Hubby and I recently had a great deal of fun watching some documentaries about new technology back in the day. Part of the fun was that it soothed my soul, it gave me back some much needed perspective. Sometimes I expect humanity to be more advanced than we are, smarter, less barbaric, more intelligent, and so I can get lost in despair, often wailing, "why is this happening."
Well, it's happening in part because we are mostly half witted, moronic baboons more interested in worshiping at the altar of our own pride and cleverness rather than engaging in any wisdom and compassion.
Most of these things I already knew about, I just never really thought about them from a Victorian or an Edwardian perspective. So first we began by plastering our homes with green wallpaper made out of arsenic. Arsenic is extremely toxic and tends to build up in your system. People were literally keeling over and dying right in their drawing rooms by the hundreds and it took years to identify the problem, and even more years to try to stop it. There was big money in arsenic mining and wallpaper sales.
After several other epic tragedies like deciding it would be a good idea to rub our faces down with mercury and lead infused blemish creams, we eventually discovered natural gas and brought it right into our homes for lights and heat. Part of what lends the creepy atmosphere to the play, "Gaslight," is not just the brainwashing and psychological abuse, but the constant unspoken fear running in the background, is this the day we all die from leaking gas pipes?
How did we develop modern safety measures for natural gas? Mostly by having mass casualties. But wait, it gets even better! Electricity was soon discovered, so we promptly brought it into our arsenic infested homes and ran it right along our gas lines. Needless to say, this was often a shocking and explosive experience. Before we had breaker boxes and fuses, before we had insulated wires, we just had a chunk of metal you plunged into a light socket which often caused a large spark, just perfect to ignite the gas leaking from your pipes.
We invented the electric chair by conducting a series of human experiments. Meditate on that one for a while.
Thankfully, in the interim we discovered asbestos which was a great fire retardant, so we just went in and plastered our homes with it to try to prevent all the fire damage and loss of life that was happening. The problem being, asbestos tends to be very toxic too, and causes asbestosis. Something else that doesn't burn very well, lead. Most old building are absolutely infused with lead and asbestos.
Being extremely pale, contaminated with heavy metals, and seriously oxygen deprived, was so common it actually became the beauty standard, a coveted marker of attractiveness and social status. Pat yourself down with some more rice powder least any evidence of the bloom of life shamefully make an appearance.
We end our journey into the adventures of man with the discovery of radium, a substance that glows in the dark due to it's radiation content which we promptly painted on all our clocks, watches, and appliances, so we could see them glowing in the dark. I am being a bit snarky about the whole thing, but it really is epically sad and tragic what happened to all the young women working in factories painting radium on pocket watches. Like, their faces are falling of and large tumors are growing.
It should come as no surprise that the average life expectancy back in the day was about 37. We often assume this was due to disease, our lack of understanding of germ theory, and not having access to medical care. In truth however, if our new fangled household appliances didn't kill you outright, modern medicine probably would. It was and sometimes still is, downright barbaric and not helpful.
Besides comforting myself with the truth of human nature and the truth of human history, so as to reassure myself nothing is really out of order, we barbarians are actually right on schedule, I wanted to write about all this in response to someone who was recently lamenting the tragedy of rural backwoods country bumpkins who were always the last to get modern conveniences. Allegedly socialism would solve this problem, serve to bring technology into our homes much faster, and therefore improve our quality of life.
Ai yi yi. Oh yes, no elitism there, no foolishness at all, but I digress.
Let me just say, I am exceedingly grateful to have NOT been one of the up and coming fancy folks living in the city and that, "being forced to read by candlelight," was not necessarily a sign of having been "left behind," uneducated and forlorn. Nah, really I'm good. Just leave me in my little non progressive bubble, glorifying in my ignorance, and please do not pity me thinking you must drag me kicking and screaming into the modern world.
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