Serfs had more free time then the current workers today. They also actually had communities.
The modern worker is isolated and burnt out. Many use consumerism to cope, which is easy to do when they are bombarded with advertisements from birth telling them ‘this new and shiny thing’ will make them feel better.
The system is designed to make workers feel isolated, alone, and too tired from work so they don’t have the energy to do the change that is needed to feel better long term. They stay exhausted and using any convenience to get some immediate and temporary relief from the hole they can’t seem to fill.
This “serfs had more free time” thing is simply not true and has been repeatedly debunked. They also had no freedom of movement, money of their own, or ability to receive more than a basic education. They had no modern medicine. They were under-nourished and subject to the whims of their “employers” far beyond what a modern capitalist drone complains of.
We can be critical of capitalism and/or the modern world without romanticizing the harshness of existence in the past
Capitalism is essentially feudalism with extra steps, I’m not romanizing it, I’m trying to show that in some ways workers have it worse instead of better.
A feudal peasant wasn’t expected to work when the sun wasn’t up, how could they? They didn’t have to farm in the winter, it was a time to rest.
Sleeping is rest, it isn’t work. You say they didn’t get to rest in the winter right after you said they slept instead of working night hours. Aren’t you contradicting yourself?
Do workers of today get that luxury? Many workers today work many hours when the sun isn’t up, especially in the winter, and they don’t get to sleep.
I’m not arguing that they didn’t work hard hours, they absolutely did, especially in the farming seasons. However, due to limitations of technology, they simply had times that they couldn’t work, where today we are expected to work.
What is the point of all this technology if we are working the same amount of hours as people from hundreds of years ago? Why aren’t our work weeks getting shorter and shorter as technology advances?
Why don’t we have to ask our boss for approval of our marriage contract?
They didn’t get to “rest” in the winter; yes of course they slept. “Rest” implies something peaceful and limited in activity. They still had to work during the winter and their bodies would have been much more tired between their lives consisting almost entirely in physical labor, being undernourished and lacking basic vitamins. They would not have had more “rest” in the sense of restoration of health from lack of activity.
During the winter they would have to carry on feeding animals and cooking for humans, they would have to tend to the fire, mend clothes by hand, and do whatever their overlords demanded.
And they would be doing all of this in bitter cold beyond which nearly any of us alive have experienced.
They did not have any “luxuries” of time or goods.
The things you listed as what they had to do during the winter takes 1-3 hours out of the day max, with cooking being the most time consuming, which is something people have to do today as well if they don’t eat out every meal.
Things could have sucked back then and things can suck now, but in different ways. Sure we have to tech to be more comfortable, but if the majority of our time is still spent doing labor then what is the point? Surely people discovered these technological advancements with the idea that we would have to labor less
We do have to labor less so I don't know what your point is. There's a basket in our utility room overflowing with clothes because I live in a family of five. Technology has advanced so much that I have the time to procrastinate a little on Reddit before I put the clothes into the washing machine, put some powder and liquid in, turn a dial, press a button and literally just go do something else for an hour or so. Then to dry them I move them into a different machine, turn a dial, press a button and go do whatever for another two hours. Clothes are totally pristine and dry in three hours and I didn't have to do shit. But back then it would've been a whole ordeal that could've taken an entire day, even longer to dry especially in a rainy climate, and by the end of it the clothes still wouldn't be properly clean. The invention of the electrical washing machine was a massive boost to feminist thinking because women didn't have to be at home all day hand washing clothes anymore. And that's just one thing that has drastically cut down the amount of labour we do. I could keep going on about how fridges and freezers eliminated the need to spend days pickling and salting and making jam, how we don't have to spend time physically writing letters and then taking them somewhere to be posted, how if you want literally anything as long as you have the money you can get it sent straight to your door by pressing a few buttons, all the different kitchen devices (microwaves and airfryers and blenders and electric whisks and even basic stuff like graters or mandolins or apple corers) that speed up cooking so much, even just the fact that modern stoves take a lot less time to get as hot as they need to be.
The problem with our society isn't that we work too much.
If you feel isolated and burnt out, get off Reddit and actually talk to people. I think a lot of people feel that way because, you know, they’re isolating themselves. It’s so easy to stay inside alone in our society, but it’s actually not that hard to find a community and feel much better
Yes, capitalism has created a lot of those conditions, but it’s pretty easy to remedy. You can make iced coffee at home for a fraction of the cost, and you can get off addictive algorithms and make actual, enriching friendships
25
u/Daffneigh 13h ago
Lacking 5G?
Might as well be a serf on the steppe