From time to time I allow myself to think about how random my lifespan has been. I had no control of it until I was born and how I have managed it so far will probably help to determine how long it lasts. Again, random chance will probably play an equal or greater part in that.
With that as a given for all of us (unless you can prove otherwise) and with what you have learned about other times in history, what period of roughly 50-100 years would you select as the best of times and the worst of times.
Somehow I think of pre-history and the Middle Ages as being worst.
As for best, I can’t beat the current period. My 100 years span would be 1940-2040.
I think pre-history could be tremendously varied depending on your location. I’m sure there were some places, for instance those recently ravaged by disease or only recently discovered by seafaring folk, where life was easy and the challenges few.
So if you were relatively healthy and a good hunter, and you had the fortune to have a friendly clan surrounding you to avoid boredom I’d say life could be pretty sweet. (20 people, tops, since it seems any group bigger than that runs into rough intergroup dynamics.)
As a person who enjoys observing wildlife in the wild, I sometimes think it would have been fun to be alive before civilization shrunk habitats and diminished populations of so many creatures. Maybe around 1800. But in terms of comfort, safety, health, convenience, choices, a million other things, I’m with you. I wouldn’t trade the times I’ve lived in for any other that I’ve read about.
While it would be intresting for a while, I’m not sure that I’d want to live with a band or 20 hunter-gatherers (probably about 5 hunters, 5 gatherers, 1 elder/shaman, and the rest children) for my whole life. Life would be too precarious for much of the time, and boring for most of the rest. Now seems about right – at peak oil, before global warming has really taken effect.
Do you want the best and worst of times for any average person to live, or our own selves? As a woman who loves needlework, reading, and conversation, the Victorian era (in the British Empire, naturally) would suit me just fine. Of course, your average worker struggling to survive on the grimy streets would probably disagree.
As for worst for anyone, I’d venture plague-stricken Europe. No class was safe, or comfortable.
I deliberately left the OP rather open-ended so that “the rules” would be whatever individuals wanted them to be. But you have raised a reasonable issue. I share the fascination with specific activities that might have been more fun or more rewarding or would have paid better money in other eras, so I can see how having the Victorian benefits you mention might be nice. But when I factor in such things as sanitation, medical knowledge, modes of dress and other such things, I find I’d rather just think about those times than actually live in them. That tends to work for most eras I would consider being time-machined back to. Times like Ancient Greece, the Old West, the Civil War, the American Revolution, Robin Hood’s days, etc.
I have no real problem with selecting aspects of earlier periods to wish thast they might be brought back into fashion. But I think the OP ought to imply a total return to all aspects of the period – the good and the bad. That’s what leads me to accept my lot as being about as good as I can imagine. Since I don’t have much more than Sci-fi to go by in selecting future periods, I must rely on what I have read or seen on the History Channel to use for going back in time.
Other than that, select your own criteria. It’s all speculation anyway, isn’t it?
I wouldn’t want to live through World War II. Whenever I feel like the world is falling apart, I remind myself that it was a hell of a lot worse then. Crazed maniacs trying to take over the world, fighting all over the world, genocide, atomic bombs. Not sorry I missed it.
Best time? Don’t know. Has there ever been a really good time in human history? It’s all pretty lousy, which occasional low points. Now’s as good a time as any, I guess.
Just for the record, I did live through WWII, but it’s safe to say I don’t remember it. It was over before I started grade school and all I knew of it at the time was the picture in the paper of the A-bomb hitting Hiroshima. If I had been born maybe five years earlier I might remember some of it. Since my dad was in the army and we traveled all over the South from one base to another until I was around three, maybe I ought to remember something about it. But I don’t. All I really know of the period is what’s come afterward: movies, tv, music, stories, all that.
That’s the main reason I can say with little hesitation that the period I have endured is as good as any I can imagine. It’s not all that great to have been alive while the Holocaust was going on. But since I wasn’t there, it has had minimal effect on me. Same can be said for the Civil Rights period, Vietnam, Watergate, American Idol, and other things I have been contemporary with. Just not really affected by in any serious way.
There are those moments when I fantasize about going back to an earlier period in my life and staying there. The 50’s come to mind as one of those times. But I think it’s more about my age at the time than anything all that magical about the period. Happy Days and such retro nonsense is just that: nonsense.
Moorish Spain before the Reconquista is one. A Muslim state where Christians, Jews, and Mislims lived in (relative) harmony, with books and art and (relative) peace? Interesting.
North America after 1945 is another. Being born just after the Second World War, you would get to participate in the victors’ prosperity. Note that being born even 20 years later is a very different experience.
I’d have to say now is the best time period for me. If I had been born before the current century I wouldn’t have survived childhood because of measles, mumps, injuries (concussion and eye injury from a bike crash), etc. My allergy-triggered asthma would have ruled out any kind of agrarian life including ranching.
In general, I agree. Part of my job used to be analyzing prehistoric skeletons. From this I decided that if I ever went back in a time machine and could only take two things with me, they’d be a toothbrush and a condom. Even the elites in the populations I looked at were pretty ravaged by age 30, just for different reasons.
On the other hand, around 1947 America seems pretty sweet. We’ve got most of the major medical advances by then, and America for a short while was on top of the world with unlimited potential (at least if you were white).
Sheesh, and that’s only 9 years before I was born. I’ve either don’t have enough imagination or too much.
I’d say very late 1800s and early 1900s in America (or Canada). The arts and philosophy of the time were fascinating, and women’s roles increased outside of the home. My great grandmother lived through it and recalled it as the very best years of her life; a golden age.
The mid to late 1800’s appeals to me too. The westward movement, immigrants, inventions, the changes in the economy, the promise of a limitless future.
