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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.
I never wish for anything to change and I would have no idea anyway if I would want to live in a different era.
I have nothing but my current experiences throughout my lifetime to compare so overall, no I think I will stay right where I am and not regret any of my life experiences or decisions.
Location: Finally escaped The People's Republic of California
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I would like to visit a different Era. Particularly the Old West. But life would be pretty hard on anyone from this Era trying to live in another Era....
Even the Amish of today benefit from modern roadways and laws.
I too would like to have experienced the Old West from the 1870s-1880s but I doubt if I could have handled being a farmer or Gandy Dancer so I probably would have ended up an outlaw swinging at the end of a rope.
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.
Every once in a while I have the thought that living in the Medieval era would be pretty cool. Then my brain turns back on and I realize that while in modern times I've barely reached middle age, I would be at the end of my life expectancy in that time period. Also, I like little things like bathing, brushing my teeth, and eating diverse meals on a regular basis.
Threads like these usually indicate serious lack of knowledge of the past. I suspect that if you could hop into a time machine and go back to the "old west" or another time, once the initial excitement wore out you'd probably become bored very quickly. And discover that in a way, times weren't as different as you might imagine.
The Old West wasn't just shootouts between Indians and the Cavalry. Certainly by the 1880s such incidents were very rare and the concept of the "old west" was already being mourned as lost. You'd have go back a few more decades, but if you did so and went out to the genuine frontier beyond the line of US forts you ran the risk of Indian raids and I don't know how much you'd enjoy being scalped, and the Indians were ruthlessly efficient in stalking and attacking remote homesteads in surprise raids. Almost everyone, whether 1850s or 1880s, were hardscrabble farmers or cowboys or ranchers trying to eke out a living, or small town merchants, or miners. Like today, they focused on muddling along through life the best they could and were focused on their families and close friends. It was hardly glamorous. The standard of living would be extremely primitive by modern standards. Sure, times could be "simpler" due to fewer technology, but times could also be more "complicated" in that you had to struggle more to maintain a decent standard of living.
You can never know whether you genuinely want to live in a different era until you've tried that era. It wasn't just different clothes or technology, but the mindsets were completely different. Would you be willing to tolerate the extreme racism of the past? Or sexism? Income disparities? Social classes? It wasn't only that they were prevalent but such attitudes were *believed* in and accepted as part of the *natural* order of things. Despite what Hollywood may say, life wasn't Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman.
Sure, if slavery hadn't existed or if I was a protected race, not affected by several injustices; but if history were to remain the same as it is now, I'd pass. Our world isn't perfect now, but I definitely wouldn't want to be a part of that history.
Threads like these usually indicate serious lack of knowledge of the past. I suspect that if you could hop into a time machine and go back to the "old west" or another time, once the initial excitement wore out you'd probably become bored very quickly.
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?
Most movies do not give an accurate idea of what life was really like in the past. They give a romanticized version and tend to gloss over things like dying of curable diseases, virulent institutionalized racism and sexism, eating poisoned food and working from sunup to sundown. Especially movies about the South that promote the "Lost Cause" way of thinking, which is far from accurate but is still very prevalent in the South.
The hate and crime of today is nothing compared to the past. Especially if you're picking somewhere in the American South prior to the mid-1960s. The "amazing" way of life you imagine in Columbia, SC in the 17th and 18th centuries was mainly provided through slave labor. Plus all diseases living in such a hot, humid environment with very little sanitation brings. If you weren't a rich, white male then life could get very unpleasant.
So no, there is no other time I'd rather be living in.
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