Too bad Catherine the Great couldn't have died in a way to make a better story. She neglected her responsibility to history.
We have no choice of when to live, so it's healthy to like what we have, but that doesn't dampen the pleasure of imagining other lives. In our minds, we might be anything, which is why we enjoy movies, fiction, and tales of all sorts. In our minds, we can explore the world in safety. It's not easy to imagine a life radically different from one's own. To imagine life in a different time, with beliefs, values, and customs so alien to what's familiar requires not only a deep understanding of history, but the ability to sympathize with a point of view wholly different from one's own. I suppose few people can do it. We'd be better off if more could, since it would add perspective, and a bit of modesty, to our thoughts about contemporary affairs.
Moi, what's wrong with liking a life time? You like 1855, but you like it because of what lay ahead over the long years of ... a lifetime.
The question pulls me in two directions. One towards those times that are most interesting, which might be pretty horrific to live through. Shakespearian England during the plague years would be a good example, Rimbaud in Ethiopia after giving up poetry, Burton in Sind. Gurdjieff in France post WWI. The other is towards those times where life is easy and pleasant and boring. Polyenisia before contact perhaps.
First off, you say that anytime after WW I is out of bounds. I don't like that restriction.
Well, MAYBE I would "set the way-back machine Sherman to..." The "Ragtime Era" maybe, not too sure I would really like that, but MAYBE. When I was a kid, there would be no doubt in my mind, I would have gone for 1870-1905, that's because I watched movies like "Big Jake" and just dreamed of how fun that would be.
Now, with a much better understanding of those times, I really am not sure I would like it very much at all. Back in those "good ole days" things we don't even think about had not yet come along. For example, cholera was a common cause of death, cholera is what happens when shit contaminates drinking water. Polio was quite a threat, and totally misunderstood. There was no real cure or treatment for many maladies we today don't even think about.
Several years ago, sitting around a fire pit and drinking beer with some doctors, we were just chatting, about anything and nothing in particular... One doctor had recently looked at the figures on incidence of cancers in the U.S. population over the twentieth century, and he said that cancer actually decresed dramatically around the 1930's, then he asked if anyone knew why. I was absolutely stumped, couldn't imagine what would cause it to decrease, but I ventured an un-educated guess, and said that maybe the great depression caused more people to give up the habit of smoking. I was wrong, that is NOT the reason cancer incidence went down in the 1930's. What was the reason? REFRIDGERATION. Refridgeration made it possible for fresh vegetables to actually get to the consumers without rotting in transit, and household refridgerators became more and more common, ending with fresh vegetables become a more common thing in everyone's diet. Fresh vegetables... they were NOT available to even the richest of people year round, until refridgeration became available.
So on one hand, I would have loved to go back and live out the "wild west" fantasies with "The Duke" and been some sort of "Maverick" or "Marshall Dillon," maybe even a "Have Gun Will Travel" sort of man. But then again, LOTS of people died from "consumption" and cholera, gangreen, or the common flu, cancer was not even understood, and most people who did not live in Florida had ever seen an orange much less a banana or a mango. Those weren't just tough times, those were suck-fest times and I mean "suck" in the bad way.
It is really rather philosophical question than historical question.
Best times are always when you are young. It is due to some developmental reasons. The world is opening up for you and you are able and willing to absorb everything you see, feel and hear. During your teens and and early adulthood you have so many first experiences, that you will remember for life.
The taste of music you enjoy is exactly what you enjoyed during your firsts.
bobover3 (imported) wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2010 10:48 pm
Holland: Antwerp during the Golden Age (1600s), during which much of modern bourgeois civilization was born - one of the great cultural revolutions.
Hi bobover,
I'm sorry, but you make an usual mistake as made by many foreigners.
Antwerp was a city in the duchy (state) Brabant, not in Holland. Other cities in Brabant were for example Brussels, Louvain, Mechlin and Breda.
Holland was a countship (state) with cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leyden, Rotterdam and Alkmaar.
Holland and Brabant once belonged to the 17 United States of the Netherlands, other states were for example Flandres (countship), Luxemburg (duchy), Utrecht (bishopric) and Gelderland (duchy).
During the revolution (80 years war) against the ruling sovereing, the king of Spain, the Netherlands got split up into two parts: the northen Republic of the 7 united (states of the) Netherlands and the southern Spanish/Austrian Netherlands. The Netherlandish Declaration of Independance was the exemple for the American one.
Antwerp in Brabant was a very important commercial, cultural and intellectual centre at the side of the new republic until the fall of Antwerp in 1585 when Spanish troops took the city. Now the economical power shifted to the north, to the Republic. Many protestant merchants and craftsmen flet from Antwerp to Amsterdam in Holland. Not only from Antwerp but from allover Europe people came to Holland and Amsterdam. Amsterdam became for a while the most powerful city in the world. For the Spanish and Portugese jews, Amsterdam was the new Jeruzalem. Many people from differnt religions were allowed to pactice their religion. This was unique in that time. It made and was a part of The Golden Age (1600s or 17th century) "
bobover3 (imported) wrote: Sun Jun 20, 2010 10:48 pm
during which much of modern bourgeois civilization was born - one of the great cultural revolutions.
"
You can still find the spirtit of that time in Amsterdam of today.
But, I'm afraid like John Adams, I might find the natural air there in the before times, a bit hard to breathe.
It is beyond my understanding why some reliables always go, off topic.
The choice was a middle class life in a time before WW1.
I am most happy being a product of the '50's and the Hollywood Hills and
would not trade that in to be a child in today's world. Often what I offer here are products of extended conversations with friends as this thread.
I chose the American west in a time to be too young for the War Between the States, and too old for the turn of the century ones because -
The middle class of the American west was probably the best off in terms of health and hygiene, food supply and variety, filled with the coming of all those inventions and the middle class could afford them. Moi has better reasons then westerns to choose that period.
circa 1855 to be too young to take
