Published in The Manila Times, 24th May 2015
[The OpEd editor deliberately did not change the author’s
Britticisms in his contributed essay.]
AS an historical novelist, I am often asked when was the best time to be alive. My readers expect me to say 7th century Byzantium or 17th century London, or some other time I write about. My answer, though, without a moment’s hesitation, is now. The present has its ugly side, no doubt. But no one in his right mind, who is not already dying, should ever want to live two weeks before now, let alone two centuries.
Let us take the ancient world. I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about it. I would like to see it. But would I want to live there? Certainly not. My readers who fantasise about living there always imagine they will be in the higher classes. Well, the higher classes were never more than half of one per cent of ancient populations. Those living in the cities were never more than five per cent. The other 95 per cent lived and worked on the land. They were usually slaves or serfs, or otherwise unfree. They hardly ever cooked or bathed. Their work was backbreaking. Even without banditry and famines and plagues to carry them off, their life expectancy at birth was about thirty.
Look now at the cities. Perhaps one in twenty of those living there were in easy circumstances. The rest were effectively beggars. Their life expectancy was lower than in the country. Or look at the higher classes. They had baths and slaves and pretty clothes. But they had no tea or coffee or proper dentistry, nor any effective pain relief. They had no spectacles. When the black rats turned up with their fleas carrying the Pasteurella pestis bacillus, the rich died just as horribly as the poor.
Let me now look at my own experience. I have reached the age of 55 in apparently good health and with most of my teeth. But I had a bicycle accident when I was 18. This was nothing serious at the time, and the bruising soon cleared up. In my middle twenties, though, I noticed I had increasing difficulty with passing water. I ignored this, until the difficulty became alarming. I then went to my doctor, who referred me to the local hospital. There, I was anaesthetised and carried into a clean operating theatre. Ten minutes with a surgical pipe cleaner, and I was carried back to my bed. I was in hospital for three days. I came out with the problem sorted, and it has never re-turned.
Carry me back to a time as recent as the 19th century. What then? Well, the constriction was unlikely to have killed me outright. But it would have led to repeated bladder infections. One of these would have reached my kidneys, and I would probably have died in my early thirties. I would have died in pain, and been put into my coffin already a shrivelled skeleton.
Or I look at my own family. My wife would have died in childbirth, my daughter with her. If she had survived all her other problems, my mother would certainly have died last February. As it is, she is back home and moving about. My mother-in-law would have died five years ago of a blocked intestine. Or my best friend would have died in 1983 of a bad appendix.
Rather than tell ourselves how much better things were in the past, let us recognise how lucky we are to live in the present. The only better time to be alive than the present is surely the future – and many of us have an excellent chance of seeing that.
Richard Blake’s, latest historical novel, Game of Empires, was published in London on the 15th May 2015. His other historical novels are Conspiracies of Rome, Terror of Constantinople, Blood of Alexandria, Sword of Damascus, Ghosts of Athens and Curse of Babylon. He has also written the book How I Write Historical Fiction. You can see his full profile on Amazon You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Linkedin
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I agree totally. That’s why I’m so shit-scared at the dumbing-down of sciences in ,_all_ modern British schools. Not just scumbag government schools which are daycare centres for the children of the uncurious, fully-televisualo-targetted masses and those otherwise caring parents who are poor.
This process has been deliberate. No mistakes that vast, and so “nicely” (in the fossil English sense) targetted are made accidentally.
Mr Blake is quite right.
For example, in Europe in 1348/49, when Y pestis arrived via fleas from rats on boats, from, er, other places, if there’d been antibiotics manufactured in today’s industrial amounts, very few people would have died.
Whether or not this was a “Good Thing” in the terms of “1066 and all that”, is debatable still today. The Black Death did trigger, at least in Britain, the beginnings of the decomposition of the feudal system. Others may argue that this in itself was bad. I leave it open to discussion.
I would value Keir Martland’s views on this matter, as he is a current and future historian.
Keir, was the precipitate unravelling of the English feudal system between 1349 and about 1500, driven by economic imperatives I would suppose, a good thing or a bad thing? I would value your insights here.
A good article Mr Blake. Sean. Whatever. 🙂
I would suggest that- so long as Western Civilisation does not collapse, the future is going to be even better. I am just sad I won’t see that, as every indicator currently suggests that even if it comes to pass it is likely to be preceded by another Dark period, into which we are already plunging. I was going to write one of my long comments predicting the nigh-utopian state of our descendants, but instead via this clumsy segue, I think LA bloggers and readers might like this surprisingly libertarian introduction to the course on Greek Civilisation, from no less than Yale University-
https://youtu.be/9FrHGAd_yto?list=PLE87F99F43EEE353E
Will look at
Agreed.
I congratulate Mr Blake on his rational optimism for the future. I do hope that he will very soon persuade his good friend Dr Gabb.
So now, all we have to do is to get rid of the absurd 16th-century political system we suffer under today, replace it by a proper system of law and justice, and bring to that justice those responsible for today’s mess.
That should be a cakewalk, no? Like it was last time round… in 17th-century London.
http://www.deathreference.com/Ho-Ka/Iatrogenic-Illness.html
I don’t tend to share the optimism for the future, but I suppose I am a bit of a pessimist in that regard, considering my viewpoint of how certain things will progress and what it usually entails.
However, I do share the view that we live in some pretty great times. We are so fortunate, in all sorts of ways. It is so easy to forget and just drift through life taking things for granted.
We may be losing a lot of our freedoms, but at the moment, if we are in a decent position, we can still drive around as we please, we have food on demand, many of us enjoy working less than 40 hours a week in jobs which are not physically demanding or potentially lethal.
So far, we have escaped conscription, war, famine. Most of us enjoy a relatively crime free society, walks in the park, entertainment on demand. We have gadgets and gizmos that help us do amazing things.
The future of technology, if demographic and civilisation collapse is averted, holds both frightening and exciting developments. Medicine, materials (graphene etc), 3d printing, the internet, computers…..
We also have the luxury of time to be worrying about the questions of life itself. Whilst I think society has deteriorated, I think it has led some of us to wonder why we are here, what it is all about, why we do the things we do, what life is about, what the purpose of it all is and how utterly insignificant we all are in the “big picture”.
I have wasted the best part of 15 years being depressed, bitter and generally cynical. I still haven’t fully shaken it off and as I get older I find more to be worrying about and regretful of. I have suffered anxiety attacks and intense ill ease.
However, as part of dealing with this, I have had to try and keep in mind how fortunate I am and how fortunate our generation is. It has become easy for us to get bogged down with “first world problems”.
The only counter side that nags me with that is how we should not necessarily slide into too much thankfulness and complacency to the degree were we set the bar by how bad others currently have it. We ought to be pushing forward and making things improve, not necessarily counting our blessings that our health or road system is not as bad as Malawi yet, even though we still ought to be!