Yes, your description is evocative and shows that we haven't arrived at a perfect, carefree society. I say that the car is an "option" for you in the sense that you at some point made a decision that life is better -- less difficult -- with a car than it would be without. In the past you would not have had this option because automobiles did not exist. We might have discussed the inconvenience of keeping a horse shoed and fed and healthy, and the problem of feces piling up in the streets. You may be relatively less well-off than many other people today, but you are absolutely better off than almost everyone in the distant past, when many people did not even survive childhood. Of course, it's natural to compare ourselves to more fortunate contemporaries, and the resulting aspiration probably drives a lot of the progress in society. I just find it curious that there seems to be a determination to ignore or even deny this forward progress, and focus on pessimistic measures of human well-being.we should be... i guess more in awe of what defines a lower or middle class existence, but I guess it's hard to be in awe of things you need to function
TRUE. But in fairness, I would likely have not been working as far away from my home as I am now. the small road crossing I leave near would have had a general store, and a church (which still stands, actually - they use it for weddings, but need to bring a generator for power), etc. I wouldn't have been working in the next town over, or 15 km down the road. Now, there's no nearby general store, no post office, and fewer farms, less industry. It's because our society has evolved to take the car into account. People drive into the city for work, people drive to the big box store in the next town, or to the grocery store in the other town that has better prices. Because we've been doing that for 40 years and more, smaller local businesses have disappeared, and if one tried to live without a car in a town like mine now, like one would have 100 years ago, it would be possible of course, but the idea of "leisure time" would become a memory, eaten up by walking 20 minutes to the grocery store, then 20 minutes back, or walking an hour to work, and an hour back. every errand adds more time taken, and you can only do so much at a time because you don't have any way to carry a large amount of stuff. Then also do that in -40 with with a headwind a few times each winter, or in a few feet of snow, or on a +35 C day, or in pouring rain. Modern life does not stop for those things (neither did life 100 years ago, but you probably weren't going as far then) What i'm saying is that it's possible to live without a car outside of major cities, but it is, as a general rule, not realistic. ----- anyways as I said in my first post, I do agree with you that most of what we consider "necessities" today are gravy on top of a life that our great-grandparents would have been gobsmacked at. Cars, however, are not one of those. The advent of the affordable car for everyone changed our society in an irrevocable way - It created suburbs, it created freeways, it changed almost everything.In the past you would not have had this option because automobiles did not exist.