One of the great cruelties of living through ‘interesting times’ is that life still goes on.
Subsistence farmers in Medieval Europe living through countless wars, economic turmoil, and the Black Plague in the 14th century AD still had to get up, sow the fields, secure the granary from vermin, pay their lord’s taxes, etc. No amount of horror stopped life from going on. It just… continues. Same in accounts of civilian life in WW1 and WW2.
There’s no moment where most personal stories turn into a continuous tale of heroic resistance, or of valiant martyrdom. Even the heroes and martyrs have to live day-to-day; it’s just that certain parts of their story are more memorable than others.
I think it bears considering that the farmers’ work was directly connected to their own survival and welfare. They didn’t have to sit through meetings on the Company’s new ”values” or do telemarketing for pump and dump AI or crypto scams, while the world burns.
They may have had it harder, but many of the most sadistic forms of existential anguish, and lack of meaning, had yet to be invented.
One of the great cruelties of living through ‘interesting times’ is that life still goes on.
Subsistence farmers in Medieval Europe living through countless wars, economic turmoil, and the Black Plague in the 14th century AD still had to get up, sow the fields, secure the granary from vermin, pay their lord’s taxes, etc. No amount of horror stopped life from going on. It just… continues. Same in accounts of civilian life in WW1 and WW2.
There’s no moment where most personal stories turn into a continuous tale of heroic resistance, or of valiant martyrdom. Even the heroes and martyrs have to live day-to-day; it’s just that certain parts of their story are more memorable than others.
I think it bears considering that the farmers’ work was directly connected to their own survival and welfare. They didn’t have to sit through meetings on the Company’s new ”values” or do telemarketing for pump and dump AI or crypto scams, while the world burns.
They may have had it harder, but many of the most sadistic forms of existential anguish, and lack of meaning, had yet to be invented.