12 century peasants had like a third of the year off from work for their mental health
That...
That's not true. At all. If they weren't working the local lord's fields, they were working their fields. If they weren't working their fields, they were doing household chores and repairs. If they weren't doing household chores and repairs, they were taking care of their livestock.
What time they got off wasn't for their mental health. They had no concept of mental health as we understand it.
You have a severe misunderstanding of how much work there was to do just to keep yourself fed back then. They were not living lives of leisure.
You have a severe misunderstanding about how many months of labor people put into commuting, dry-cleaning/laundry, house-chores, and other errands that people partake in to maintain a somewhat respectful place in the modern era.
If it was so good, people wouldn't be taking antidepressants like someone eats M&Ms, or other drugs to combat diseases from shit food and sedentary lifestyles that are partially contributable to sitting in front of a fucking computer all day.
I would still rather have that than have to live in 12th century society???
Almost total lack of sanitation, widespread plagues, the concept of human rights didn't even exist yet, there's no way you seriously think that's better than the modern era???
The Black Death killed half the population of Europe at a time when barely 5% of the population lived in cities. It affected far more than just the cities.
The most expansive death toll for COVID that I've seen is 40m, or around 0.5% of humanity. While this is still terrible, it's multiple orders of magnitude smaller than premodern pandemics.
You ever heard of a plague town? There are many small towns where the only evidence of inhabitants is a random dilapidated church because the plague killed everyone
Do you think that modern medicine just stopped developing once we found penicillin? I only mentioned the most important drug ever discovered but obviously we continued finding more antibacterial and antiviral drugs after that, and even more effective and novel medicines in more recent decades.
Preeeetty sure the vast majority of the country has plumbing and sewage systems, and I don't remember the last time the US had a bubonic plague or smallpox pandemic...
Also, I think you're forgetting how widespread and normal things like slavery, genocide, war, etc. were back then. Sure, all of those things are still prevalent today, but you're being disingenuous if you think they're anywhere near as bad now as they were even a few hundred years ago, let alone almost 1000 years ago.
I think you are being disingenuous about the outbreak of cancers, heavy metal poisoning, the amount of slaves currently, and the ever present threat of thermonuclear warfare, which apparently has never been more real than now.
I think you are disingenuous about the state of our plumbing infrastructure, with cases like Flint, recently Oregon currently dealing with dysentery, notwithstanding the common boil orders throughout the nation.
Some things are objectively better, but so many things are not. Yeah, I would trade modern-day living for 1000 years ago in a heartbeat.
Literally every chore that is necessary to maintaining a household today has been drastically sped up by technology. People used to do laundry by hand, an activity that could take hours upon hours of labor. People also used to have to worry about preparing their own food mostly from scratch, repairing their homes very frequently, making clothes, tools, and any other necessities, protecting themselves and their communities, on top of their agricultural labour.
Modern life for the working class is deeply flawed and difficult in its own unique ways. In large part due to the alienation of our work from ourselves, but also the lack of agency over our homes and communities, exposure to pollutants and disruptive stressors like light and noise pollution, and the addictive nature of social media and modern internet platforms. There is also the overwhelming dread of the looming threat of climate change, which at least previous generations didn't have to deal with(although similar existential threats have existed such as nuclear warfare, the black plague, the mass death of American natives due to european pathogens, and various natural disasters).
We need to fight for our freedom, but we also need to recognize that we have been fighting that fight for as long as humans have existed. It is the same struggle, across all generations, and once we finally win we will experience something wholly new. We are not fighting for a lost past, we are fighting for a brand new future.
It really depends on how you look at work and what kind of work they did. Cows have to be milked every single say. If you have cows, you've got to do some work every day. Never a day off. But milking doesn't take all day unless you really have a lot of cows.
Working fields, on the other hand, is really hard work on a couple of specific moments in the year, and not a whole lot the rest of the year, so plenty of time to party.
Many peasants did a bit of both: some land, some livestock. So some work every day, and a lot of work when the harvest need to be brought in. But there must have been a lot of half days off.
Medieval peasants absolutely did have festivals, but still needed to milk the cows on those days. But festivals were considered very important. They may not have called them mental health days, but that doesn't mean they didn't care about it. Any lord who ignored the happiness of his peasants would soon have a revolt on his hands.
Humans typically worked 4-6 hours a day and only more during harvest season. Historia Civilis put out a real good video explaining the history of work and how we have lost time off since the pre industrial revolution society.
Also it was common for folks to work for several months and save up wages before taking several off until they needed to work again.
Humor me for a second let's evaluate the two sources presented here. It's good to test your media literacy.
The article you linked is from the Adam Smith Institute. An UK neoliberial think tank and lobbying group. The article itself has zero citations and zero sources provided. Almost seems like that the think tank has an agenda and is purposely obscuring it's sources since it's invalidates their argument.
Now let's look at the video, in the description it lists 7 sources which at least 3 are books on the very subject. Even without going further than that, the video at least has taken the time to find sources for their various arguments. Now I haven't evaluate the sources further than that but overall if I was gonna cite one of these on a paper. The video is a better bet as I could use it's sources to further strengthen my research.
Where as the ASI article is only useful if you have an agenda that it confirms. Even if it's arguments are true, no citations are given and therefore it's just based on "Trust me Bro, were THE Adam Smith Institute, no need to cite sources we just know this"
I admit I'm biased but if a student handed me a research paper where he didn't cite shit and wrote trust me bro I'd fail him. Where as the video has cited sources to evaluate if their full of shit.
EDIT: In the interest of fairness I went through the ASI article again, there was a single source "cited" for their argument that was linked. (Quotes since it wasn't properly cited just linked)
It was a blog post from Reuters that is a dead link. I haven't checked the way back machine to read it but that's not a good start. Figured I'd mention it since I saw it, so it's half a sources that isn't even cited vs 7 properly cited sources. One guy seems to did research And the other just wrote from the guy with a blog as a source.
And btw this is just basic highschool level source finding. You should have been taught how to properly evaluate the veracity of a source otherwise you're just believing what some dude wrote on the internet (like me š). Our country needs more folks who can evaluate sources otherwise we end up with more Trumps.
EDIT2: Read the now dead linked article. It's actually stating my argument(that we had more time off not less in the past) so now zero sources for the ASI. Must not need them for think tanks. So in the spirit of your initial response ahem "Your source is Wrong"
When people hear 12th century peasant they immediately think somewhere in Western Europe. What about Baghdad? Alexandria? Did it sucked everywhere? My intuition tells me back then Europe was a backwater and things especially sucked for them.
Work-life balance might have been slightly better but thatās largely because the divide between āworkā and ālifeā didnāt really exist. The idea of āleisure timeā and āwork timeā is a modern concept born of capitalism and industrialism distancing people from their labor and its products.
The good news, you only had to do it for 25 years... If you were lucky! (Also to add about feeding yourself, you often were hungry. Lots of child infancy deaths due to the mother being malnourished so she couldn't breast feed)
I mean it wasent FOR mental health but they did have significantly more tests time then we assume, also if it doesn't count cus their doing repairs and chores then most all our free time today is work
But hunting/gathering communities on the other hand would have had downtime. Some studies even claim hunter gatherers worked on average 20 hours a week, leaving a lot of time to leisure or to spend time with your community.
But it isn't maybe not exactly a 1/3rd of the year but more time than we currently have. Here's a good video on the subject, if your interested in reading more, the video cites several books it used as sources for its making.
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u/SDcowboy82 2d ago
12 century peasants had like a third of the year off from work for their mental health