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I DID grow up in a different era.........I had a lady who was into psychic stuff tell me one time I was a lineman in the old west and died by hanging ! But that is another story altogether.
But, no, I LOVED growing up in the 50's and 60's and wouldn't trade it for any period in history. I was so lucky to have been born when I was. (except for that little hanging thing ! )
Honestly, I hate the world we live in. All the technology,hate, and crime. I live in Charleston, SC and to imagine being here back in the 1700-1800s would have been amazing. Even the early 1900s to skip some wars
If you DID want to live in the past, anywhere in particular?
FYI...I apologize if this has already been made into a thread.
You might want to investigate the lot of black South Carolinians in those eras. I'm sure none of them would prefer to be slaves or the victims of blatant racism like cross burnings and lynchings.
Indefinite suffering? Nihilism of now? Those are very interesting parameters.
For every potential upsides of a different set of circumstances, there's always a downside. You may be attracted by the notion of tribalism, but others would find it suffocating and the lack of personal identity and freedom frustrating. Any potential upsides to a different lifestyle philosophy should be balanced with the other realities of the time, which may include shorter lifespans, lack of medication and brute violence in much of the world. You may think you might be happier in 1300 England for religious reasons, but can you also accept the feudal system? The quality of life?
There's no evidence to suggest that people were any more happy or any less happy in the past than they are today. If depression is on the rise today it may because there was no such publicly recognized diagnosis as depression in the past so datas were not kept. People may have been more religious in the medieval days but does it mean they were happier and more content than modern era people? How can one prove this? Especially when people in the past didn't know anything beyond their own time and circumstances? Likewise, are people happier in tribal societies? How can one prove this?
Humans are defined by our relationships to our surrounding circumstances because we are culturally ingrained into the environments in which we grew up with and its expectations and the realities of those circumstances. A "modern" person cannot exist in 1300, and likewise a 1300 person cannot exist today. The only way one could be successful in a radical transition, assuming we had access to a time machine, is to completely isolate themselves from the surrounding context so that you do not get upset at, say, the perceived injustice you see (and the definition of injustice has evolved throughout the centuries). But you would have to deal with the morality of tolerating a society that would be so much in opposition with the values you grew up with.
If you are arguing that your particular self would be better off had you been born X years ago, it's impossible to say that because you can't eliminate the memory of the time span between X and the present from your self. Your life experience forms a part of your identity and helps defines how you think and relate to the world around you. If you want to erase that life experience by removing your existence to a different period in the past, you would just become a different person quite unrelated to your present self.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Marcinkiewicz
And answers like yours often reflect a lack of imagination. Forget time machines. Imagine being born at a different time, in a different place. You could spend your entire life envisioning these essentially infinite scenarios. Depression is on the rise now (according to stats of which I myself am somewhat skeptical, given the actual magnitude of the increase reported (tenfold in terms of pre-1945 vs post-1945)), but I myself often wish I were born at a time when I wouldn't have so easily become an atheist, for example. When a cause would easily be adopted, as opposed to the nihilism of now. Imagine that you were born at a time when tribalism was essentially inescapable...there's fulfillment in that, illusory though it is. Better than a condition of indefinite suffering, though, is it not?
All I know is I was much happier in the 90s when technology wasn't as big. 5 year olds didn't have cell phones and you played outside until it was dark. This is what I mean with this thread. As we progress with each decade, things just seem to be getting worse with society IMO. People are caring more about technology than spending time with each other. For instance, I'm driving in the car with my friend and she's just texting away and paying no attention to me.
Like I stated earlier, Charleston is a historic city with beautiful homes that are still intact today. The Victorian era just has always fascinated me. I even moved to this town just because I love it so much. The only turn off about that era: the clothing and the excessive heat in the south.
Back in 8th Grade I asked a friend about this and we both agreed Greco-Roman times would have been good--but I think we also realized people who want to live in a different era usually only think of life in the ruling class. Everybody wants to ride in a galley; nobody wants to be a galley slave. People who want to be a knight in the Middle Ages only want to pose in the knight's armor, sit on the knight's horse, get their picture taken, and then return to modern times. The idea that the knight might have some actual work to do would come as quite a shock to them: He had to be STRONG to wear that armor and swing a sword. What did that sword do? Ancient battlefields have yielded skelletons sliced from the shoulder to the hip or with the legs cut off halfway between the foot and the knee. There was a reason why the knight wore armor and there was a reason why castles had walls: the era was as violent as the inner city ghetto is today and the knight had to take his blade and rumble, carve the other guy up and maybe get carved himself.
The Old West is another popular place in time. It lingered longer in Wyoming and my Grandmother's brother was part of it. You probably would have called Uncle Jack a cowboy--and that might have been the last words out of your mouth. He was a sheep herder and there was a range war between the sheep herders and the cattle ranchers. One day some cowboys gunned Uncle Jack down on the open range and left him to die. He didn't, but a lot of guys did. It wasn't the Indians you had to worry about, it was other White Men. Imagine that as part of your daily life. And suppose you were a cowboy on a trail drive. Do you have any idea how much dust the hooves of a thousand head of cattle can kick up? Do you realize you'll be riding in that cloud of dust all day long? Cattle stampeeded rather easily and it might take days to round them up again. You'd never find all of them, but you would find a few that had stampeeded from an earlier trail drive. The Indians were usually satisfied by collecting a tax of so many head of cattle. A cowboy was always sent to help pick out the cattle. The cowboy's job was not to give the Indians the weaker cattle. The cowboy was there to check the brands and let the Indians have cattle from some previous trail drive.
I don't think any of us appreciate the amount of hard physical labor that went into daily life in previous eras. A gymnasium fitness freak would be exhausted well before the end of just one day Back Then, whichever Then he was in. My mother grew up in a sod house and it was common to have centipedes a foot long running around in the house. On Bonanza they hop on a horse and ride into town with the same ease we drive a car today, but when Grandpa took Grandma to see her sister in town it took the horses several hours to to pull the wagon there and it would take several hours to get back home. They only made the trip a couple of times a year. Grandpa sold what he could sell and bought what they needed and the kids got the only candy they'd get all year long. Such were the Good Old Days.
When I watch movies, like say The Patriot, life just seemed so much simpler. Now I'm not talking about the wars but there were no cell phones, TVs, etc. It was all about family, nature, etc.
That's the problem with a lot of people today
People believe what Hollywood claims to be "history"
You said you want to live in Charleston during the revolutionary war?
Let's see what you would have gone through
Monday, May 12
On this day in 1780, Charleston falls to the British. The city had been under siege for weeks. The American surrender was a demoralizing defeat, but there was little that the American commander, Benjamin Lincoln, could do. He was surrounded and outnumbered. The last several weeks of April were tough. Lincoln kept refusing to surrender, but the British kept pounding the city with cannon fire. Lincoln finally surrendered on May 12.
To see 2082 will be fantastic,even though it is possible i could see 2082,as i was born in 1982.
I would have loved to grow up in the 70's and 80's.
Technically,i did grow up in the 80's,but i would have liked to do adult things rather than kiddie things like listen to music,bars,watch soap operas as oppossed to school and watching cartoons
Well, let's say speaking in terms that you didn't even know what present day was like.
When I watch movies, like say The Patriot, life just seemed so much simpler. Now I'm not talking about the wars but there were no cell phones, TVs, etc. It was all about family, nature, etc.
You can easily have same now. Nothing but a personal choice. You are a free person in a free country. Go live somewhere on a remote farm, homestead, and do not use any of those technological advancements. Go green 100%. Wind power, or, better off, in best traditions of "simple" 1800s, no power, candles, manual labor only and no running water or toilets.
Btw, I am not sarcastic. It can be easily accomplished. Not sure how long you'll last though.
I always think my morals and values are more in line with the '50s. I was a young child in the 50s, but I wish I had been a teenager at that time. Guess I was born 10 years too late!
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