That you can read this is pretty amazing. For most of human history, literacy didn't even exist as a concept. For the vast majority of time that it has been around at all, it wasn't of much concern to peasants like you and I. We had other things to do, mostly toil ceaselessly until our premature deaths. Oh, we didn't choose to do this, we were usually forced to either with threats of violence or, if very lucky, merely to keep from starving to death…

We don't have to go back all that far to reach a time when threats weren't bullshit like bullying, but being eaten by birds. That's right: birds. Birds used to eat our children. Birds used to eat our kids in recent memory! Less than a thousand years ago¹⁾. Recent enough that we still tell stories about it…²⁾