. I did not bring my good brain in today, it seems. Yes, now I understand. 'Going back' wholesale is nothing I would be in favour of, either. If such a thing is even possible. The past is applicable, but not to that degree.

I do recognise that pain. The best part is that it is no doubt said while they are out on the country with their semi-feral dog, which is happily worrying the sheep (in the middle of lambing, naturally) somewhere in the background. Well, until it corners and ewe or gets into the cow pasture, gets kicked to pieces and the owner breaks off from his contemplation to demand the land owner to pay for it.

EDIT:

So, we should consider that it might not have been bad to live as an uneducated peasant and die of horrible disease because nobody knew about germs or viruses yet?

No, and this is exactly the arrogance of today that is being exhibited - that everyone back then were uneducated peasants wallowing in offal unaware of infection or viruses, when in reality empirical medicine was being practiced by the Greeks and Chinese to such a meticulous extent that we still use their disease categorization systems and ethical standards 2,500 years later.

Sometimes when I am thinking, I do a brief stop and take stock on all the things that are influenced by the ancient Greeks or that I have them to thank for. It is an awful lot, all together. Terribly fascinating!

[Frumple]

Well... no, it's barely anything except inconsistent nomenclature and occasionally the hollowed out and almost entirely rebuilt skeleton of something or another. Greeks did fairly good for what they had, but the stuff we're using that has something of a historical connection to the stuff they managed shares very, very little in common, particularly outside of naming conventions and the occasional rough outline, these days. There's influence in a very loose sense, but most credit where it's due is due to stuff significantly more recent. Trying to connect the grecian(/roman/pick-your-ancient-culture) stuff with present day systems generally does a fair amount of disservice to both, so far as understanding and whatnot goes.

... also not really worth talking too much about the ones that managed those gains, really. The ones that did weren't the vast majority of the population. The chances of any of us being similar to those few if things somehow happened to revert are pretty slim. There's a difference between literally everyone and functionally everyone, but only so much of one, and for all of us in the functionally everyone shit sucked pretty hard, particularly compared to the last century or so. Even for all the folks in the last century or so that it sucked real damn hard for.

[Mech#4]

No, and this is exactly the arrogance of today that is being exhibited - that everyone back then were uneducated peasants wallowing in offal unaware of infection or viruses, when in reality empirical medicine was being practiced by the Greeks and Chinese to such a meticulous extent that we still use their disease categorization systems and ethical standards 2,500 years later.

Sometimes when I am thinking, I do a brief stop and take stock on all the things that are influenced by the ancient Greeks or that I have them to thank for. It is an awful lot, all together. Terribly fascinating!
[/quote]

The Wikipedia page for medicine in ancient egypt is an interesting read. Things about how they dealt with indigestion, maleria, cleaning and suturing open wounds.
This one in particular, the Eldwin Smith Papyrus, talks about how to deal with injuries to the head, neck and torso.

[MrRoboto75]

Man has not evolved one step beyond the primordial ooze that spawned it

[Silverthrone]

Well... no, it's barely anything except inconsistent nomenclature and occasionally the hollowed out and almost entirely rebuilt skeleton of something or another. Greeks did fairly good for what they had, but the stuff we're using that has something of a historical connection to the stuff they managed shares very, very little in common, particularly outside of naming conventions and the occasional rough outline, these days. There's influence in a very loose sense, but most credit where it's due is due to stuff significantly more recent. Trying to connect the grecian(/roman/pick-your-ancient-culture) stuff with present day systems generally does a fair amount of disservice to both, so far as understanding and whatnot goes.

... also not really worth talking too much about the ones that managed those gains, really. The ones that did weren't the vast majority of the population. The chances of any of us being similar to those few if things somehow happened to revert are pretty slim. There's a difference between literally everyone and functionally everyone, but only so much of one, and for all of us in the functionally everyone shit sucked pretty hard, particularly compared to the last century or so. Even for all the folks in the last century or so that it sucked real damn hard for.

That is, indeed, how history works. 'To thank for' does not mean 'they did it all, and all as it appears in its current shape, and we would never have thought of such things without them', but rather a sense of fascination and thankfulness for the threads through history that has passed through that era, to be influenced and improved upon later. Of course the workings and ideals of modern democracy were not invented as currently used in Greece and Rome, it would be impossible to employ a system of governance from a very different era, even if the world did work like a Civilization-game, and there were these clearly defined idea-parcels floating about and could be readily adopted at will.
Further, while a good point, I believe it is rather obvious that not every one in Classical Greece were a philosopher or a play-wright, wandering the hills being clever all day (A significant part of the population were no doubt slaves; things do indeed get better with time), but rather ordinary people, as in every other culture. I completely fail to see why that would be a reason why those who are remembered are 'not really worth talking about'. It would be as if all those involved in the Enlightenment and their discoveries ought to be neglected in the face of the terrible standard of living that was the reality of the 18th century.

Even so, one should always remember that the 'ordinary' people are terribly important in a historical context, as well. Their lives and their work, after all, is what gave people like Plato and Descartes the possibility to specialise on those things that eventually made them famed in history. Someone must tend the fields and herd the sheep, and, of course, we owe a great deal to those throughout history, as well. And not only in agriculture, of course. Alexander the Great would not have gone very far at all without his now anonymous warriors.

The Wikipedia page for medicine in ancient egypt is an interesting read. Things about how they dealt with indigestion, maleria, cleaning and suturing open wounds.
This one in particular, the Eldwin Smith Papyrus, talks about how to deal with injuries to the head, neck and torso.

Ah, thank you for the links. That will be an interesting read. Ancient Egyptian medicine is quite interesting, and it is always intriguing to see those sorts of surviving documents. Many thanks!

[Jopax]

I am having a yawning attack of some sorts. All of a sudden I started yawning, like, several times a minute for minutes now, seems to be calming down a bit, but holy shit I couldn't take a step because of it. Was my brain so starved for oxygen :C

[Rolan7]

Yep. Could have gotten trapped in the basement and lost too much heat to get out however it came in. Your mum might've saved the snek.

A good deed for the day, and not a bad idea. Sneks eat vermin, after all.

Squirrels, however. They will eat all sorts of things. They are quite vicious little bastards, all together. Fascinating creatures, but have no doubt that where you shrunk to some ten inches high, they would not hesitate to bite your head off. They, too, have to eat, but they are unusually ruthless.

Dang tree-rats.  IDK, usually they're pretty cute, frolicking around eating nuts and things, but I remember times they weren't.  For some reason they would screech almost constantly during certain seasons in Raleigh.  Eventually started filtering it out as background noise, like ugly birdsong.

They also swarmed our pecan tree, naturally...  Except they did it too early, chewing off the sprouts which would someday become pecans.  Clearly the poor things were population-limited by hunger.  So while it was a little uncomfortable to my sensibilities, it was actually pretty merciful when we started shooting and eating them.  They didn't taste great but I felt better from using the meat.  Dad got pretty great with that BB gun, and pumped it to a point where they only suffered for seconds.

So, we should consider that it might not have been bad to live as an uneducated peasant and die of horrible disease because nobody knew about germs or viruses yet?

No, and this is exactly the arrogance of today that is being exhibited - that everyone back then were uneducated peasants wallowing in offal unaware of infection or viruses, when in reality empirical medicine was being practiced by the Greeks and Chinese to such a meticulous extent that we still use their disease categorization systems and ethical standards 2,500 years later.

The Greeks were laudable for trying to classify things, and they were aware of the importance of hygiene.  That's pretty cool, and most of that knowledge was preserved and used in medieval society, if only at the highest echelons.  Most people had folk remedies and probably a basic understanding that unwashed wounds were bad...

Those poor peasants probably didn't understand about the four humors which needed to be kept in proper balance by bleeding or potions.  They knew to clean wounds, but didn't ascribe it to a goddess.  They really didn't have a good system of diagnosis and classification, which sucks for choosing or sharing remedies, but they were just as clueless as the Greeks about germ theory.

(Apparently, making poultices with feces was a thing, but it was a notably un-scientific movement that promoted it...  A movement championed by Hippocrates)

On a different but I feel related noted, just look at how well they (or the Romans) classified animals.  It's both impressive and awful.  See the elephant:
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast77.htm
It's amazing how much they got right, mostly thanks to the Roman's unprecedented travel network.  But there's so much that they got hilariously wrong.

But maybe elephants are an unfair example.  Thing is, they got amusingly simple things wrong about very common animals as well:
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastalphashort.htm
"The weasel conceives at the mouth and gives birth through the ear"
"Geese can smell the odor of man better than any other animal can"
"The cubs are born unformed, and must be licked into shape by the mother" (bears)
And don't get me started on *horses*, which you'd think they'd understand pretty well http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast212.htm

I know you're not saying they're perfect or anything, I mostly shared all this because my friends and I find it interesting and often entertaining.  It is impressive that they *tried*, in such a time.  But they actually understood very little, they simply kept better records of their trial-and-error than the average witch or midwife.  Which was a huge advantage, even though a lot of that knowledge was harmfully wrong.

[TempAcc]

You know, I've always kind of wondered: do we have any police people in the forums? I know we have medical doctors, lawyers, sociologists, different shades of STEM, maybe a civil servant or two, but I've never heard of any policemen/women/thing.

[pisskop]

MetalslimeHunt is a dirty piggy.
I actually qualified to apply as one in my state last month.

[TempAcc]

Sweet.

I'm actualy becoming a police scribe soon, if thats even the proper english term. Kind of a halfway between a investigator and the police chief's right hand man here.

You guys are under arrest for being sluts btw.

[TheBiggerFish]

*looks at TempAcc*
':|

[Draignean]

You guys are under arrest for being sluts btw.

Please, officer, you don't need to arrest us! There has to be something else we can do to... work our crimes off.