Before we get going, we need to eliminate one of the bigger fallacies about previous eras: One cannot apply modern thinking to non-modern settings. It can get sort of interesting when one attempts to impose modern thinking on, say, medieval settings without understanding that it just doesn’t apply.
This is important to understand when we are dealing with a number of social mores. Slavery is the obvious example, as the modern concept is rather limited. This should obviously not be seen as an endorsement of slavery, as we have moved on and it simply no longer applies to our way of life; even prisoners used to do work that others would not, such as cleaning highways, should be compensated for their work. However, in the ancient world it did have a number of advantages, such as allowing a way to preserve cultures when the culture was threatened by conquerors (the culture would be enslaved rather than exterminated), a way to provide for services that few wanted to perform, and spreading of genetic traits (a major bonus when inbreeding was all too frequent).
Another is too assume that cultures were more simple simply because they do not need to deal with today’s politics. It can be argued that the extreme reactions of the time (easily taking offense for even pretend offenses and acting on them) made local politics more interesting, and required a far more delicate touch than they did today. Just the issue that someone could be accused of something and that the accusation needed to be taken seriously no matter how ridiculous the charge could easily make life interesting for the accused. Without today’s necessity for proof courts could get interesting.
It also needs to be noted that a number of assumptions we have about other eras need to be noted every so often. It is almost amusing how many people assume that the Victorian Age is without love or even sex beyond the need to procreate despite the mountains of evidence we have that prostitution flourished, that erotica took on new forms (some that could not even be imagined before its beginning), and that romance was definitely on the wax. We need to look at our own assumptions and investigate whether or not they are worthy of maintaining.
The point here is that our assumptions about how life worked in prior ages is all too often based on invalid information, and sometimes satire or parody took on a life all of its own (such as the apocryphal stories of table legs covered to avoid amorous attentions of young men). We need to allow that not all of the stories are true, and that sometimes are ancestors did what was appropriate for their lives then, and without our current knowledge. It may not work today, but that does not mean that it did not work for them; it was a simpler time, and that applies to technology as well as it did to the people. This is a necessary first step.
This is important to understand when we are dealing with a number of social mores. Slavery is the obvious example, as the modern concept is rather limited. This should obviously not be seen as an endorsement of slavery, as we have moved on and it simply no longer applies to our way of life; even prisoners used to do work that others would not, such as cleaning highways, should be compensated for their work. However, in the ancient world it did have a number of advantages, such as allowing a way to preserve cultures when the culture was threatened by conquerors (the culture would be enslaved rather than exterminated), a way to provide for services that few wanted to perform, and spreading of genetic traits (a major bonus when inbreeding was all too frequent).
Another is too assume that cultures were more simple simply because they do not need to deal with today’s politics. It can be argued that the extreme reactions of the time (easily taking offense for even pretend offenses and acting on them) made local politics more interesting, and required a far more delicate touch than they did today. Just the issue that someone could be accused of something and that the accusation needed to be taken seriously no matter how ridiculous the charge could easily make life interesting for the accused. Without today’s necessity for proof courts could get interesting.
It also needs to be noted that a number of assumptions we have about other eras need to be noted every so often. It is almost amusing how many people assume that the Victorian Age is without love or even sex beyond the need to procreate despite the mountains of evidence we have that prostitution flourished, that erotica took on new forms (some that could not even be imagined before its beginning), and that romance was definitely on the wax. We need to look at our own assumptions and investigate whether or not they are worthy of maintaining.
The point here is that our assumptions about how life worked in prior ages is all too often based on invalid information, and sometimes satire or parody took on a life all of its own (such as the apocryphal stories of table legs covered to avoid amorous attentions of young men). We need to allow that not all of the stories are true, and that sometimes are ancestors did what was appropriate for their lives then, and without our current knowledge. It may not work today, but that does not mean that it did not work for them; it was a simpler time, and that applies to technology as well as it did to the people. This is a necessary first step.
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