Life back in 1300

I have no idea what peoples lives were like centuries ago. Say in 1300 or whenever. Were the common people mostly hungry all the time? Constantly suffering from plague, disease, illness? Was life short, nasty and brutal? How did they entertain themselves? They didn't have the Internet, nor TV, nor books (and they couldn't read anyway). And what would they think of our modern world?

And if I went back in time to 1300, what would they think of me? Would I be able to blend in? Would they think I'm weird?

The fetishizing of work

I read the following article:

The Cult of Busy-ness

The author says:

[Steve Jobs] was a man who lived a life almost completely devoid of any reason to be alive. His renowned ascetic existence was grey and cheerless and boring beyond endurance. And… well… he’s dead. How is this success?

Our culture has a fixation on work. Success and worthiness, one's standing, have been defined by how hard one works and how much money one earns. For many people, work becomes the point of their existence. Without it they would become lost, be forced to look inside themselves and face the inevitable existential angst. We all need goals, and the goal of being a "success" and held in high esteem by others has a certain appeal.

Newton and a smartphone

Imagine if you went back in time to 1770 and showed Isaac Newton a modern smartphone (obviously can't make calls, but the camera, torch, chess programs etc would work). Would he think it was magical, produced by witchcraft or whatever? Or would he understand that the regularities (physical laws) describing reality are much more intricate than he might have supposed. Regularities that can be utilized to produce such a wonderous device?

I think the latter.

Chatting about other people

I've heard it claim that two-thirds of human conversation is gossip about other people. Surely not?? Anyway, I scarcely ever talk about other people. It's just not something that interests me. I'm extremely bad even by male standards.

This is problematic because it's how many people bond. They don't like talking about intellectual stuff, they like talking about whatshecalled been up to. "She did what?? Ooh, well I never!" Well, at least some women talk like that, if not men!

Anyway, more seriously, as I said it helps to bond people together . People like to share their experiences of others, especially negative experiences. They want sympathy, they want to express how they feel about others. I think it's disadvantageous having little interest in such stuff. Oh well, I've always been different.

By 2404

I really have no idea what the future might be like in, say, 400 years time or so. What will the world be like in 2404? What will have happened to the climate? They'll have been mass migration from the hot areas of the world to Europe by then, since these hot areas might be too hot for human beings to exist. People will start living in Antarctica.

What will technology be like? Probably we will have a shared virtual reality pretty much indistinguishable from real life. We'll have robots that maybe look like us and on a superficial level behave and speak like us. But they still don't fool people that they are sentient for any appreciable length of time as there's something off, weird, unconvincing about them.

And will people still subscribe to philosophical materialism? Next 100 years the mainstream view might be some type of materialism, but not by 2404.

If I'd never been born

What would the world be like if I had never been born? Exactly the same as very few people have known me and even those that have never listen or read anything I say? I don't think so. Infinitesimally small changes in the world lead to larger and larger effects without end, leaving nothing untouched until the whole world is changed. I reckon if any one of us had never been born, the world would be different, perhaps very different.

A trip to the supermarket (fictional).

I was just thinking. Suppose I went into a supermarket, a large one to shop for my groceries. It's fairly quiet as it's early evening and there's only about a 100 people in. Suddenly, as I'm walking around holding my basket, I hear a loud boom and I feel the floor move beneath my feet and I almost fall over. I look around, wondering what the hell happened there. There's a couple of people near me who likewise appear bewildered.

A few seconds later, from the front of the supermarket near the entrance, I hear a bewildered shout followed by a babble of confused voices. The shouting and confusion soon gets worse -- much worse bordering on hysteria. I make my way to the front of the supermarket. Out of the windows I see that the world has completely changed! Instead of a car-park filled with cars and nearby buildings, they've all been replaced by a lush, vibrant green forest.

We all pour out of the entrance. The cacophony of confusion, bewilderment, and hysteria continue. Suddenly, we all hear an almighty, huge roar. It's a tyrannosaurus Rex, attracted by the noise and feasting its malevolent gaze upon us! We all panic and there's a stampede to get back into the supermarket, jamming the door in the process. Thankfully, we all manage to get back inside before it reaches us.

Oh well, plenty of tins of food to consume for the near future, and also shelter provided by the supermarket. Pity supermarkets don't sell guns though.

Think will continue getting my groceries delivered.

We cannot see the self

The fact that you can’t see your eyes doesn’t mean that you don’t have any. Likewise, the fact we cannot see the self doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The self is that which perceives, it's not itself a perception.

The Wisdom of the Cherokee

 

Yes, precisely. The issue of rights and the associated notion of pursuing one's own self interests is often to the detriment of society as a whole. The tragedy of the commons illustrates this. It serves to alienate us all from each other, to view others as competitors. Contrariwise, obligations serve to bind us together, to care for one another. This leads to close-knit communities that are not only beneficial to the local environment and ultimately the planet, but leads to fellowship, a sense of belonging, contentment.

In 2062

I wonder what the world will be like in 40 years time in 2061. Be interesting to travel forwards in time to that date, although not so good if I can't get back.

Will anyone have set foot on Mars? I doubt it. Will we have conscious computers? No.. Will autonomous cars dominate the roads? Ugh . . difficult one, level 4 yes that can drive in prescribed areas, but not level 5 cars that can drive anywhere. Will we have a theory of everything (TOE)? No. Will we be able to upload our minds? No. Will virtual reality have become a big thing by then? Yes.

Education and Indoctrination

It has been said that indoctrination and education are polar opposites and absolutely incompatible.

In an ideal world, but certainly not in practice. To a large measure, education indoctrinates us into believing that our modern "scientific" picture of the world has more or less given us a correct picture of what reality is with only the details needing to be filled in. Thus, there is no God, no afterlife, no magic, no ghosts, no psi, no objective morality, no "free will", no ultimate given purpose to our lives, no colours, sounds or smells in the external world.

I surmise my "education" has been very poor since I believe in all of these things (possibly not magic, I lack sufficient information to reach a conclusion here).

It's a bizarre situation we find ourselves in

It's bizarre enough that we find ourselves existing on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an eternal nothingness. But, arguably, what's even more bizarre is that no-one questions it. Everyone thinks it's normal. 

We need to take a step back and just consider how utterly strange is the situation in which we find ourselves. Are we all being deceived? Are our lives akin to some strange dream, and when we die we'll realise how preposterous it all is? I don't know.