Whenever I feel my circumstances are limiting, including my historical circumstances, I always ask myself if that is really what is stopping me from doing what I want to do or being who I want to be.
Most of the time, after a little introspection, I conclude the source of the limitation is a combination of not really believing I'll do it or become it and/or not really caring. Then I make peace with that or try to change it.
I'm a big fan of philo-medievalism. It's very reasonable to admire the past and yearn for it, even if the past wasn't objectively, comprehensively better than the present, because it's usually, if not always, the case that the past was better than the present in some ways, and you can try to take the good and leave the bad, which often works perfectly well. European elites obsessively admired the Greco-Roman classical era for almost a thousand years, and profited immensely, even though taken holistically, Western Christendom was arguably a better civilization for most of that time, and definitely by the end of it. They admired it for very different reasons, and borrowed diverse and often opposite things from it, but all in all, they did quite a good job of taking the good and leaving the bad.
So definitely-- admire the medieval hamlet! The past is usually a better source of dreams and ideals than abstract ideology, because even if there's a good deal of imaginative projection, they're more grounded, more empirical.
Sometimes I long for a boring life, and yet modern medicine has saved me and people I love so many times. There are downsides to every time period I suppose.
Whenever I feel my circumstances are limiting, including my historical circumstances, I always ask myself if that is really what is stopping me from doing what I want to do or being who I want to be.
Most of the time, after a little introspection, I conclude the source of the limitation is a combination of not really believing I'll do it or become it and/or not really caring. Then I make peace with that or try to change it.
Whenever you go, there you are.
I'm a big fan of philo-medievalism. It's very reasonable to admire the past and yearn for it, even if the past wasn't objectively, comprehensively better than the present, because it's usually, if not always, the case that the past was better than the present in some ways, and you can try to take the good and leave the bad, which often works perfectly well. European elites obsessively admired the Greco-Roman classical era for almost a thousand years, and profited immensely, even though taken holistically, Western Christendom was arguably a better civilization for most of that time, and definitely by the end of it. They admired it for very different reasons, and borrowed diverse and often opposite things from it, but all in all, they did quite a good job of taking the good and leaving the bad.
So definitely-- admire the medieval hamlet! The past is usually a better source of dreams and ideals than abstract ideology, because even if there's a good deal of imaginative projection, they're more grounded, more empirical.
https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/philhellenism-the-european-gentlemen
Sometimes I long for a boring life, and yet modern medicine has saved me and people I love so many times. There are downsides to every time period I suppose.