The meme isn’t literally saying modern life is ‘just as bad’ as medieval serfdom - it’s highlighting that despite almost unimaginable progress and development since then, economic and social conditions for the average person are becoming increasingly shit - and that the overlap in this venn diagram is a shameful rebuke of our complacency and the failings of the current system/those which are disproportionately benefiting under current uncertainty and exploitation.
In any case, suffering isn’t a competition - someone who’s circumstantially stuck in their shitty apartment paying off a lifetime of debt might be (more) free from the TB concerns and formal landlord permissions that medieval serfs had, but it doesn’t for a second mean that people are guaranteed a healthy, happy, prosperous life - or that anybody in a developed country has the ability or the capital to do what they want or go where they please. Shit, I can’t have 2 days to my fucking self without the ordained holy approval of my moron manager, in practice I’m no more free to venture or travel without affecting my livelihood when it comes to needing someone’s say-so.
Amazon workers pissing in bottles to raise their children in a society which increasingly expects the individual to bear all costs of life but will gladly subsidise corporate malpractice is a crappy situation - and farmers in 12th century England having it worse doesn’t diminish the shittiness of the situation for people alive today. I agree that historical literacy is important, but the meme doesn’t exist to insult the serfs, it begs us to avoid their plight with infinitely more resources, having won hard-fought battles to avoid that sort of lifestyle.
I don’t want to wait for the economic outlook gets even worse until we’re all living in Meta/Tencent company towns and sleeping in pod hotels eating gruel for a comparison to become fully valid.
The meme isn’t literally saying modern life is ‘just as bad’ as medieval serfdom - it’s highlighting that despite almost unimaginable progress and development since then, economic and social conditions for the average person are becoming increasingly shit - and that the overlap in this venn diagram is a shameful rebuke of our complacency and the failings of the current system/those which are disproportionately benefiting under current uncertainty and exploitation.
In any case, suffering isn’t a competition - someone who’s circumstantially stuck in their shitty apartment paying off a lifetime of debt might be (more) free from the TB concerns and formal landlord permissions that medieval serfs had, but it doesn’t for a second mean that people are guaranteed a healthy, happy, prosperous life - or that anybody in a developed country has the ability or the capital to do what they want or go where they please. Shit, I can’t have 2 days to my fucking self without the ordained holy approval of my moron manager, in practice I’m no more free to venture or travel without affecting my livelihood when it comes to needing someone’s say-so.
Amazon workers pissing in bottles to raise their children in a society which increasingly expects the individual to bear all costs of life but will gladly subsidise corporate malpractice is a crappy situation - and farmers in 12th century England having it worse doesn’t diminish the shittiness of the situation for people alive today. I agree that historical literacy is important, but the meme doesn’t exist to insult the serfs, it begs us to avoid their plight with infinitely more resources, having won hard-fought battles to avoid that sort of lifestyle.
I don’t want to wait for the economic outlook gets even worse until we’re all living in Meta/Tencent company towns and sleeping in pod hotels eating gruel for a comparison to become fully valid.