Before that, people were “experimented on” by viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Also indoor smoke, etc. And how do you think folk remedies were tested?
To fuck around and find out is not modern, it’s the human condition.
In this case specifically of "to err is human; to forgive is divine," which sounds to me like Johnson but I'm not going to try looking up the attribution because, in this context in particular, the universe's love for irony all but guarantees I'll get it wrong.
Half of all humans who ever lived did not make it past the age of five. We are living in the best time. I will take any of these problems over not knowing where my next meal is coming from, or dying from infection after a paper cut.
That is a reasonable personal position but it's not universal. It implicitly seems to assume that a long life of relative ease and physical health is best no matter how that is achieved. Personally I'd prefer a relatively short life of profound meaning and autonomy (even if it involves painful loss and physical suffering) over living in a rat's cage for 80 years, kept alive by my captors.
> Personally I'd prefer a relatively short life of profound meaning and autonomy (even if it involves painful loss and physical suffering) over living in a rat's cage for 80 years, kept alive by my captors.
Historically, that hasn't been an option.
"A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.
What about hunter gatherers? Even in the history of our more recent western ancestors, people have always made radical decisions to live lives outside of the mainstream. Religious fanatics and martyrs come to mind.
> "A relatively short life full of painful loss and physical suffering, living in a rat's cage" would be a better description of the median serf.
You are leaving out the part I said about profound meaning. Mental suffering matters as much as physical suffering and a lack of meaning is a sure cause of mental suffering and is experienced by many if not most modern information workers to varying degrees.
"Hunter gatherers" "profound meaning" was what exactly? Religion? AKA superstition fueled by ignorance, that's an option available to you now.
Really whatever your definition of profound meaning is it is available to you now if you choose to see it. If you are waiting for your context to provide it for you, good luck.
Now you’re just cherry-picking: going by raw years alone, we have been hunter-gatherers for far longer than the the thousands of years that have passed since the Agricultural Revolution started ('median serf').
“Oh”, someone says: “But more and more people have been born since the time we were hunter-gatherers”. Which is also true. But then surely you would pick “historically” to still be sometime after the Industrial Revolution, since we have doubled the population many times over since then. Hence, talking about serfs if that is some kind of middle-point “historically” is just cherry-picking.
I did myself some kind of old man injury bodysurfing in Mollymook last week. A quick bust of freestyle swimming to get on the wave busted something in my arm.
Well, if you got, say, a compound fracture, you were at least losing the limb. And in that process just hope the 'surgeon'/butcher was quick and not too drunk, and that luck was on your side in terms of bacteria.
