I'm not sure it's demonstrated we can cope with change even at a linear level.
Falling is an exponential process which explains why the Greeks were so afraid when the bird dropped a turtle and killed the bald guy.
It seems to me that at the micro level, you're always going to have a lot of individual variation. Which grandkids survive to adulthood, which get caught up in a plague or war, which marry into another village, which emigrate to a distant location. You're a Celt and some asshole Jutes show up to marry all your granddaughters and your great grandkids all speak some strange gibberish. The wife you picked for your second son dies in childbirth with her fourth kid, and the step-mother works to favor her kids over the first batch, deflecting the lives of grandkids not yet realized.
The last is what people mean when they ask for a fairy tale romance.
Interestingly, though, a whole lot of human perception is logarithmic.
Does the history have to be recorded in that specific time and place? Because if not surely Australia or more specifically Tasmania about six thousand years after the ice age has to be in with a shout.
I've been toying with moderating my stance to "all nostalgia is potentially bad." Final position being hashed out in committee.
|| NMM 2 Edward de Bono. So, linear thinking it is. |>
The olds have been complaining about the youths at least since the invention of writing, and by historical standards, not much changed. Competing evolutionary hypothesis: by age 30 our brains calcify the world into 'the way things are' which soon becomes 'the way things outta be' and then anything different is an aberration.
Which explains why I rejected "totes".
I was working in agricultural extension 20 years ago when I was given an extension bulletin from the 1920's. I could have changed the date at the top and sent it out and no one would have known the difference. I decided it was hopeless and moved on to a different job.
My friend's sister was on Backyard Farmer, the extention's tv show.
|| Mostly unmasked, 50,000-person Bitcoin conference goes about like you would expect. |>
The whole thing is a pump and dump anyway.
Heebie, from what I've read over at Delong's blog, basically any time before the Industrial Revolution, had the attribute you're looking for. True, life changed slowly over centuries, but still, look at any 2-3 century stretch, and things were remarkably the same for almost all people.
I have a different take on olds complaining about the young, that we were all callow shitheads when we were young. I would apologize to my parents, but they are conveniently dead, so I'm off the hook.
A surprising amount changed in the European Middle Ages, but slowly -- except for the Black Death or, if you were a French peasant in hitherto peaceful Gascony, the English.
But basically, any agricultural society is going to involve a shitload of back-breaking monotonous labour with no chance of change at least until fossil fuels are exploited on a large scale. Rice paddies, wheat fields, and so on. A lot of stoop labour even before cash crops like sugar and cotton. One third of the population of Anglo-Saxon England were slaves in 1065. After the conquest they were maybe called "villeins" instead, but it didn't really improve their status.
Some period between anatomically modern humans and the Neolithic, GY's 8 being a contender. I was going to say simply halfway through, but I doubt there was that much continuity. What NW says for the Middle Ages is AFAIK true in every society we can see, even where evidence is limited to stone tools. The 19C view of pre-modern stasis is utterly wrong.
That's a compelling idea about Buddhism. Heebie, was this the uncle that you've mentioned to me in the past?