Of course not! But the question isn't "Would you rather live in the Renaissance or now?" the question is, "Would you rather live in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance?" And for the average person, the answer is, "The Renaissance! It was so glorious, and the Middle Ages were so dark, and ProgressTM!"
And her point is that life expectancy actually dropped, and quality of life became a lot more horrible for the masses, and no matter how great the art and science was, the Renaissance was not necessarily an improvement on the Middle Ages for the average person, and we need to rethink this Whig take on history as inevitable progress.
Likewise, whenever I hear people talk about the Bronze Age collapse and the ensuing "Dark Ages", I point out what one of my archaeology profs said: "no huge palaces =/= unhappier populace." (He wouldn't let us use the term "Dark Ages".) We don't know that, after the dust settled, the average person was happier...but just because the art and architecture got a lot worse, doesn't mean the average person's life did. A lot of great projects are produced by having a highly stratified society, and highly stratified societies are not always nice to the people further down, see also: Fritz and Lehndorff.
besides, say, 2015 as opposed to 2020
Funnily enough, just the other day my wife and I were talking about our last Europe trip, in 2012, and how it was the Dark Ages, because we didn't have smartphones or data/texting plans or anything, and we had to sit in hotel lobbies and print maps and trace out our excursions for the day, and we missed so many things because we didn't know that were in the place that had X thing we'd heard of, because the wifi was so crap you'd only use it for 5 minutes a day, while cursing.
And god knows, finding food was harder; you'd walk down the street and go, "I'm hungry, this place has food," instead of actually getting to read reviews, or even just see what place is freaking open (Italy the entire afternoon, when you have to walk really far before you find a place that's open, because you just got off the train and you're starving, but everyone's on siesta for the next four hours, omg).
So once the dust settles (pandemic, my health, our income which closely correlates to my health), hopefully in a couple of years I can go with international data plans and have an even better time in and around Berlin!
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Re: 1799
Date: 2020-06-09 11:05 am (UTC)And her point is that life expectancy actually dropped, and quality of life became a lot more horrible for the masses, and no matter how great the art and science was, the Renaissance was not necessarily an improvement on the Middle Ages for the average person, and we need to rethink this Whig take on history as inevitable progress.
Likewise, whenever I hear people talk about the Bronze Age collapse and the ensuing "Dark Ages", I point out what one of my archaeology profs said: "no huge palaces =/= unhappier populace." (He wouldn't let us use the term "Dark Ages".) We don't know that, after the dust settled, the average person was happier...but just because the art and architecture got a lot worse, doesn't mean the average person's life did. A lot of great projects are produced by having a highly stratified society, and highly stratified societies are not always nice to the people further down, see also: Fritz and Lehndorff.
besides, say, 2015 as opposed to 2020
Funnily enough, just the other day my wife and I were talking about our last Europe trip, in 2012, and how it was the Dark Ages, because we didn't have smartphones or data/texting plans or anything, and we had to sit in hotel lobbies and print maps and trace out our excursions for the day, and we missed so many things because we didn't know that were in the place that had X thing we'd heard of, because the wifi was so crap you'd only use it for 5 minutes a day, while cursing.
And god knows, finding food was harder; you'd walk down the street and go, "I'm hungry, this place has food," instead of actually getting to read reviews, or even just see what place is freaking open (Italy the entire afternoon, when you have to walk really far before you find a place that's open, because you just got off the train and you're starving, but everyone's on siesta for the next four hours, omg).
So once the dust settles (pandemic, my health, our income which closely correlates to my health), hopefully in a couple of years I can go with international data plans and have an even better time
in and around Berlin!