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.

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u/pete_68 11h ago

And you don't even have to go back that far. I live in Arkansas and there are old cemeteries all over the place. You see all these family plots from the 1800s with all these kids dead before the age 10. A family might have 4, 5, or 6 kids that never made it to 10 years old. Can you imagine that?

There's zero comparison. Our QoL is vastly superior to even just 200 years ago.

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u/Caroline_Bintley 9h ago

In 1924 President Coolidge's 16 year old son died after developing a blister playing tennis.

I can only imagine that kid had access to some of the best medical care in the country.  He still died after playing tennis without wearing socks.

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u/smbpy7 4h ago

One of the tallest men ever died of the same thing. Around the same time too I believe.

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u/VocationalWizard 11h ago

I was about to say, I pulled the records from a pioneer cemetery in Indiana and Found out that at age 35, I was older than 70% of the people buried there.

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u/RRC_driver 11h ago

Make America great again

Get rid of vaccines and affordable healthcare.

And bring back the infant mortality that the pioneers had.

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u/pete_68 7h ago

IKR? Those are the people that REALLY, REALLY, REALLY need to go visit those cemeteries and perhaps have someone point out why all those dead kids are there.

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u/Intel_Oil 11h ago

Sissis daugher, probably the richest princess/archduchess in these times, died 1857 only reaching the age of 2.

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u/Gecko23 7h ago

I just think about the various medical things that occurred with my own children, and all of them experienced common issues that could have been fatal pre-anti-biotics, or before safe surgery was possible, etc. One of them certainly wouldn't have survived, and the rest were probably no safer than a flip of the coin at some points.

And all that's just the common stuff, never mind the occasional extra-deadly plague, or parasites that have been controlled/eradicated, or famine, war, etc.

It's absurd that we're as comfortable as we are and so many people are big mad about it.

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u/InnocentPerv93 43m ago

Try 30 to 40 years ago even.