I have often thought that boy, I would really have suffered had I been born in medieval or Roman times because I don't know what I would've done if I didn't work in IT.
I would describe the feeling as guilt, and it took me some time to just accept that things are the way they are.
There is this notion I see going around that in the past people survived by being brutish animals and smart people would have died quick. In fact, it's the opposite. We outcompeted other animals because we are NOT like them. Because we engineer. In a hunter gatherer society someone who builds traps, designs better huts or tents, etc could be extremely valuable.
Buffet's self-deprecation is admirable but lacks imagination.
The thing is just that I've been obsessed with computers my whole life and can't imagine myself being, for example, an aqueduct engineer or a blacksmith.
Where Buffet's quote struck a chord is that I'm thankful that society allows me to do what I love, but I should stay mindful that not all people have those opportunities.
I suppose a different way to look at it is that had I lived in a time before computers I wouldn't have known what I was missing out on, so there's that.
From what I gather, the actual monk-monks in your average abbey, the ones doing the routine of daily prayers and reading & writing in an established and bookish order, were largely children of aristocrats or otherwise well-off. There were very few of these relative to the total population. The rest of the folks living at an abbey lived some of the routine but were largely excluded from the life of study and learning, instead doing manual labor to keep the place running. They were usually classified as something less than full brothers/sisters. Most weren't literate and there was typically no serious program or intention to make them so.
Yes there were exceptions and various orders work differently, but talking about in general and during times when there were quite a few—though still not that many—full-on monastics sitting around writing commentaries on Augustine and such. Some orders took a work-and-prayer approach for everyone to keep their order afloat, but those generally seem not to have lasted long before morphing into collecting rents and relying on patrons. Turns out it's really hard to have a life of the mind & spirit without a bunch of other people working to support you—if you're doing the necessary work yourself, it's all you have time for, meanwhile a competing order nearby's adding a wing to their abbey with the money they're collecting from a share of a mill, rents on three commercial properties in town, and 30 acres of land worked by peasants, their wine cellar is full, and their abbot has significant influence in the court of the Duke. So. Maybe that seems like a better idea.
I have often thought that boy, I would really have suffered had I been born in medieval or Roman times because I don't know what I would've done if I didn't work in IT.
I would describe the feeling as guilt, and it took me some time to just accept that things are the way they are.