The Mind Parasites Q2 - Historical foundations

RichardAbbott

Leaving aside the hugely ancient and clearly fictional underground ruins, Wilson spends a fair time trying to build a historically rooted case for a qualitative change in human progress and optimism around the start of the 19th century. Did you find this convincing? (I don't mean the fictional explanation in terms of parasites, but simply the idea that something got derailed at that point in history)

Apocryphal

Well, it was generally ok, but OMG ‘the rate of suicides in ancient Hattusa’ is just not something anyone is ever going to be able to study, so that was pretty ludicrous. I had to learn to let that go pretty quickly.

NeilNjae

I don't think so. Industrialisation happened, and that changed things. But it was more an excuse for the plot than anything else.

RichardAbbott

Industrialisation, and the (probably) consequent growth of both leisure time and the middle classes, I guess.

clash_bowley

No. The attempt at justification was interminable and ludicrous.

RichardAbbott

@clash_bowley said:
No. The attempt at justification was interminable and ludicrous.