Quote:
Ecurb wrote:
Of course I see something is very wrong with our world. I’m not Candide. What I don’t see is that we have degenerated from some ideal past. Are you suggesting that no negative stereotypes about women existed in the past? If you are, I dispute it. Women have more freedom today than they have in most of the known past (men, too, for that matter). Although stereotypes exist, they are less prevalent and pernicious than they have been in centuries.
I don’t doubt that some people are anxious and others are depressed. But hasn’t that always been the case? Wasn’t Lady Bertram, sitting endlessly on her couch stroking Pug “clinically depressed”? Don’t you think women who stood a good chance of dying in childbirth, and whose children were likely to die before they turned five, were just as anxious as modern women, whose children generally survive, and who usually complete more than their three score and ten?
Why is it that people always see the problems with the present, and idealize the past? I hear constantly about the high stress of fast paced modern life. But isn’t this ridiculous? Wouldn’t a life where one’s children often die, when one is subject to countless diseases and plagues, and when one might starve if the hunt is unsuccessful be a lot more stressful than modern life? We live in the most stress-free, least anxious time in the history of the world.
In fact, the hustle and bustle of modern life is a mere illusion. We look out our window and see cars and trucks driving by. But the people inside them are sitting still. If there were more activity, there would be less hustle and bustle.
Of course diagnosis of ‘depression’ and ‘anxiety’ has increased – the medical profession is treating more and more things. But that’s no reason to assume that there is actually more depression or anxiety. It seems likely that there was more anxiety in the past – and for better reason.
