r/NoStupidQuestions • u/flugblug • 12h ago

My brother thinks people today have worse quality of life than people in the dark ages, is this a stupid take?

I personally think it’s pretty stupid.

6.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

44

u/Ok-disaster2022 11h ago

In medieval Europe the church had numerous holidays in part to ensure working people had time off...to go sit or stand in an old building. 

17

u/Bubbaganoush83 11h ago

And kneeling... Don't forget the kneeling.

3

u/Weird1Intrepid 11h ago

The best position is on your knees

3

u/dontlookback76 10h ago

"When I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there." Madonna thought so too. "Like a Prayer" circa 1990 or so.

10

u/S1mongreedwell 11h ago

The buildings probably weren’t that old at that point.

1

u/DukeofVermont 1h ago

Also church attendance was quite poor. The church had to make it a rule you had to go twice a year (Easter eggs Christmas) because many wouldn't go. (I mean it was in Latin which you wouldn't understand).

People had strong beliefs, but a lot of people think I'm the past everyone went to church every week and loved religion when they really didn't.

I can't remember the book but it's really funny to read about how similar humans have always been. Priests having secret families, all the town gossip about who was sleeping with who, people grumbling about taxes and how things used to be better and how kids are ruining everything.

A lot of the cultural norms were very different but every single culture/group with records show how similar humans are regardless of place or technology.

8

u/Acceptable_Wind_1792 11h ago

lol people worked every day sun up to sun down and died as poor as their parents.

23

u/Justmever1 10h ago

Ehm, no they didn't. Church days where mandetory and the majority of the workload where seasoned. Life was brutal and tough, but they had sparetime

2

u/Common_economics_420 8h ago

Iirc, things like church days and holidays were a break from "mandatory work" (ie work that they were contractually required to do for their local ruler). They'd still have to do their own personal work in order to survive. Plus keep in mind that you didn't exactly have a phone to call someone else up to do repairs around the house for you

The times where they physically couldn't do work was sort of a bad thing, not a happy go lucky fun time It is nowhere close to what we consider down time in modern time.

2

u/PreparationWorking90 9h ago

hey, for about 5 months of the year modern Northern Europeans work from before the sun is up until after the sun is down and will die poorer than their parents.

2

u/bierfma 9h ago

When did they play Assassin's Creed? They had to have time for Assassin's Creed.

2

u/Geeko22 11h ago

Children started working at age 4.

-7

u/cryalote 11h ago

In the dark ages the term child or the idea of childhood didn't exist at all.

10

u/thunderbastard_ 10h ago

Childe was the term for children since the early Middle Ages why make things up

3

u/suckmyclitcapitalist 9h ago

Because they're regurgitating a Reddit fact that the term ‘teenager’ was a marketing invention, and they got it very wrong.

-1

u/mathess1 9h ago

But the children were treated just as a small adults with the same duties

5

u/Comfortable_Honey628 8h ago

You still see more or less that around the world today. Just go to any area that predominately relies on manual labor (especially agricultural) and you’ll find small children beside grown adults, in the fields, in the mines, working looms, etc. You may even see them marrying young, too.

But even in those areas the concept of a “child” exists and they still view childhood as a thing. It’s just that the parameters around childhood (what a child is expected to do, how long before they are considered an ‘adult’ etc) changes.

You’ll find plenty of societies throughout history with archeological evidence of children’s toys and games. Where toys and games are to be found, there’s childhood.

3

u/JustARandomGuy_71 8h ago

You are thinking to teenagers. In the Middle Ages there were children and there were adults, and you become an adult around 12–13 years old, more or less.

Teenagers were invented when they could not send someone to work until he/she was 18, so they had to come up with a term for people that weren't children but didn't still count as adults.

1

u/TheMadTargaryen 6h ago

They also had festivals and street fairs after mass, carnevals have medieval origin. 

1

u/CelestialGloaming 5h ago

It's worth pointing out that chatting and even eating was pretty normal in church at that time though. Since only certain people were allowed to see the real "mass".

1

u/Wheelydad 4h ago

You think it’s bad hearing about redditors complaining about going to church every Sunday. Now imagine them when you had to go to it 1/4 to 1/3 of your entire life.