How does he know that?
I suppose a 'visionary historian' might find this out by, you know, having visions?* rather than being able to substantiate the claim from empirical evidence?
But really, when someone comes out with the following: [W]e have gained enormous power over the world and it doesn’t seem to make people significantly more satisfied than in the stone age.
my impulse is to snarl 'And you know the satisfaction index of the average Stone Age person on the Stone Age equivalent of the Clapham omnibus HOW exactly?'
It's a hard enough question to answer for far more recent epochs of history. Perhaps those Stone Age people were too busy surviving to the grand old age of 30 with enough teeth to eat with to pause and reflect on the quiet desperation of their lives. But I'm not sure that amounts to satisfaction with their lot.
I think there's a difference between 'gotta put up with stuff/make the best of things', as people did within really quite recent history if they can't see any alternative (this thought brought to you by a discussion last week about marriage and divorce in the UK in the second half of the C20th) and being satisfied with the way one's life is.
Will concede that, looking about at certain people in the world today who do have enormous power, and seem to spend their time in constant whingeing (one longs for the flounder to send them back to the vinegar-bottle [though I observe that I have conflated two versions of this folkloric motif]), perhaps 'enormous power' doesn't make for satisfaction, although I would hazard that a reasonable degree of control over one's circumstances does at least make for a more comfortable life.
*Or having that deep poetic intuition into Things claimed by Robert Graves re White Goddesses etc. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2579519.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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