Imagine there are no books..and no movies..

[blazeofglory]

I often wonder we again live in prehistoric times with no books, no TVs, no cinemas. Doing things instinctively. No stress, no complexities. Life goes on and on without sophistication.

We work on farms using simple implements. Come home and you will find it cozy and stress-free playing with little ones. No noise pollution. You express things when you like, never dramatizing things. You live simple homes, and use firewood to warm yourself and your family members.

You will never a flower from somebody's point of view the way you do now, analyzing the beauty of it not the way it is but from some aesthetic or philosophical or poetic point of view.

You do not rationalize things the way we so called intellectuals do. We can not enjoy things. There are always doubts, skepticisms. We can not believe in what others said for mostly ideas or informations are fabricated or fictionalized.

We will be in touch with nature. We will be be more with rivers, farms, animals, trees, mountains than with TV's Cinemas, Discos, books, and videos and the like.

For man's life is too short, and we keep on amassing things endlessly. We build houses that are not properly lived in, we occupy so much land and we need but a very little of it. We may say for security's sake. But can these things secure us?

Now we are really complicating life more and more. There are disharmonies, inconsistencies everywhere.

We have invented religions and cultures yet they are dividing us more than before. Racism, fundamentalism and so many things are there to divide us, to fragment us and to disintegrate us along divisive lines.

[Big Al]

No thanks.

[aswelch]

talk about my worst nightmare...and so boring

[crazefest456]

well, the absence of such media only makes us look for other ways to express/discuss ideas...it's our nature to find such tools (not restricted to books and movies)..But it really would be boring without them.

[Midas]

I think you are getting your ages a little mixed - prehistoric - then agrarian.
Anyway, that off my chest, I do understand what you mean, or the point you are making.

However, as to them being 'stress free' whichever age you are in, I would say from my understanding through reading and research, I conclude that for the common man, at least, they were anything but stress free.

Sure, they didn't concern themselves with some of the problems we have, or are told we have, from the ubiquitous media in all its forms today. But they had others we don't even think about.

Generally, though, it seems, the one thing in their favour, was that they did not have as long as we have to suffer their stresses - they died younger.

In which age would you have preferred to live? Be honest.

[adampearson]

Are you kidding me?? You don't not often imagine that, you just want to seem mysterious. Also, hunting a woolly mammoth with a spear, no wheel? You're right, problem free.

[blazeofglory]

Are you kidding me?? You don't not often imagine that, you just want to seem mysterious. Also, hunting a woolly mammoth with a spear, no wheel? You're right, problem free.

My friend, I am not kidding at all. Life is getting complexer with time. Now people distance themselves from nature. We are indeed stormed with more and more challenges and life is getting more burdensome, more challenging. Children are pressed to read and be successful. Maybe this does not apply to your circumstances in your country. But in Nepal and in entire South Asia life is getting really increasingly more complicated with more advancement in technology and the like.

[Oniw17]

As long as there's language, the majority of people will continue to think in the words of others, and as long as there's discussion, there will be intellectuals. Without books there would still be oral history, and oral teacching and investigation of science. I don't think anything would be much different actually, society-wise I mean. Lots of other stuff would be different. Don't forget, it was already like that at different points throughout history, and we ended up where we are today(which I think is inevidable, provided that language exists).

[blazeofglory]

As long as there's language, the majority of people will continue to think in the words of others, and as long as there's discussion, there will be intellectuals. Without books there would still be oral history, and oral teacching and investigation of science. I don't think anything would be much different actually, society-wise I mean. Lots of other stuff would be different. Don't forget, it was already like that at different points throughout history, and we ended up where we are today(which I think is inevidable, provided that language exists).

Indeed there would be discussions, and oral teachings. Yet people have limited memory power and they can not remember things always, and greater parts of human traditions, achievements would have been lost. People could not have understood so closely as we would have today.

The other side is a romantic side. People would be a little freer, and will not live with the burden of books. People would be more in proximity with nature. In a sentence they would be more themselves.

[bibliophile190]

I think I'd like society to stay the way it is now.

[jon1jt]

i generally agree with what you're saying, blaze. you make some valid observations of human life today, what has in a sense become the human condition. it wasn't always this fast-paced, or the people so innanely disconnected. yet, i don't think life during any period of human history was stress-free as you say. people were wracked by the whims of nature, so there was an immediacy to things. to let tasks linger could be disastrous on entire communities, today, there's a tendency to put things off. we are imbued with a sense of having endless tomorrows, which creates a lethargy in people who end up accomplishing little to nothing. this has become a way of life though we are disinclined to see it that way.

nature was never viewed by whole populations with a sense of appreciation as you describe. the land was there and viewed in terms of what could be extracted from it. there was no intellectualizing about that. certainly the natives along with some other indigenous cultures had a heightened appreciation of the earth, but even they saw it in terms of what it offered. the mythologizing native was too, part, exploitive. we must be cautious about glorifying a past that never existed, or romanticizing a world that will never be. there's still a great deal of land to love, and enough trees to string up a big hammock between and connect the stars with your finger. go west, man.

[blazeofglory]

i generally agree with what you're saying, blaze. you make some valid observations of human life today, what has in a sense become the human condition. it wasn't always this fast-paced, or the people so innanely disconnected. yet, i don't think life during any period of human history was stress-free as you say. people were wracked by the whims of nature, so there was an immediacy to things. to let tasks linger could be disastrous on entire communities, today, there's a tendency to put things off. we are imbued with a sense of having endless tomorrows, which creates a lethargy in people who end up accomplishing little to nothing. this has become a way of life though we are disinclined to see it that way.

nature was never viewed by whole populations with a sense of appreciation as you describe. the land was there and viewed in terms of what could be extracted from it. there was no intellectualizing about that. certainly the natives along with some other indigenous cultures had a heightened appreciation of the earth, but even they saw it in terms of what it offered. the mythologizing native was too, part, exploitive. we must be cautious about glorifying a past that never existed, or romanticizing a world that will never be. there's still a great deal of land to love, and enough trees to string up a big hammock between and connect the stars with your finger. go west, man.

I indeed subscribe to your views. Of course people in primitive times hard times to fight against natural forces. Nature was very cruel. There were tremendous threats from the wilderness, for men lived in caves and in caverns and every time they had to protect themselves against agressions.

Since I too am from an agrarian society. My father was a farmer. I too used to work on farms using only primitive implements. Life was indeed much harder than the one I am having now. There was not enough money to buy things the way now I can do or my family members can do.

Yet despite everything life was much stress free then. Life was really easier . with all kinds of scarcities. Maybe from some other perspectives I maybe wrong

[Bakiryu]

It'd be beautiful yet not. Life is easier right now but still but still cruel from a humane view point. Maybe If we could just cleanse the whole slate and begin anew. (Flood, anyone?)

[Midas]

"...........Maybe If we could just cleanse the whole slate and begin anew. (Flood, anyone?)..............."

This is a thought of many. However, I do not believe it is a perspicuous one.

Why?

Let me sow a few seeds of thought for anyone with the mind to turn over.

(1) What would stop us from committing the same follies - again?

(2) Could it not be even worse, next time?

(3) If we pride (deceive) ourselves into believing we live in a democracy does not that mean if the majority are unhappy with the way things are, we can change it?

(4) Can we really blame it on countries that are not so called 'democracies'
The 'Western' civilisations who claim to be 'democratic' have held the most powerful, and influential, position for a very long time.

(5) Have we really set a good example for others to follow? Really? You believe that?

(6) Is it not our duty if we want people to follow our ideals, that we ensure our own house is in order to set that role model example?

(7) Nations, and societies are only a collection of people. Therefore do we not start by making ourselves, individually, a good role model.

(8) Are YOU (WE) a good role model, if not, are we prepared to make required changes?

(9) Nature, untainted by man, and created by G-d (God) (or is it all just a big accident?) Whatever we believe. Does it not also appear to have 'cruel' aspects - survival of fittest, big fish eating little fish......

(10) If life held no apprehensions, if all was sweetness, and perfection, would that really make us happy? There have been societies that were reasonably happy with their lot, and stress was kept down to a minimum, by comparison.

However, when so called accepted 'western' ideals were forcibly introduced, and their way of life changed, they became just as, or almost as, prone to the afflictions that pervade our life.

In my humble (yes, ever so humble, almost to make Uriah Heap look as conceited as Kenneth Graham's Mr Toad) limited capacity I do not have the answers, well, at least not all of them ( I did stress I am humble). I therefore pose questions.

Here comes another 'however'. I have observed that there is a requirement for a positive, and a negative force in certain energies (perhaps all, I don't know not being a particularly scientific person, though my last name is Newton) So maybe what is really wrong, and where we should be concentrating our 'energy' is seeking the balance of life to ensure that nothing gets too far out of sync.

In other words, it is the imbalance of that which we have come to term good and bad (which in themselves are only words) that is the real cause of our problems?

I leave those thoughts with you.

[JCamilo]

Life was complex back them. People disagreed with each other and that is why they killed each other (before agricultors we are hunters. And Human meat was nice).
I do not know if you really understand but Cinema, as we know, is so new that people in the guiness book of record are older than cinema.
Other thing - Cinema and Literature do not create society, neither its complexity - It represents it. As all art. To eliminated human complexity you would have find a a world without humanity.
Capacity of Aesthetic examination of an object is a way to add complexity and not simplicity. And it is what started all arts.
The primitive humans had a lot of doubts and questions, hence the reason why the started with the myths, seeking for answers.
Racism was born there. Your tribe, my tribe.

You are very confusing and a man with more capacity of argument that you showed here once wrote a book defending in some ways the return to nature. Then another man, which capacity of argumentation is superior to all of us, read the book and asnwer "Very interesting, but no thanks. I have spent 80 years walking with two legs it would hurt me a lot trying to walk on fours again". It was Rousseau and Voltaire.