Survivorship bias. I have poor eyesight, no amount of practice would ever allow me to throw a spear and hit a wild animal. Heck with lots of occupational therapy as a kid, I can kinda-sorta catch a ball. On a good day.
I'll say that falling out of trees was a lot easier (even fun!) as a kid though. I do worry that the current generation doesn't have much unstructured play time.
> We walked around barefoot, unsupervised, climbed trees, ate wild fruit, made spears from wood and once you were four you had to take your two year old sibling with you and look after them.
Growing up working class in 80s and early 90s suburbia was awfully similar. Except we had to wear shoes when it got too hot, concrete is friendly to cars, not feet. :( But yeah, we ran around all summer day long without parents getting involved. The littler kids were looked after (dragged home for diaper changes though!), we road bikes all around, picked berries from the woods, got hatchets and chopped down small trees to make clearings in the woods.
Now days? I am not quite sure what childhood is like for the current generation. I know that I've see less and less groups of kids running around every year, and I haven't really seen any in the last few years, but maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.
What, specifically, is your eyesight problem? There's some growing suggestive evidence that our eyes need time outside in bright sunlight to develop properly. Depending on your particular sight problem, it may very well be the case that a failure to be outside attempting to throw a spear and hit a wild animal as a child is the cause of your problem.
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/time-outdoors...
I'm missing an optic nerve. Sunlight isn't going to fix that. :)
Remember, hunter gathers don't need to read tiny text, or the pattern of bark on a tree. So, even what we think of as poor vision was actually often 'good enough'.
And yet, somehow the sum of hundreds of such benefits (secure food, healthcare, fire departments, internet) doesn't lead to a significant increase in average happiness. In fact it may be that we in the west are less happy than people living in stone age societies.
People in the village are not immune from wanting more but the pace is slower. They are more patient. They exercise, not by going to gym but walking 10km to say hello to a neighbor then walking back. Food is organic, all cows eat grass and roam free. Little of the food is highly processed. They also manually process their food. The thought of spending half a day pounding millet for supper has me getting so impatient and thinking surely there is a better way. They have accepted.
Sorry I went on a bit of a rant, but this is topic close to my heart.
I dunno if this makes any sense, just something that popped into my head.
Like you, I also wonder the same - fancy electronics, cars, running water etc are all great, but how much of it truly contribute to one's laughter, happiness, health etc?
We moved to town which is 60km (40miles) away when my dad got a job working in a mine. From then I went to school in town and only spent holidays in the village. To this day we still own our own cows and our home still stands.
To answer your questions, yes more than half my relatives are still in the same village. We talking a village of 60 odd people. I organise a gathering every other Christmas, we slaughter a cow (apologies to the sensitive) and talk about the good old days.
Times have changed even in the village. Everyone has a cellphone even in the village :-).
The interesting thing is how easy it is to adapt and to also get caught up in the environment you are in. Suddenly the next great framework is the thing that occupies your mind the most. At that moment I am just like any other person in IT. I go home once a year because it keeps me grounded. Makes me realise I have come far but life is a bit slower there and people have genuine smiles but own less.
That's a great observation. I think it's hard to argue that someone happy in their life is not successful just because they haven't advanced economically.
Great link. The Onion rarely disappoints.
Also, as others have noted, there is survivorship bias in your experience. If you or one of your siblings were born with a disability or became disabled in some way from a sickness, the experience would probably be quite bad.
Alot of the adaptation happened as a kid. I went to school not knowing a word of English. I don't even know how I learnt the language. Kids adapt. They are less self conscious. So I guess every new environment was new for as long as it took to adapt.
For the same reason, I imagine the poor in Benjamin Franklin's time might find a Native American lifestyle (if accepted by the group) to have some draw if exposed to it. I would by the same measure expect the middle and upper classes to find it less appealing.
1: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3315638...
2: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&cites=37...
If I compare my upbringing with my daughter's, there is nothing to compare. We walked around barefoot, unsupervised, climbed trees, ate wild fruit, made spears from wood and once you were four you had to take your two year old sibling with you and look after them. There were no nannies. Here is the interesting thing, none of us ever had to see an occupational therapist to help us with our hand eye co-ordination. Falling out of a tree was enough incentive to figure it out on your own. I digress, the point I am trying to make is that I remember my childhood as a happy time. Full of activity and adventure. I would have been classified as poor because I we slept on the floor, shared blankets as kids. Kids ate from the same plate, grouped roughly by age group. No toys except ones we made ourselves.
I am not advocating returning to the village. Running water and healthcare are good things. I often wonder about who is better off, me in town with access to water and health but with all manner of rates and taxes and social pressures?
Edit: typos