I feel like lots of things about the way life used to be (and still is for many) is based on women not having agency (financial independence) and being physically weaker than men.

We are only beginning to find out what happens when women have full independence and children are not a necessary byproduct of sex, and it seems like cratering birthrates are at least one result.

A lot of the costs of birthing and raising children were paid solely by women, but benefited the whole tribe. Now that those costs can be made explicit, I wonder how tribes will chose to compensate women such that they are sufficiently incentivized to have at least replacement level of kids.

That's the TED talk I had in mind, I just forgot Hans' name.

I understand his argument but I think it's a biased view, we assume modern leisure is better but I'm not sold on this.

Education, literacy, political empowerment are not leisure.

These are all cute words, but on my daily routine I see nothing of that sort. People are not especially empowered, power which I believe comes as much from emotional and human experience rather than words.

I can't imagine your daily routine. Education, literacy, and political empowerment constantly play a role in my life, the life of people around me, my society, my economy, etc.

One might say that education and literacy play a role in what we're doing right this moment ...

most people I ran at work into were not specially educated, nor empowered, they coast along trying to fit in their work waiting for a bit more money to spend on not super important stuff.

A tiny example about power, woman in charge of my office bowed down in excuses after a lawyer insulted her for his own mistake. This is the sort of power people still don't have and that no book will teach you.

now, to be fair, my experience is only that, if so I wish I could live in yours :)

> most people I ran at work into were not specially educated

We're talking about an historic timescale. If they are literate and have high school degrees, they are very well educated compared to pre-industrial people.

> woman in charge of my office bowed down in excuses after a lawyer insulted her for his own mistake. This is the sort of power people still don't have and that no book will teach you.

Those situations are stomach-turning to me. Books do teach people about that kind of power, how to get it and use it (unfortunately), and how to respond to it. Also, literacy and education led to that attorney's power (unfortunately).

I tend to think that higher education is not as interesting as it's said to be. And people who used to work hands on (woodwork, metal smith) had a lot of deep knowledge too, it just wasn't seen as evolved.

Frankly I don't think one book will ever prepare you to live the situations above. This is the kind of thick skin only real life can imprint in you. That girl probably knew everything she could have said, but biology took over, she made a large grin and let it slip. Social status for you. The same old song that has been played for ages. And mind you, that chief wasn't an angel, she unleashed on me a few times during my work. That's why I say people are not better today. All I see is tribal reflexes and fitting in the social tissue.

Now to be fair, I'm not the happiest dude on earth right now, so maybe I amplify the negativity of those situation. Still I'm not sold on the benefits of doing less thanks to modern technology.

> I tend to think that higher education is not as interesting as it's said to be. And people who used to work hands on (woodwork, metal smith) had a lot of deep knowledge too, it just wasn't seen as evolved.

It's not necessarily your fault, but I hear this trendy claim often, but nobody can support it. No one book can teach you everything and not every problem can be solved with knowledge, of course, and there are things we learn from experience, but the track record of learning from books is pretty unimpeachable - including, learning from other people's experiences. (And higher ed is much more than learning from books.) It's hard to imagine humanity without literacy.

Anyway, I'm not adding a heck of a lot at this point ...

I don't know, I learned about physics in HS and college, but nothing made me understand it better than actually interacting with materials (and it wasn't at school). Being faced with reality changes your depth of understanding IMO.

All in all I think our model of society is slightly fooling itself about a lot of things. It adds but it subtracts too.