Stop romanticising the ‘traditional’ past

While we must admire the struggle they went through, appreciate that they built a better life for their descendants, and we must ‘preserve the fire’ that they bequeathed to us.

The present may be a foreign country to many of us, amidst the rapid technological and social change that the Western world has experienced over three generations, which have seemingly poured an avalanche of corrosive acid onto the bedrock of civilisation. Now in the year 2023, a generation that is entering a cut throat evaporating job market, the rent-o-sphere, and diminished wage power will soon throw its hat in the ring for political office.

Many of this generation did not see the 20th Century, so the Spice Girls and payphones are completely foreign to them, and they will shape the future according to the cultural standpoints and values of the early 21st Century. How frightening.

But this will be a tale for another time: this article today is about the past, and a warning not to romanticise or even fetishise it. For all the bright oil paintings of idyllic rural life in 19th Century England coupled with canvasses featuring a sprawling, vibrant neighbourhood of Ancient Rome, it gives the impression that these lost worlds were a utopia.

For the reality is that, while all times have had their triumphs, they have been equally inflicted by tribulations – some so severe that theologians believed the apocalypse had come (they would do well on Rumble today).

While traditional society undoubtedly had a close knit, high trust society with stable, monogamous families living under a roof that only had to be built rather than paid off over thirty years, these people endured turmoil that no self-identifying Trad on Twitter would wish to return to.

In pre-industrial society, 25% of children died before their first birthday, while half of children departed this world before their 15th birthday, and there are two primary causes for this heart-breaking infant mortality rate: malnutrition and infection.

While our own window of history is incredibly unhealthy, with expanding waistlines, sedentary lifestyles, and a fast food buffet just a click away, ‘traditional’ children were often deprived of critical vitamins necessary to the function of their bodies, leaving them vulnerable to the Grim Reaper.

Furthermore, infectious diseases that once haunted humanity through the centuries, such as smallpox, measles, and polio, have been all but wiped out thanks to improved sanitation and vaccination.

Maternal mortality was also extremely high compared to our own glimpse of existence. In the 19th Century, between 500-1000 mothers died per 100,000 births. Today, the U.K has a rate of 9.6 following advances in modern medicine and hospital births (physicians once did not wash their hands before attending a delivery).

In the pre-Christian world we admire, for all of their glories, heroes, and many civic customs we inherit from them, they do harbour some very dark secrets. Unwanted children in ancient Rome were left in ‘exposure pots’, either picked up by passers-by or killed by the elements. Pre-pubescent boys in Rome and Sparta were also systemically abused by older men on a scale that would make the Catholic church blush.

If one were to survive into adulthood, unabused and unspoiled, they would have contended with famine, plague, and war.

While we must admire the struggle they went through, appreciate that they built a better life for their descendants, and we must ‘preserve the fire’ that they bequeathed to us, we must not idolise a narrow view of perfection and simplicity.

Our time is one of material abundance, the omnipresence of technology, the end to natural selection and physical hardship, but, as Fight Club’s Tyler Durden iterates, our turmoil is one of meaning: ‘our great depression is our lives’.

We have our own challenges to worry about. How do we cope with widespread use of potentially corrupting and destructive technologies? How do we live authentic lives when our jobs and social connections are trapped inside a pixelated screen? How do we process humanity’s default settings to expect struggle and strife when we endure nothing but comfort and food security?

These are the questions that we must answer, but one day will answer. Then some fool two hundred years from now can worship our present.