If you could be born in any year

[Wells]

I'd like to have been born in 1923. To be of age to enlist in the Marine Corps with the outbreak of WWII. I know that sounds silly, as war is never something anyone should want to experience, but this is all quite theoretical.

 

[Ticklishchap]

I'd like to have been born in 1923. To be of age to enlist in the Marine Corps with the outbreak of WWII. I know that sounds silly, as war is never something anyone should want to experience, but this is all quite theoretical.

I do see what you mean and can't help agreeing with you, but admittedly on romantic rather than practical grounds.

 

[Wells]

I do see what you mean and can't help agreeing with you, but admittedly on romantic rather than practical grounds.

Definitely. Upon viewing the past, I think we all romanticize things a bit.

 

[emigran]

I was born in '47... don't think I would change it,,, I just missed out on steam rail travel, a regret for me... I would probabley like to have lived in Italy during Michaelangelo times...

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Had we all been born into the time period that we chose, we would be different people & so applying how we are today to how we would be back then doesn't make sense to me. We can all wish to have existed in a particular period we may relate to today but had we really lived at that time, we probably wouldn't have done so well as we have in our era, nor of had the luxury of fantasizing about living in another time, even those who knew what it meant.
Just imagine,there are still humans at the end of the century & they are able to fantasize about living in 2016........we don't know how lucky we are.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm pretty sure I'd have ended up with a personality very similar to that of my Aunt Edie (born 1921), who was mouthy, tough, and held her own down on the docks with the rest of the I. L. U. local. Or my great-grandmother (born 1892) who threw out her drunken husband in 1917 and went to work in a shoe factory. She was a tough old bird as well. As far back as I've been able to trace my family -- back to a mouthy woman who was hung as a witch in 1692 -- we've been like that, so there's no reason to think I'd have wound up any different no matter when I was born.

I will say, if I had a choice, I would *not* have chosen to be born in the year in which I was born, 1963. Going thru life stitched to the back end of the human centipede that is a certain postwar generation has not been an altogether pleasing experience.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Just goes to show, who we choose as role models when we're kids can affect our whole lives.

 

[tonyb]

Last Sunday, whilst listening to Sunday Edition, a CBC Radio news program, I heard the word "presentism," which is a new coinage for a not so new concept: assessing (and judging) the past in light of the standards and values of the present.

Among the more obvious examples is flippantly dismissing all that Thomas Jefferson said and did because he held slaves.

I might suggest yet another coinage: "pastism."

I'm all about historic preservation. I have an extensive collection of old clothing, much of it older than I am. I'm particularly drawn to old ephemera -- the stuff that wasn't meant to last anywhere near as long as it has. Collections of historical photos might captivate me for hours.

But do I REALLY think the world was a better place 80 years ago? Maybe in some ways, I suppose. But overall?

Nope. I don't think that at all. We here (many if not most of us, or so the evidence would suggest), are drawn to the cultural artifacts of the time preceding us by a generation or two or three. Preserving (and replicating) the artifacts might offer a window on that earlier era, but it hardly preserves that era itself. This is not a time machine.

 

[scotrace]

2220. It should be very interesting by then.

 

[Fading Fast]

Last Sunday, whilst listening to Sunday Edition, a CBC Radio news program, I heard the word "presentism," which is a new coinage for a not so new concept: assessing (and judging) the past in light of the standards and values of the present.

Among the more obvious examples is flippantly dismissing all that Thomas Jefferson said and did because he held slaves...

If this is too political, then please remove it, but my attempt is not to fight about modern politics, but to comment on a contemporary mindset.

It drives me crazy when people, commentators, analysts simply and with condemnation assess individuals, ideas or actions taken by people in the past purely by the moral standards of today. Yes, it is reasonable to look at past actions in light of how we would think about them today, but not also providing the historical, contemporaneous context is self-centered, arrogant and aggressively biased.

One hundred years from now, there will be new standards, new rights and wrong, new conventions and new accepted rules that will make some of the things we think are perfectly moral, logical or right today seem stupid and silly. How would we feel if some commentator in the year 2116 - without acknowledging our current standards - denounced us as backward, ignorant, immoral and stupid because of our present morals.

Wouldn't we say, "hey, at the time, these were our conventions, our standards, our values and most moral people did their best within the context and construct of what we believed was right?"

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Wouldn't we say, "hey, at the time, these were our conventions, our standards, our values and most moral people did their best within the context and construct of what we believed was right?"

I doubt we would say a lot since we'll all be long gone .......& if future generations do judge us harshly, I reckon we deserve it.

 

[tonyb]

"All men breathe the air of their times," some smart person once observed, although these days we'd likely use a gender-neutral term.

Few things are more insufferable than young persons whose highfalutin education has them believing it's their place to "correct" others.

They're worse than teenagers -- you know, those people you had better consult while they still know everything.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What presentists fail to note is that in every generation there were those who were on the vanguard, fighting for exactly the comforts they take for granted. Those are the ones history ought to be noting.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Indeed. It took real courage to racially integrate a public school in 1956. Or to be openly gay even more recently.

At minimum, most such persons were risking their livelihoods, if not their very lives. Few of us can claim such a backbone. That, I suspect, is every bit as true now as it was then.

 

[LizzieMaine]

^^^^^
Indeed. It took real courage to racially integrate a public school in 1956. Or to be openly gay even more recently.

At minimum, most such persons were risking their livelihoods, if not their very lives. Few of us can claim such a backbone. That, I suspect, is every bit as true now as it was then.

It's as I always say -- enjoy your 40 hour work week and your paid vacation? Thank a radical.

I think that in every generation the majority of people are neither righteous nor evil. Most are willfully apathetic -- they just don't want to be bothered. Most people in any generation subscribe to the "don't stick your head up or your neck out, keep your mouth shut, go along to get along" mindset. I don't condemn them for it, but I don't admire them or look up to them for it, either. Just as today, most people in the Era had to be hit over the head with a situation before they were willing to be roused out of their passivity and do something about it. The ones who were out there doing the hitting were the ones who made a difference.

 

[heron163]

1750 or so...

 

[Gingerella72]

Realize, though, that if you were born in a different era, you wouldn't have the wonder of it all or the knowledge of this era to compare it to. You'd just be living your life, as you are now. I imagine 100 years from now people will be wondering the same about 2016; "How wonderful would it have been to live back then and see the rapid development of technology!"

For me, while I'd like to visit another time as a time traveling tourist, I'll stick with my birth year of 1972. I almost died of pneumonia at age 2 and my chances of living through that in an earlier time are dicey.

 

[Ticklishchap]

Although I agree with the comments above, I think I would like to have served in the Army in the late 70s or early 80s, in other words just before my time (I was born in the mid-60s). I know several older chaos who did so and they benefited a lot from the experience. Although there were a few nasty conflicts then, the Army was better funded and less subjected to bureaucracy and political interference, thereby offering more opportunities to young men interested in world affairs and history but also in the outdoor life.

 

[plain old dave]

^^^^^
Indeed. It took real courage to racially integrate a public school in 1956.

Indeed. I just happen to live about a 15 minute drive from where that happened.

http://www.people.com/article/cameron-jo-ann-boyce-clinton-12

They bombed Clinton High, too, about two years later. And the kids from Clinton wound up getting bussed just about three blocks from where I sit typing to what was then Oak Ridge High School (AFAIK the only high school in the South that had to be SEGREGATED as integration was the order of the day at the Manhattan Project) while their school was rebuilt. And the first day they came, the Wildcats' marching band played the Clinton High fight song.

To this day, you can still see two colors of brick on the gym at what's now Clinton Middle School.

 

[Shangas]

I'd pick 1900-1910ish era. The start of the 20th century.

If I get to choose my death, then I would die in 2010. And document the great changes that a life spanning 100 years would witness.