Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by TeMPOraL on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:34AM (#24605652)

I'll have to read up on Egypt and pre-XX-century China. How oppressive were these dynasties typically? What did the life look like for a regular subject?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by SpicyLemonZest on Sunday September 27, 2020 @10:44AM (#24607002)

We'll probably never know, unfortunately. The literate classes in ancient societies rarely wrote about the lives of subsistence farmers, who were the vast majority of the population, so while some details can be reconstructed it's very hard to speculate about how oppressed a typical farmer would have felt.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by pbhjpbhj on Sunday September 27, 2020 @06:53AM (#24605718)

The Vatican has almost a couple of millennia of continuance, but I'm not sure I'd want to say continual stability per se.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by jlg23 on Sunday September 27, 2020 @08:08AM (#24606031)

Yes, for any "couple of" smaller two. And more than once it was not clear whether the Vatican was still relevant at all.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by ianai on Sunday September 27, 2020 @09:10AM (#24606365)

The Vatican is also not the same size and breadth as the US or China.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by ben_w on Sunday September 27, 2020 @10:28AM (#24606885)

The Vatican as a country, I would agree. The Vatican as the Catholic Church, does seem to be on-par with those, at least in terms of head count.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Are we living at the 'hinge of history'? by coldtea on Sunday September 27, 2020 @09:00AM (#24606312)

Compared to today's bureaucracy, taxes, etc, they were free as birds...

[ Parent | on HN ]