On Those Happy Peasants of Yesteryear
"… is
from page 557 of Will Durant’s 1950 volume, The
Age of Faith; here
Durant writes about the typical medieval peasant:
He
shared in the social life of the village, but had no cultural interests.
He could not read; a literate serf would have been an offense to his illiterate
lord. He was ignorant of everything but farming, and not too skilled in
that. His manners were rough and hearty, perhaps gross; in this turmoil
of European history he had to survive by being a good animal, and he managed
it. He was greedy because poor, cruel because fearful, violent because
repressed, churlish because treated as a churl. He was the mainstay of
the church, but he had more superstition than religion.
But this
peasant was a locovore whose food (when such was available, as it
frequently was not) was organic!"
Comment
And some
voices (and fists are) are raised in praise of dismantling capitalism and
returning to a "simpler" farming age? Why don't they migrate to sub-Saharan Africa from their pampered lives in the market economies in the West.
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