We are always romanticising that which was lost. Back when we began to farm after being hunter-gatherers for so long we longed for the life of the nomad. It was longer and healthier and more certain than that of the first farmers. They keenly felt the joy of mere survival. Yet the life of the farmer was so much more productive and our larger populations cannot be fed except through technology and specialization. The price we pay is the removal of that immediacy of life that we often only now feel when close to death or close to birth, (an advantage of being a woman?) There is however no turning back and we must sleep in this bed that we have made.
This seems to mean that we grow ever softer. My son cries when I would have been too embarrassed to cry. A grown man is shattered when a teenager calls him an ape. We have been molly coddled by comfort and are ill-equipped when the hardships arrive, as has been noted in Europe. Although the cultures have clashed, the streets have not run with blood because one side has already surrendered.
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