I'm against Kavanaugh just because Trump submitted his name for SCOTUS. He could walk on water and I would still disapprove of his nomination. That he may have attempted rape while he was in a private prep school (another strike against him) is obviously not to his credit, but are we going to judge an at least somewhat inebriated teenagers the same way Harvey Weinstein is being judged?

What matters more than what he did in high school is what he has done since about 1982, 36 years ago (Kavanaugh was born in '65).

freedom, voluntary action, agency, autonomy, responsibility, control, determination — SophistiCat

Because 'determination' is not singular, consistent, or unidirectional, and we seem to have some degree of freedom (so that we can make voluntary choices with executive agency), we can be held responsible--at least to a significant extent.

We can do whatever we want to do (provided armed guards aren't standing in the way), but we can't choose to want it.

So it is that exempting an adult from the responsibility for actions taken with personal agency is a very big deal. That the innocent by reason of insanity (an odd phase) are few in number is a measure of how much we don't want to let people off the hook of responsibility.

I like to go to the local farmers market. All the behavioral cues are there: "fresh", "locally produced", "Organic" (maybe), "farm to table in one step", and so on. There's is a festive community atmosphere (unless it's cold and raining). Quite often a small band will play for publicity. I may think I am freely willing to bike over there and buy food but, in fact, I am being driven to this market by a set of cultural beliefs and habits of long standing. Beliefs are deterministic, and I did not freely choose most of the beliefs I have. Preferences, also never deliberately put together, are also deterministic. Habits are deterministic. Lots of personal and social features drive our behavior.

e.g. 'Screwdriver' means 'a tool created to turn screws' — invizzy

Turn of the Screws? I thought it was orange juice and vodka. Screw turner! Outlandish.

nothing 'perennial' about it — StreetlightX

Well, perennials keep coming up. As opposed to annuals which you have to plant again.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
LEWIS CARROLL (Charles L. Dodgson), Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6, p. 205 (1934). First published in 1872.

Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
Charles Peguy.

You mean, the sex dolls having sex with each other? I suppose that might not be very meaningful, since the dolls would have difficulty developing a decent decadent narrative.

Or possibly you mean people having sex with sex dolls? Whoever heard of such a thing--screwing a piece of inflated plastic! Sex with a sex doll would not be meaningless, however. It might not be a sublime and elegant meaning, but it would have meaning, none-the-less.

Can we have 'choice' if our behavior is 'determined'? Setting aside indeterminate particles, the chain of determination from atoms created in a supernova to what kind of apple I am eating must have branched and branched again many many many times, affecting me and and many other things and creatures many many many ways over the eons of time.

Maybe what we have Is "choice" and not free will. Much of what we think is "free will" is actually just a choice, driven by determination.

Life is too complex for us to figure out what has been determined and how. Therefore we say either "everything is determined" or "nothing is determined" based on deterministic factors that allow us to make choices among limited options. We tend to like certainty. Zero free will is just as comforting as 100% free will.

IF the determined arrangement of one's brain allows for little tolerance of ambiguity, the person might require philosophical views that are cut and dried. They will prefer their theology to be black and white: This and only this is right; everything else is wrong. "We have absolute free choice, so you either choose right or you choose wrong. You freely decided God was dead, and that is wrong. Therefore you will rot in hell forever. Case closed."

Some people are so determined that they tolerate ambiguity well. "What is right, what is wrong, good, bad, true false, isn't black and white -- it all tends to be kind of fuzzy. Maybe god exists, maybe not. It's hard to tell. There can't be any final right or wrong answer."

We can't chose, or will the kind of person that we will be when we are conceived. We are pre-determined. But we will never feel the "master program" pulling us one way or the other. It will all seem like "just us doing our thing that we want to do because that is, in truth, what we will."

Hard determination is the reality; soft determination is the appearance.

as long as they don't lead to what we have seen in Europe in the 20th century — ChatteringMonkey

More recently than the Nazis, the Rwanda and the Balkan massacres come to mind. The Balkans seems to have produced some unusually long-lived and bitter hatreds, about as murderous as those of the Hutus towards the Tutsis. The Communist government clamped down on inter-ethnic conflict, but as we saw in the '90s, once the clamp was gone the hatred flowed as vigorously as ever.

Or visa versa: what holds nations together are strong internal identity and material necessity causes war. Or both.

I do not have enough background to assert that the Balkan war of the 1990s was material and not ethnic. There seems to have been a very strong and long-standing desire to reorganize ethnic distribution, and if possible eliminate some of them altogether (mass graves). Were there material necessities? Don't know.

Israel and Palestine have both material necessity and ethnic identity in conflict. The Middle East may be homogeneous as far as Islam is concerned, but there are various ethnicities and material interests in conflict. Burma wants to be Buddhist and has discriminated against both Moslems and Christians (maybe others too... don't know). How different ethnically the Moslems and Christians are, don't know. Is it a religious or ethnic conflict? China has decided that Uyghurs are an undesired ethnic/religious group.

I would anticipate that in the presence of increases economic, climate, and agricultural stress, groups will seek to solidly their cohesive identities, as well as their material needs.

The best way to avoid a trampling and crushing of minorities as the majorities rush for the exits, so to speak, is to try avoid as much economic, climate, and agricultural stress as possible. Otherwise, prepare for interesting times.

I just can't really see the nation states as the solution for the future. — ChatteringMonkey

We enlightened moderns dismiss the ethnic identities of the rabble, frown on nationalism, disapprove of the nation state, regret the existence of hierarchies, reject religious identity, and so on. We, of course, think of ourselves as transethnic; beyond gender's dictatorship; world citizens; above hierarchy (or would that be below hierarchy?); not religious; etc.

If we want to find the people who are quite out of touch with reality, all we have to do is look in the mirror.

Very large complex societies maintain their internal organization using national identity, gendered roles, hierarchies, ethnicities, religion, race, and so on. The results of maintaining strong internal identity -- identity strong enough to survive world wars, civil wars, regional wars, economic collapse, and so forth are not altogether pleasant, but they work quite well.

I think a nation state that can hold itself together and function in a complex, sometimes destabilized world is a good thing, and citizens, being the primates that we are, need recognizable features to identify with.

Then they can blame "Brussels". In fact, the whole problem is that people can critisize "Brussels" and not their own politicians. — ssu

Americans would like to blame Brussels as well. We are tired of criticizing and blaming Washington, and Washington has grown accustomed to being criticized, excoriated, referenced as a swamp, and threatened with draining. Perhaps American criticism of Brussels would be refreshing to the bureaucrats there.

plan B — ChatteringMonkey

FORGET PLAN B. We will either survive under plan A or we will die. Which, by the way, would not stop the world spinning.

Problems to overcome with Plan B (living somewhere else)

1 Energy

Before we can live in cities orbiting the earth, we have to lift a tremendous amount of weight. Whether we do this with rockets or a space elevator (one end anchored to the earth, the other end anchored to a platform orbiting the earth), a great deal of matter and energy is involved. A lot of fuel is required to boost rockets into orbit (even when they are carrying nothing).

The space elevator is not energy free either. Mass still has to be pushed or pulled away from the earth using a very very thick cable. (The cable has to be thick to hold itself together, before it can carry anything). There probably isn't any form of matter that won't end up being quite a lot of weight to manufacture.

2. Radiation

Once in space, animals, plants, and materiel will be bathed in penetrating visible, solar, and cosmic radiation. There are means to block radiation, but again -- cost.

3. Time

No matter how fast we go, (and the fastest we are likely to go is a very small fraction of SoL) it will take us a very long time to get to anywhere that offers a viable environment for humans, animals, and the plants we depend on. (And this assumes we know where that is at the start of the trip.)

So, whatcha gonna do? Hibernate for 50 years; wake up; leap out of the hibernation box, and suddenly go to work? I don't think so. Live inside a large hollowed out asteroid? Travel in a FTL space ship like the Enterprise with inertial dampeners, detachable saucers, dilithium crystals, et al?

It's possible that we could live inside a large hollowed out asteroid for 60 years, but... doubtful. Remember, we will be voyaging in space as the prickly, somewhat unstable, quite often maladaptive, argumentative, emotion driven primates that we are, and that describes the cream of the crop. I can't imagine a cage of 150 humans locked up together for 60 years with NO EXIT and being either bored out of their minds or suffering repeated crises--some external, most internal--ending up ready to found the EARTH II civilization.

how I found out would become immediately clear and would damage other relationships — ProbablyTrue

And here you acknowledge that this sort of truth telling (like the truth of who you are) can damage relationships.

I still think that one should think long and hard about reporting to people you think have been harmed how they have been harmed. I'll grant that your motives are probably good -- I'm not suspecting you of doing this for malevolent reasons.

I'm reading Sapiens right now — ChatteringMonkey

I'm also read Sapiens. I like it, so far.

Interstellar travel is, of course, entirely possible -- provided we can solve all sorts of immensely difficult problems in all sorts of diverse fields. But there may not be much point. We will probably have to go a very long ways, measured in light years of travel, before we find another nice earthy planet to ruin.

I don't find the idea of orbiting cities kind of stupid. It's great for science fiction stories, but it requires magical solutions to difficult problems. "Too much magic" infests futuristic thinking.

Best focus on this one celestial ball.

Supposing that after you have revealed your intrusive interest in the cheatee's and the cheator's personal lives, the cheatee reveals that he is relieved to hear that his wife has taken her insatiable sexual demands to another customer?

I think polytheism might be superior to monotheism. Monotheists tend to be rigid about being right: Jews, Christians Moslems... Supposedly (according to Yuval Harari) polytheists tend to be more flexible in the their approach. Christians could just go ahead and start worshipping the saints and the separate persons of the Trinity. Instead of praying to the BVM to intercede with God the Father (or God the Son -- her kid) she could be redefined as a deity. Ditto for St. George, St. Matthew, St. Paul, St. Henry (aka St. Hank), St. Peter, St. Dick, St. Fallus, Saints Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and so on.

Fertility and phallic worship should be reinstituted. They were such revered traditional practices. Some of the fancier marble cathedrals would make great gay bath houses. Under the doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers, every believer would be obligated to serve as a temple prostitute one day a year. If one were good at it, one could skip purgatory. If not, purgatory would last longer. A little incentive there.

before the Industrial revolution it wasn't really a thing for the larger part of human history, so presumably we could do without in the future. — ChatteringMonkey

Continual economic expansion wasn't a thing in the centuries preceding the IR. What made it possible was a somewhat stagnant society that had a low level of technology. (The medieval period wasn't the dark ages it was made out to be, but it was economically fairly tame.

How much stagnant society can we stand?

is to start using more of the resources in the rest of our solar system. — ChatteringMonkey

Be sure to calculate the cost of fetching useful ore from asteroids before you decide that is a workable solution.

@SSU, you seem to have economic expertise. Is zero economic growth possible to achieve without producing a disaster?

@Chattering Monkey, which Harari book are you referencing?

This is a good topic, but how amenable to armchair analysis it will be... don't know. Some questions:

When you say 'stop economic growth' do you mean...
- no increase in GDP?
- no new products, or new products only as replacements?
- a flat rate of change in quality of life (various ways of measuring QoL)?
- zero population growth (ZPG)?
- negative population growth?
- etc.

Even in a non-capitalist economy, I am unsure whether zero-economic-growth (ZEG) is possible. Certainly, maximization of growth doesn't have to be the goal of society. But problems arise...

If ZPG is enforced as part of ZEG, this can have very difficult consequences--a mushroom shaped age distribution: Lots of elderly (the cap), not too many care givers (the stem). Japan is or will have problems from low birth rate. So do, and so will other countries. Of course, eventually the problem dies and goes away (that may take...50 years?)

If ZPG is achieved as part of ZEG, one can achieve a chronic shortage of labor. Yes, mechanization, robotics, and automation can compensate for much of that labor, but many tasks will still be done by hand (like, picking raspberries or strawberries). Will there be enough labor to produce the surplus of food in one area needed for sale or donation elsewhere?

Some surplus of wealth will be needed to pay for legacy costs: retired nuclear plants have to be looked after and eventually deconstructed. Infrastructure can't be abandoned until it really isn't needed. Highways, for instance, have to be drivable (freight, for instance) until freight is moved entirely by rail (over long distances). Refineries have to be maintained until there is no further need for processed hydrocarbons. Toxic waste sites have to be stabilized and cleaned up. Bad policy (burying garbage) will probably be need to be undone (over time). For one thing, there are a lot of material resources in the waste pits. Forests need to be replanted (that means many billions of trees, not millions.

If ZEG is achieved, will it produce enough resources (food, machinery, energy, etc.) to cover the labor of dealing with legacy costs?

Obviously research into certain areas will need to continue: pharmaceuticals; food and fiber production; energy capture from solar and lunar sources (photovoltaic, wind, wave, hydro); technology to reduce resource use (making fabric out of more readily biodegradable fibre; cotton doesn't degrade quickly), etc.

I say go for it, IF we can find a way of implementing a non-capitalist world economy whose people are willing and able to limit population to at first negative growth and then later zero growth, and we can work out a way of producing enough excess wealth to solve legacy problems (like global warming).

"FAITH ERODES COMPASSION".

Where do people get these stupid ideas from?

Maybe faith is a good thing; maybe not. On what basis does some yoyo think that it erodes compassion? If one is compassionate, then one is compassionate; if not, then not -- but not because of or in spite of faith.

Maybe God exists; maybe not. I kind of doubt it. But people have been trying to box up the God concept for a long time and generally the box isn't big enough.

Ahhh, interesting question that, is TPH the epicenter of the chattering class. No, I'm afraid not. We aren't nearly 'elite' enough. It isn't that the chattering classes are academic or economic class elites; they aren't even cultural elites. They are New York / LA / London publishing / media elites who babble on in the company of other chattering units, and whose collective circle jerk commentary ends up on the pages of The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and various glossy high end-type web sites.

We chatter here, for sure. So do monkeys, but that doesn't make the primates members of the chattering classes.

We aren't at any risk of being mistaken for taste makers, trend setters, opinion leaders, and blah blah blah. Not that we would want to be. I mean, god forbid that we should have a mass following. It would ruin everything.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the fine literary novel ceasing to be what it was before. Granted, other art forms that are really quite compelling have joined the novel -- film in particular, and electronic media (radio, TV...) Granted, literary styles have been introduced that are quite unlike 18th and 19th century novels (not surprising since society is not the same now as it was 200 years ago).

There are some reasons for this damnable situation.

One reason is that the real unemployment rate is probably considerably higher than 4%, or any other officially stated number. In order to be counted as unemployed, you need to be registered as unemployed and looking for work. If you are ineligible to receive more benefits, there isn't much reason to register.

Further, in order to be unemployed (at least in the US) you have to be able to work. If your health is poor, or if you are recovering from an injury and you can't work (even though you very much need to work) then you are not unemployed. You can't be in school full time and be officially unemployed. ETC.

So actually, it is even worse than it looks: Maybe twice as many people as are officially counted could work if there were appropriate work at appropriate wages offered.

Where did all the unfilled jobs go to? Asia, for one. To the robot, for two. Three, automation. Four: speed up of existing workers, and use of contingent workers (who can not be officially unemployed when their temporary job comes to an end -- at least in the US). Five: There are jobs that are not worth doing at low wages. Immigrants (illegal and otherwise) are usually willing to work for very low wages, because low wages here are still higher than in the countries they come from.

Meat packing used to be a good job -- greasy grimy, gutsy, cutsy, choppy, bloody; somewhat dangerous, but reasonably well paid union work. When wages were slashed (like disemboweling a hog) and with the unions busted (like killing a cow) the only people who found the wage acceptable were basically illegal immigrants and very recent legal immigrants.

The various factors I mentioned mean that there is actually a larger reserve labor pool than it appears, and is "available" to come out of the woodwork whenever jobs become easier to access. When a lot of people pop out of the woodwork, wages are held down.

Where there are real shortages of labor (like in the North Dakota oil fields) wages really do go up--a lot.

Some teacher training programs in home economics still exist, but more often than not it isn't called "home economics".

I think it is a very relevant program -- teach basic child care, basic cooking, basic cleaning (home sanitation), and basic budgeting.

When I was in 6th grade, one of the high school home economics classes raised several white rats on different kinds of foods. (They brought the rats down for us 6th graders to look at.) The rat that had been fed milk-only was skinnier than the rat that had breakfast food and milk. The rat that got only breakfast food was kind of sickly looking too. The rat that got to eat all that it was willing to eat looked like it had been inflated. (that was 60 years ago. the rats made a big impression, I guess.)

This was in the United States. There weren't that many fat people 60 years ago, so I guess the fat rat inspired over-eating.

they do not generate and translate the most advanced meanings and values anymore — Number2018

Please expand on this. I'm not sure what you mean.

I wonder too how is that possible given such a dismal primary and secondary education system. Why is there such a discrepancy here in the States with regards to primary and secondary schools and universities? — Posty McPostface

We are a pluralistic society, remember. Just because the schools in one part of town are shitholes doesn't mean that ALL the schools in town are equally bad. Even in a shithole school, there may be a successful college track program for some students.

Those students whose parents are reasonably affluent will locate themselves in school districts where their children will get a good education. Usually those school districts are suburban. The quality of education in a good, college-tracking high school is going to be altogether different than the experience that will be received in a run-down 'fuck'em' school where it is assumed the children have no future. Maybe 10% to 20% of children are in really decent schools which actually prepare them for college work.

I was deemed to be too stupid to be in the college track program (such as it was). I was with the majority of students who, it was supposed, would take their place in a low level job after high school. I was lucky -- I went to college anyway -- nothing even remotely ivy league to be sure -- and it was an all-round good experience (except for the teacher prep program which turned out to be a total waste of time and money).

Anyway, the college prep students in my small high school took chemistry, physics, more advanced math classes, and a language. The sub-fucks took office skills and shop classes.

I always attended public schools; we used to have "release time religious education" -- about 4 hours a week students left school to receive religious education. That has since been ruled unconstitutional. The Catholics and Lutherans were most active in this.

Where did we get our values from? 1. Parents, the church, the school, and from "the community".

Parents may not teach good values, but they have a privileged position to model what is right and wrong. Many children in our community attended Sunday school every week -- Catholic or Protestant both. There was church, and youth groups besides. The school teachers in our town didn't talk about religion [politics and religion were verboten], but they modeled what was expected: diligence, honesty, fairness... that sort of thing. Some of the scout leaders were good moral teachers. Then there was the community. In small towns (less than 2000 pop.) at the time I was a kid, people did keep an eye on children, and reported misbehavior. No child liked that but... it restrained the options for gross misbehavior.

parents believe it is the schools job to teach values to their kids — Sir2u

Oh yes, I understand that. But parents establish the values of their children, for better and for worse--quite often the latter.

You only need one in a hundred to cause havoc. — Sir2u

Very true. I went through a very small town school (1952-64) where havoc rarely, if ever, existed. I understand, of course, that times have changed. Even my little town school has problems today it didn't have when I was there, let alone what goes on in large urban school districts.

So, are we creating a better future for them with our current educational system in America? I wonder. — Posty McPostface

Posty, you're asking the schools to bear unreasonable levels of responsibility. Schools do well (not just to day, but at any time) if students leave being able to read, write, do sums; know their basic history, have some understanding of science, and know how to carry on a civil discussion. They may not teach civics any more, but civics was never about "who to vote for". It was about structures of government and was pretty boring.

The whole society is creating either a better or worse future for our youth.

I loathe Donald Trump, but you can't blame his election on "the American education system". Some poorly educated people voted for Clinton, and some well educated people voted for Trump. He didn't win in the popular vote, remember.

The little red school house isn't there to train people to vote for or against particular candidates, even if the school teachers find a particular candidate to be thoroughly loathsome.

So, why do we not instill values in the youth? — Posty McPostface

Of course we do instill values in the youth. But remember, America is a quite heterogenous society.

A 13 year old was kicking a soccer ball against the front of the church across the street from me. He had been doing this for quite some time. Eventually a kick went awry and the ball went through a frosted-textured glass window. $400. He went home and told his mother who came to the church office to arrange some kind of restorative justice program involving her son having to work off some of the cost of the window.

Kicking the ball against the front of the church might have been a bad idea, but the kid was 13. 13 year olds don't think that far ahead. He fulfilled the agreement we worked out. One has to conclude that he had been taught good values.

On the other hand, there are children who have been taught quite different lessons, involving the appropriateness of lying, cheating, and stealing, and carrying guns to school. Many of these children are quite young, and also do not thing very far ahead.

Most children are reasonably well socialized with reasonably decent values. Alas, not all.

my envy of social democracies in Europe — Posty McPostface

Wasn't it just yesterday that hordes of refugees were paddling across the Aegean Sea for Europe, and marching up the Balkans on their way to the promised land, much to the horror of many Europeans? Didn't Italy decide that they weren't going to accept any more wretched refuse from N. Africa's teeming shores yearning for larger incomes? Didn't Angela Merkel reduce the Willkommen she had earlier offered? England didn't want the young refugees camped out on the French end of the tunnel, and France didn't either. Hungary built a fence. Etc.

Are you aware that there is homelessness in Europe? Slums? Drug addiction? Poverty? Crooked corporations?

True -- Europe has done a better job with social welfare systems (SWS) than the United States: social welfare got its start in Europe decades before the US could bring itself to construct even a stingy assistance program. However, Europeans have had to pay heavy taxes to finance the SWS. I too envy Europes SWS, and wish we could do half as well.

Over time, Europe may find it more difficult to main the SWS as it stands. We'll see.

Probably most teenagers do not read books; probably most of their parents do not read either.

There has always been a large demographic of people who do not read books; some of them can not read; some of them find it too difficult to read for it to be a pleasure; and some people could but just don't.

There has always been a demographic of eager readers; it has varied over time, but it has included the educated elite who like to read; the upward aspirational immigrants who want to partake of the Anglo-American culture; ordinary educated people (not elite) who like to read, and then a few people who read for a living: book editors and reviewers. The chattering classes read because they need fresh fodder to chatter on about.

Then there is a demographic who is well educated, literate, affluent, and who take pride in claiming that they haven't read a book since college. Conversation with these people validates their claim that they haven't read a book in the last 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

Here's a ranking of reading: At least the US is not on the bottom.

1. India — 10 hours, 42 minutes
2. Thailand — 9:24
3. China — 8:00
4. Philippines — 7:36
5. Egypt — 7:30
6. Czech Republic — 7:24
7. Russia — 7:06
8. Sweden — 6:54
8. France — 6:54
10. Hungary — 6:48
10. Saudi Arabia — 6:48
12. Hong Kong — 6:42
13. Poland — 6:30
14. Venezuela — 6:24
15. South Africa — 6:18
15. Australia — 6:18
17. Indonesia — 6:00
18. Argentina — 5:54
18. Turkey — 5:54
20. Spain — 5:48
20. Canada — 5:48
22. Germany — 5:42
22. USA — 5:42
24. Italy — 5:36
25. Mexico — 5:30
26. U.K. — 5:18
27. Brazil — 5:12
28. Taiwan — 5:00
29. Japan — 4:06
30. Korea — 3:06

Certainly, technical changes alter the way we read and write. Guttenberg's printing press resulted in much different writing and reading than was possible with the books prepared in the monastery's scriptorium.

All the forms of electronic communication -- the telegraph, telephone, film, radio, television, computer, internet, etc -- have changed life. Abraham Lincoln hung around the War Department's telegraph office to get the latest reports from the field before anybody else saw them. Photographs of battle scenes brought home to people just how bad the carnage of the Civil War was. That was 160 years ago. All the technological innovations since then have continued to change the way we produce, distribute, and consume information.

The way people wrote changed when typewriters replaced pens. When the 'word processor' replaced the typewriter the experience of writing changed again. Seeing one's words on a print-like page (typewriter) or a screen (word processor) was different than handwriting. War and Peace was written in long hand.

Appreciating 'the classics' is fine, reducing good literature to them is silly. In 200 years perhaps people will be lamenting that not enough people read Danielewski and Palahniuk. There's already something similar happening with Borges and Eco, last time I spoke to literature snobs anyway. — fdrake

Most of the books printed since Guttenberg have been forgotten. Every year the conveyor belt of produced works dumps old product into the pulping machines. There are really very few books from the past that we still want to read. That's most likely going to be true for today's works too. Most of them will be forgotten fairly soon -- you won't have to wait for 200 years.

Classics are rare, because most old books don't fare well as time passes. Not a lot of people still read Chaucer, but thousands do. Far, far fewer (scores of people) read Chaucer's contemporaries Gower, Langland, or Boccaccio.

Furthermore, there are too many books to read, from the very ancient to merely old to new yesterday. There is far, far, far too much short-form writing to read, as well--fiction or factual. Too much music to listen to, too many films to see, too many web sites to visit. There are more cute cat videos than one has time to watch.

There are "big picture" and "close-up" thinkers. You are a big picture thinker. I am a big picture thinker. Big picture thinkers are "a" (not "the") critical part of society. We concern ourselves with trends, patterns, contradictions, long-term consequences, and such like. "and such like" is a big picture generalization.

Close-up thinkers are also "a" (not "the") critical part of society. They are minders, mongers, managers, and manufacturers of minutia. We've needed both kind of thinkers all the way back into the stone ages. Someone in a band of Homo sapiens sapiens had to decide when it time to move on. Someone had to pay attention to the whole band, not just 1 person. On the other hand, when it came to stone tools, close-up thinkers needed to focus on the stones that were available, and how--exactly--to use them. Close-up thinkers figured out how to get pitch out of birch bark (it's great glue). Both close-up Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens figured this out, separately.

You are a big picture thinker and you are able to question the grand scheme of things that we are taught. Close-up thinkers aren't interested in that sort of questioning. They want to make the machine 7% better; you wonder whether the machine should even exist.

Big picture thinkers, like close-up thinkers, make positive contributions. Ancient traders made a big picture decision when they set out on the sea to find other people to buy from and sell to. Even haggling over the price (in very small units of value) is a big picture activity. One needs to know not just whether a given piece of cloth has enough threads per inch, but they need to think about how much they can sell the cloth for elsewhere in exchange for what, and who can they sell that stuff to...

Big picture thinkers deal with real problems, and find real solutions, just like close-up thinkers do -- just on a different scale.

I guess a bigger point I am trying to uncover here is the tediousness of living in general. — schopenhauer1

Classic big picture project. Is it a positive or a negative picture?

I figure that starving, lack of gainful employment, lack of respect and a sense of belonging, and being a social tool without a use is likely far worse for someone's well being than feeling like a "cog in a wheel". — All sight

In the world it is quite possible to not starve, have 'gainful employment', but still have a lack of respect and sense of belonging. The employed may still feel like a social tool with no use, or no positive use.

Alienation and anomie. Many suffer from it. The cause is purposelessness, a lack of personally relevant purposefulness.

Was there a golden age where people were happier and more fulfilled? — All sight

I don't know.

Can we assess the happiness of ages past? The dead are a devilishly difficulty demographic to survey.

What we can do is assess the happiness people feel at the time of the survey. There are various institutions (Gallop organization, Michigan Institute for Social Research, etc. You can google happiness surveys. It's about what one would expect: Some countries are happier than others right now, and over time some countries have been happier and unhappier.

It would certainly depend on "who you ask". The people on top are probably happier and more content than the people on the bottom. People whose modest expectations have been fulfilled are probably happier than those whose large expectations have only partially been fulfilled. Etc.