Someone - give Fred a shot of hope, follow that up with a hearty dose of optimisim. He's wishing for things that never were. Again.
Fred wishes he could ride the plains as a free man, alone with nature and communing with diety. Which is fine. Perfect, more power to him.
But the odds are reasonably good he's be just another schlub, chained to the land and his lord, working until he drops dead at the ripe age of 30. He wouldn't get the benefits of Greek or 1st century Roman civilization, his betters would.
I might have preferred Greek times, when humanity was a small speck in a large world. Or perhaps Rome of the first century, with more order but man still not a spreading uncontrolled blight. Those horrible mid-eastern religions had not yet raised their grim and censorious heads, and one might still worship a sacred grove, or the statue of a goddess, or the moon. Capri was yet a lovely place, with misted peaks on a blue bay, not yet carpeted in tour buses and fat people from Rhode Island.The good old days weren't. Dirty, brutish, life was short, the hours long and if you thing your boss now is a slave driver .. well he's not, literally a slave driver. In short, unless you were a privleged minority, you were nothing.
Fred wishes he could ride the plains as a free man, alone with nature and communing with diety. Which is fine. Perfect, more power to him.
But the odds are reasonably good he's be just another schlub, chained to the land and his lord, working until he drops dead at the ripe age of 30. He wouldn't get the benefits of Greek or 1st century Roman civilization, his betters would.
