When my father was born, in  January 1875, people used to live in a way not different from the Romans' one: oil lamps were used to light, people used to travel in carriages and sail on sailers. Light bulbs did not exist, nor telephones, nor anything that electricity entails today. The 80% of the population used to work the earth, a similar percentage was illiterate. People used to die of a simple infection, few used to go to school, culture was the privilege of an élite. Infant mortality was around 50% (half of the remaining 50% used to die before reproductive age). Without cinema, radio and television, information and ideas did not use to travel a lot.

At that time you could behave irrationally without bringing about global pollution, energy crisis, nuclear distruction; the ecosystem was the wheat field one and rationality (the one that my father taught me) was simply a personal skill.