Thought Experiment.

Is there a period of history that you've ever been especially drawn to? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in some period of history, say Medieval Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire? Most people would probably choose to live in a time in which people were generally thriving, and not just getting by, like the heyday of Rome itself, during the reign of Emperor Augustus in the first century A.D, let's say. But whatever period you like, pick one and then imagine how a person of that time lived on a day to day basis. What sort of job did that person have? What sort of dwelling did he/she live in? To help facilitate this process, it helps to narrow your choices. For most of recorded human history, save the last century and a half roughly, the number of choices are few. So get five or six six-sided dice and roll them. If you roll five or six ones, depending on how many dice you have, then you are one of the nobility in your chosen era. For every other result, you are a peasant.

Let's say you rolled something other than straight ones and you are a member of the peasantry. You will now be able to choose from a variety of occupations; farmer, baker, cobbler, blacksmith, or cartwright, just to name a few. Now think a little bit about your chosen field. What are some of the most important things you need in order to do your job? Say you are a baker. Where do you get the grain to make the bread? What do you use to heat the oven you bake the bread in? Where do you get that from? Where do you sell the bread? Who are your customers? How do you transport the things you need and how far do you need to go? Follow this line of thinking for a while until you have a decent sense of what it must have been like.

Once you've done that ask yourself if you would still like to live in that time and place and do the things they did to get by. Then ask yourself what are the crucial differences between then and now. Why do we have cars and trucks and they didn't? Why are there very few farmers and bakers and even fewer blacksmiths, cobblers, and cartwrights today? What makes contemporary society possible and why have the changes occurred that made this happen?