He Should Bone-up on History

Here's a letter to the Washington Post:

Benjamin Kelley says that his art "represents the dehumanization of modern society" ("An artistic body of work's bone of contention," July 16).  I'd like to ask him which aspects of pre-modern society he believes to have been most humane.  Was it a life-expectancy of about 30 years?  How about mass illiteracy?  Maybe Mr. Kelley longs for the odors, lice, and scabs that regularly adorned human bodies that seldom bathed and that slept on dirt or...