id:: 6600f6e8-6bc9-436c-ae7a-fdf5ead6169b
“Last but not least, access to the finest products of the human mind has been fabulously broadened and democratized. It’s hard for us to reconstruct the gnawing boredom of the isolated rural households of yesteryear.31 In the late 19th century there was not only no Internet but no radio, television, movies, or musical recordings, and for the majority of households not even a book or newspaper. For entertainment, men would go to the saloon to drink.32 The writer and editor William Dean Howells (1837–1920) entertained himself as a boy by rereading the pages of an old newspaper which his father had used to wallpaper their Ohio cabin.” (Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now)
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There is the reasonable debate about how much access to more forms of recreation and amusement has improved our society, if at all. Pinker tends to believe we are better off for not having the “gnawing boredom” of older societies (ref). My impression is that that boredom was filled with doing more of some things (like sex).