367: It's a miracle and no one cares

The title is something I say with some frequency, and it's a philosophy I try to live by (you'll see what I mean in a second, if it isn't something I've already explained to you). The idea behind "It's a miracle, and no-one cares" is that the life that we modern humans live are incredible in a number of ways, but it's so normalized that nobody thinks about it. It's also true for many people that it's been this way for their entire life, so they don't have surrounding context or even a concept of life without it.

Spending time here in Viterbo has had me thinking a lot about the lives of the people who originally built this place; the medieval city walls and stone-brick churches date to the 1200s, and life must have been so, so different.

The main thing that's different will have been comfort and longevity; technology has allowed us to live more comfortable lives in just about every single way. I don't just mean electrical systems or inventions like air conditioning, but things that you wouldn't think of, like textiles and rubber and foam. I'm even a fan of stretching the word "technology" into pharmaceuticals, from simple aspirin all the way to the serious painkillers, they make life significantly more comfortable for almost everyone, which is fantastic.

There's also (obviously) the problem of mortality. I think people don't properly appreciate just how amazing the outcomes of everyday people are in modern times. The single best piece of data for this is infant and child mortality, the graph looks like this:

Until the mid-1800s, the number of children that died before puberty (defined as age 15) was ALMOST HALF. That number is insane to think about. Imagine half of all of your friends died when you were a kid. Half. It's only a 25% chance that both you and your significant other (if you have one at the moment) would have even made it to be together.

Sidenote; LOVE ourworldindata.org, it's one of my favorite websites.

I should read some contemporary sources on what life was like in medieval towns, because I have an idea, but I can't even tell you what that preconceived notion was formed by, so I'm going to assume there are huge things that I'm simply missing.

There's apparently an archeological museum in one of the old wall towers; I'll have to check it out.

I could yap significantly more about what a miracle the modern world is, but its late, I've got more to discuss, and I'm tired. I'll definitely talk about it again sometime, and feel free to ask me in person and I can go on a whole ted talk anytime and anywhere.