Medieval work rate vs modern

[bilbobaggins]

My latest article corrects fallacies about the workload of the medieval peasant and serf. It demonstrates that despite modern myths, they worked far fewer hours at a more plausible rate than we do!
Work and Leisure in the Middle Ages
https://bibliotecanatalie.com/home/f/work-and-leisure-in-the-middle-ages

[KreKre]

Excellent, as always!

[LausTibiChriste]

Great article 

Can't wait for the prudes to get triggered by it.

[Melkor]

Good stuff.

[Antonius]

Very enjoyable

[james03]

You have to avoid country mouse / city mouse thinking.  You see it among rural women especially.  My brother dated a chick in North Carolina who talked incessantly about moving to New York City and joining a dance company.  She LOVED the movie Flash Dance.  She gave up a great husband, kids, and a good life chasing that.  Most likely she ended up becoming a pour girl for Diddy parties.

You saw the same with the Sex and the City girls.  Country girls who would go off to college and move to a big city thinking they'd get to date (and dump) a new millionaire every weekend (and crying over it with friends), making sure not to miss brunch on Sundays.

On the other side is this glorification of rural living.  Consider how much hay one animal needs to get through winter.  Now imagine hand cutting that with a scythe, hand raking it, and hand baling it.  Back breaking work. That's just to put back enough hay to get you through the winter.  Hand sowing and hand weeding and hand harvesting is also grueling in the hot sun. If you don't have animals, then yes you do get a nice break in the winter. 

Still, if you feel a drive to live a serf's life, that's doable.  You can even buy the tools they used to use.

One of capitalism's most enduring myths is that it has reduced human toil- Juliet Schor

Does she mean "capitalism" or "industrialization"?

[james03]

An interesting question for me is why do cities always become dens of iniquity.  Think back to Rome.

I personally hate cities and purposefully chose to work in the blue-collar side of engineering.  I also think that every young man should take a year and go work with an all-male blue collar crew and get them to whip his arse and toughen him up.  That's related.

Likely it gets down to people going soft.  If you live a rural life, even live as a serf, you aren't going to be soft.  Ironically the times of the serfs were culturally better than present day, due in part because the serfs were hard men.  And these men had appreciation.

Hard men create good times.
Good times create soft men.
Soft men can't handle their women, which results in a matriarchy and bad times.
Bad times create hard men.

[Heinrich]

Men in Northern US cities were not soft.

[james03]

There were not soft.  They became corrupt and soft.  Vee Poo had a lot to do with it.

Come to think about it, I guess I answered my own question.

[drummerboy]

Men in Northern US cities were not soft.

Because most of them came from the industrial hell holes this article deplored.

 I think big cities create a disconnect from reality. For a rather earthy example, seeing two animals mating on the farm is about the best lesson you can give on the absurdity of men having babies and all this trans nonsense.  Even small cities are often close enough to the country that people can see how nature operates.  Or: why do big cities always vote liberal? They keep reelecting the same scumbags that ruin their city.  They are incapable of comprehending that, say, congressman Bob, who's been in office for 20 years, actually hasn't done anything to improve their lives despite telling them every election cycle how great their lives will be with him in office!

[Heinrich]

Those industrial "hell holes" were bastions of Catholicism. Beautiful, clean, safe homogenous neighborhoods. When the Interstates came through, Playboy magazine and then V2, it was over.

[james03]

If you look at some tough dudes during WW2, it was the US Marines in the Pacific.  And they had a big contingent of urban Catholics.

The main problem we've had is Vee Poo and so it is important to steer clear of recency bias.  Still, there is something about urban living that the Church needs to be vigilant about.  St. John Chrysostom wrote about it:

Or what explanation shall I give, if a visitor arrives from somewhere and challenges us and says: "Is this the city of the Apostles? Is this the city that received so great a teacher? Is this the people who love Christ, who is the genuine, spiritual, spectacle?"

[Bonaventure]

Those industrial "hell holes" were bastions of Catholicism. Beautiful, clean, safe homogenous neighborhoods. When the Interstates came through, Playboy magazine and then V2, it was over.

Indeed. The agrarian romanticism has never been part of the Catholic ethos until modern times.

We have always been an urban religion, with an urban culture.

Urbi et Orbi.

[LausTibiChriste]

Those industrial "hell holes" were bastions of Catholicism. Beautiful, clean, safe homogenous neighborhoods. When the Interstates came through, Playboy magazine and then V2, it was over.

Indeed. The agrarian romanticism has never been part of the Catholic ethos until modern times.

We have always been an urban religion, with an urban culture.

Urbi et Orbi.

Care to back that up?

[drummerboy]

Those industrial "hell holes" were bastions of Catholicism. Beautiful, clean, safe homogenous neighborhoods. When the Interstates came through, Playboy magazine and then V2, it was over.

When you say "Northern" my mind went to Civil War Era cities. Men in the cities jumped on that Union army enlistment bonus for a reason.  Early to mid 20th century though, no, not too bad