i feel like there's a bit of a tendency in leftist circles to do the same thing conservatives do, and pine for an imaginary time period that never existed. except instead of like, ancient rome, or the 50s, a lot of people are weirdly fixated on like...the middle ages? or the hunter-gatherer days? or pirates? like people will try to be anti-capitalist and say "oh medieval peasants had better lives than we do" or "humans used to all live in small communities that took care of each other" and like. idk man id rather have vaccines and the ability to leave your abuser and the right to vote.
it's tempting to think that since things are bad, they must be uniquely bad. but there is no utopia in the past that we need to return to, no garden of eden we were cast out of with the advent of. idk the industrial revolution or whatever. we need to create a better future, not despair about an imagined past.
part of this is also the extremely reductive idea that like, White Men are the root of all evil in the world, and therefor pre-colonial cultures must have all been utopias. in reality, they were neither barbaric nor magically perfect, they were just people with their own flaws and virtues. it turns out people everywhere were and are basically the same. looking for the magic button that will make everything perfect again just distracts from the mundane and hard work of making things better.
