Should spend some time in a Third World country. There one can enjoy, with abundance:
Lack of air conditioning
Open air food markets with less than hygenic conditions
Inconsistent vaccinations, resulting in more illness (especially fatal ones and/or epidemics)
The list could go on and on, and not to hijack the thread (unless I already did?) or anything, but…
The Good Old Days are still alive and well in some parts of our planet.
As a medievalist, I can testify that we possess absolutely no sexual data for the Middle Ages, regardless of how you choose to periodize them. In order to invent a history of medieval sexuality, it is necessary to rely on the texts, since there is little material evidence one way or another. What material evidence there once was, namely chastity belts, has been debunked as Victorian invention.
There is not necessarily any correlation between theology and sexual practice. Just because there are numerous texts which dictate when and where sexual intercourse is appropriate does not mean that these dictates were observed. I wish I can remember the cite, but a medieval historian actually created a flow chart, conflating various treatises on sex. The rules were so confusing and restrictive that it is unlikely that they had a great deal of impact.
Furthermore, clerical celibacy wasn’t even enforced until the eleventh century, and poorly then at best. It was not uncommon for bishops to have several wives and enough bastards to populate a small country. Do not make the mistake of assuming that a high line in the texts indicates a high line in reality.
As for the spread of HIV, it would depend on what population the virus struck. If it had struck aristocratic lines, they would have been decimated. Intermarriage among aristocratic families was too important to give up, and surely it would take some time before aristocrats realized that the disease was sexually transmitted.
Furthermore, it would decimate urban areas. Without longevity medications, HIV positive people would be much more likely to catch other infections quickly. Since all of the symptoms would be different, the source of the disease would probably never occur to them.
Suffice to say, there was a great deal of mobility among urban populations, especially in the later Middle Ages. Even rural inhabitants often traveled short distances to neighboring villages, whether to bring goods to a market, to petition a representative of the king’s justiciar, etc.
Sure, HIV might not have had the impact it is having in Africa, but it would have been a monumental disaster nevertheless.
MR
Well if you dismiss all evidence until you find a medieval Kinsey Report then you can pretty much say whatever you want. But just for fun, how do you think the percentage of unmarried adults in Medieval times compares to today? Or Gays?
Obviously no religious text that says anything will have been fully observed. But were other religious practices widely kept? Compared to today? There is no reason to say that these religious texts were being produced for a public that was nearly as sexually “liberated” as today’s society.
Can’t say what rules you are referring to. But the rule that says “don’t sleep with anyone who is not your spouse” is not especially confusing or restrictive, and likely had a great deal of impact.
What do you mean by the word “intermarriage”, and what does it have to do with the spread of AIDS?
Again, if they cought it.
Enormously less mobility than there is today. It’s not even a remote comparison.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pining for the “Good Old Days” nor am I luddite by any stretch of the imagination. I just think it’s a valid consideration. What will the impact be after 100 or 1000 generations. But you never know, soon repairing a genetic defect may be as routine as replacing a old muffler. Who needs evolution anyway!
Just a comment…nostalgia seems to recur a t regular intervals in human history. Why is it that the French speak of “La Belle Epoque”-that is the years from 1890-1914?
It goes back even further-didn’t the Greeks long for the Age of Gold, in their mythical past?
Nostalgia usually strikes people in their old age, and probably reflects people’s natural yearning for old friends that have passed on…but as a previous poster stated-if you want to experience the “god old days”-it is just a short jet flight away!
I don’t think anyone ever suggested that there was more technological advancement in the good old days. Only that there may have been other aspects of society that were better, such that they more than made up for the technological backwardness. In light of this, your post would appear to be irrelevent.
I think the only good of the good ol days were
-Cars could be worked on with a standard toolbox (Hell I can tear apart a V8 and put it together again but change the oil in a 99 BMW? Nooooo
-No AIDS
-Coca Cola and softdrinks came in glass bottles…and they tasted better.
-John Wayne was alive and making movies (and they were good movies!)
-You could go to school without the worry of some dude going nuts and shooting you
-Oil was in big supply
-People were proud of their president
-Music was better (and musicians…gasp…played their own instruments)
Not much more…
I have my doubts about AIDS being a recent disease. I think we may have just noticed it now that medical technology is getting more advanced.
Considering how AIDS works, there is no way someone from the last century would notice anything unusual about a person who contracted it. People got sick and died young all the time, and if they were promiscuous it was a LOT more likely. Maybe it was common among prostitutes but they tended to die of syphilis or some other disease before or because of the AIDS symptoms.
“You could go to school without the worry of some dude going nuts and shooting you”
I wouldn’t be too sure of this one. Crime – specifically, the perception of how frequent it is and how likely one is to be a victim – is one of the biggest victims of "good old day"ism. Guns have always been easy to get in this country, and there have always been mentally-disturbed kids. There have always been bullies and victims of bullies in schools. Violent youth street gangs were common in 19th Century New York City.
Remember that heavy and immediate media coverage of events is not the same as those events occurring more often.
“People were proud of their president”
Oh, really? Go back in the microfilms of old newspapers and look what was said quite openly about:
*FDR: Do I have to tell that “The SOB I’d be looking for would be on the front page!” joke again? 
*some of the 1920s presidents: “Cal Coolidge is dead? How can you tell?”
*Abe Lincoln: pictured as an ape in a political cartoon, IIRC.
*Martin Van Buren: “Van, Van, a used up man.”
*Andrew Jackson: alleged to be a bigamist
*Thomas Jefferson: alleged in campaign material to be an atheist and an anarchist.
*Etcetera, etcetera.
And about campaign material: political campaigns in this country have ALWAYS involved personalities alongside issues and have ALWAYS included negative campaigning. Does anyone really want to argue that “I like Ike!” Lincoln as “the Railsplitter” or “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!” are about deep policy issues? Or that “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?” wasn’t negative campaigning?
Nested quotes are Maeglin, other quotes are Izzy R. (And the coding is very odd here. I’ve changed it slightly.)
Unmarried people (especially women?) Less, I’m sure. But keep in mind that monasteries and convents were much more prevalent (this is Christian Europe I am speaking of,) and many more young men and women joined than now. And not just for spiritual reasons, but as a possible career. I do not believe that the rate of homosexuality was any different. The concept of sexual orientation itself is arguably only 100 years old. A man may have been “prone to commit the crime of sodomy,” but he would not have been called homosexual (and I wonder if women’s sexuality was discussed at all.) But in any case, in a strictly closeted and sexist society, what does the marriage rate have to do with sexuality?
I’m assuming that he means that noble families married each other. Who else can a prince marry but a princess, and that sort of thing. Royals and nobles were not noted for their celibacy; rulers and consorts would pass the disease on to their mistresses and lovers who would come from the upper strata of each kingdom. This is well before germ theory and rational medicine, it would have been blamed on something other than sex (or rats and fleas.)
But why wouldn’t they catch it? This is before latex condoms, and if you have no idea that this odd wasting illness is transmitted by the sex you had months or years ago, why would you stop having sex? People have always been promiscuous (and some have always been monogamous, and some have always been celibate.) People have also always been cheated on, and raped.
“Gone to the White House, ha ha ha!”
Considering who won, that one ended up pretty negative for the Republicans too.
Akatsukami wrote:
Now that sounds like one loooooooong bag of gold. 
But seriously folks, if the old days were so much worse than today, how come I’m not getting laid as much as I was when I was in graduate school? Huh? Hmm? Answer me that!
And how can you say the world has improved, when we no longer have Betty Crocker Mug-O-Lunch?! Gawd, I miss that stuff.
I’m with you so far, although I’m not a big John Wayne fan.
After Columbine the New York Times ran a piece on teen killers and school shootings from the 1950’s and '60’s. Several kids claimed to have been inspired by the film “Bonnie and Clyde”.
I’m sure that in the early days of school integration there were also plenty of African-American kids who were scared to go to school.
Like the Monkees?
Sorry I don’t have a cite for this, but I took a “Women in the Middle Ages” class in college and remember that, according to the professor, many peasants did not get married (officially) at all - in some places at some times (remember the Middle Ages lasted about 1000 years and covers a huge geography) there is evidence that marriage was only for the upper classes.
And with lifespans so short in the Middle Ages (just your chances of dying in childbirth were significantly higher than now, then there’s smallpox, plague, etc.), it can be argued that the average length of marriage is arguably longer now than anytime before the 20th century.
Dangerosa wrote:
One of my high school English teachers told me that back before modern medicine, a woman had a 50% chance of dying each time she gave birth.
It took me only a few seconds to realize that this statistic was ridiculous. If half the births on average result in the death of the mother, then the human population would never increase.
From what I’ve heard, the highest incidence of childbirth mortality occurred when mainstream medicine first started being used by obstetricians. Before the discovery of disinfection, a doctor might cut up a cadaver with a scalpel and then use that same scalpel on a live patient without cleaning it. The incidence of puerperal fever among women whose doctors cut their umbilical cords with these scalpels was pretty alarming.
We were discussing the “good old days” in during a meeting of my history senior seminar. One of my fellow students pointed out that in Colonial America, most women were pregnant when they got married.
Actually, if I’m not mistaken, during the days of Socrates, wasn’t homosexual male love the highest form of love? Didn’t they consider women so impure that homosexual love would be the ultimate?
Intermarriage-incest, in other words. Good lord, it’s still going on today-Lilibet and Phil are cousins through Queen Victoria, Christian IX of Denmark, etc etc…it’s ridiculous.
Good lord-Edward VII was famous for his affairs! They called him Edward the Caressor. In fact, one of his mistresses, Alice Keppel is the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles.
As far as medieval tales, look at my name: Guinastasia. It’s a combination of Guinevere and Anastasia. Now that I’ve mentioned Guinevere, look at the Arthurian tales. The Canterbury tales. EVERYONE was fucking everyone else.
1957: No air conditioning in houses, but the house … 3 bedroom … cost $5000. Housing communities (parks) were a new idea.
1959: Gasoline could be bought at 10 to 15 cents a gallon, but there was little unleaded to be found. That type went under the name of white gas and was mainly used for things like gasoline lanterns, lawnmowers and such.
1960: Less pollution but poorly equipped ambulance services, who usually required a payment for picking you up.
1962: Water ran clear in drainage ditches. DDT was sprayed on everything and choradane could be bought in stores for poisoning ants – and everyone in the area.
1964: Air conditioning was in the movie houses, admission was 25 cents for kids, 50 cents for adults. They had fun Saturday matinee’s, parents dropped their kids off and picked them up hours later with no fear of them being snatched. Soda was 10 cents. A huge box of hot buttered popcorn was fifteen cents. By today’s standards, the movies would be ‘quaint,’ the weekly serials boring, and everything would be G rated. There were only 3 channels on TV, no cable and most sets were black and white (for a few bucks you could by the handy, dandy, nifty colorizer which consisted of a sheet of thick flexible plastic in 3 colors – blue, amber and green, that stuck to the screen and magically turned B&W TV into color. Not real color, but color.) Ralph Nader had not yet jumped on the car industry for churning out unsafe cars. The government was still deciding whether or not nuclear radiation might be all that harmful. You could buy radium dial watches and radium in about a 100 products because no one knew they could cause cancer.
1966: The hippies were amusing, the Vietnam war was something distant, Made In America stood for the highest quality around, better living through science was the slogan, pot was the best drug, LSD was next. Maw Bell was churning out new communication products lickity split and phones lasted nearly forever and phone bills were low.
However, computers were the size of a bus. Someone developed a home PC in a box that actually sold but was useless for almost everything. It took hours to program through switches and did one problem at a time. It had no screen. It used binary code. Compounds with addicting drugs could be bought over the counter. The birth control pill was not around, nor were most spermicides. Grove owners sprayed their groves next to housing developments by air and no one considered the effects of the poisonous drift settling through windows as harmful.
The heart bypass was just being discovered. Not until after the 70s would it become a simple, common operation saving millions. There were no transplants. Cataracts required major surgery, a week flat on ones back in bed with eyes bandaged, thick glasses afterwards and limited vision because the plastic lens implant was not around. Nor was laser microsurgery. No one realized that the local garbage dump was poisoning the water supply and that the monthly burning of old tires was polluting the air. Used oil was dumped on heavily traveled dirt roads because no one knew that it did not go away. Foggers were used at outdoor night football games to kill the mass of mosquitoes and people sat in the fog, sometimes enjoying the not unpleasant scent of the vapor as it cleared, not realizing that it was DDT and harmful.
The good old days had some problems, but lots of us like to recall the good times. At least kids respected adults, no one carried guns into school, there were no drive-bys, child molestation was almost unknown, ‘bad’ kids went to reform school and if kids fought, they usually did so with fists and stopped when one was down. Adults did not sue everyone for any reason.
And, the air was clear, the skies bright blue, worries were low, and things seemed so much simpler. Leave It To Beaver was an icon of family life. Let us ‘old farts’ enjoy our selective memories. In time, you’ll be us and some youngster will be sneering at you when you expound nostalgically on the good old days.
The only question that matters is whether people are happy. Were people happier then? Are we happier now?
I wasn’t around then to know but with all the bitchin’ and complainin’ I hear these days, my guess is we are not substantially happier than they were.
Iolanthe:
Married people are less likely to have multiple sex partners.
Without getting into debates about the nature of homosexuality, I think its beyond obvious that fewer people were leading homosexual lifestyles in the Middle Ages, regardless of what their true orientation may have been.
Still no relevence. What difference does it make if they had mistresses who were princesses or commoners?
As noted above and in my previous post.
Also I should have mentioned a dearth of intravenous drug users.