# Would you want to live in the past? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 7, 2015, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015 "2015-04-07T02:38:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/41 "2015-04-08T14:24:58Z")
We’ve had this conversation before and I am always firmly on the side of no way nohow. This is the first era in which women really have reproductive control. Before this we were tied to making babies or avoiding pregnancy. I would never go back to an era before cheap and easy to obtain birth control. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/42 "2015-04-08T14:29:05Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I think I might go back to the 1960s or 1970s. Leisure suits. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/43 "2015-04-08T15:24:45Z")
Sometimes it feels tempting. I’d especially be interested in going to back something like the period from 1870-1930, the Golden Age of Music. But I’m way too used to many modern attitudes and institutions, such as the relative confinement of smoking, pervasive cultural diversity, the beginning of finally tapping into the full creative potential of both genders (rather than oppressing one for no damn good reason), and yes, modern medicine, the Interwebs, etc. So, nope. I’d go back in time to visit (what I would give to hear performances of J.S.Bach from his time in the Tomaskirche, Leipzig!), but to live? No way. ETA: NooooooOOOOOOOOOOOO way. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/44 "2015-04-08T15:45:28Z")
> [@RandMcnally](#): > > I’m Black with a white wife. > > So no. I’m white with a black husband. Never. ---
**Author:** ![BeeGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@BeeGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeeGee)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/45 "2015-04-08T16:01:21Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I’ve mentioned my grandmother on this board, a lot. She died in November of 2012, just short of her 1o8th birthday, so she lived through the time mentioned, before and after. > > As a teenager she once told me she much preferred living now, the 1970’s. She liked washing machines and dryers, refrigerators and freezers, modern medicine and air conditioning. Oh, she LOVED air conditioning, having lived through the summer heat waves of the 1930’s. She loved television too. > > She honestly didn’t believe in the concept of the good old days, saying people were no worse “now” than they were “then”. She told me keeping clean was harder in the old days, both one’s body and one’s clothes. > > Thinking about what she said I decided I would like to visit the past, but not to live there. My 99 year old grandmother wad the same way. She read a few of those good ole days emails and said “say, that’s crazy.” In west Texas in those good ole days, if you did the laundry, you might have to hang out up all over the house. If the sand blew while it was outside, you’d have to do it over. She said listening to her appliances doing all the work was a sweet sound. ---
**Author:** ![racepug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@racepug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racepug)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/46 "2015-04-08T16:35:03Z")
I’ve thought about this several times and, overall, I don’t see the benefit to living in a past age. Sure, the Internet and satellites and other aspects of modern technology bring us some really cool stuff, but as with most things in life they come with downsides (e.g. cost, and being exposed to things that one likely never would have been had one been living far enough in the past). Mostly, though, I think I’d rather not live in a past age because, generally speaking, personal hygiene, health, and health care weren’t so great. For a _visit_ I’d consider it. But to be transported back in time with the intention of living out the rest of my life in that time period? Mmm - probably not. (With _one_ caveat - if we’re talking “within the last half-century” I’d probably go for it. Before that - I stick with my original declaration) ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/47 "2015-04-08T16:38:22Z")
Forget 1915. I said long ago that I wasn’t interested in living in any era before the advent of home refrigeration. I enjoyed growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, but I still wouldn’t want to move back even to that time. One word: typewriters. I like writing, and I’m good at it, or so a number of bosses over the past 15 years or so have told me. But I wasn’t nearly so good a writer, nor did I like writing nearly so much, before the advent of WYSIWYG text editing. Being able to quickly revise and refine my writing as I compose it with relative ease has enabled this part of me to become what it is now. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/48 "2015-04-08T16:39:37Z")
Only if I got to be upper-class and wear fancy-schmancy gowns. And take all of the mod cons with me. Like modern medicine and showers. My grandmother had polio as a girl, and had effects of that all her life. So modern medicine is a must! ETA: Can I go back and forth, like _Outlander_? ETA (again), yanno, I’m an atheist…I’m not sure most of history would be kind. ---
**Author:** ![CaptainAmerica\_1987](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@CaptainAmerica\_1987](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptainAmerica_1987)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/49 "2015-04-08T17:48:12Z")
I’m a millennial so I pick either the 1950s or the 1980s ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/50 "2015-04-08T20:47:25Z")
I’m very diabetic, plus other physical problems. I have to take a handful of pills every day, plus two injections of 5X-concentrated insulin. I’ve asked my endocrinologist what would be my quality of life without the meds, and he answered that I’d have died 20 years ago. Sure, I’d love to live in the \*Belle Époque \*(1871-1914), in Paris or southern France. But I’d have to go back as a young person, of fairly high economic status, with the understanding that I’d live a shortened lifespan. I’m counting my blessings and staying here. ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/51 "2015-04-08T21:13:39Z")
No. I love having modern conveniences and civil rights. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/52 "2015-04-08T21:41:52Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > I’m white with a black husband. Well, congratulations on your recent wedding! I assume you just got married last week, because surely you would have mentioned the slightly relevant fact of having a black husband a couple of weeks ago, when you were ripping me a new one for saying that some people possibly may not have the same awareness as you do about racially insensitive terms. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/53 "2015-04-08T23:12:22Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Well, congratulations on your recent wedding! > > I assume you just got married last week, because surely you would have mentioned the slightly relevant fact of having a black husband a couple of weeks ago, when you were ripping me a new one for saying that some people possibly may not have the same awareness as you do about racially insensitive terms. Well, that took an unexpected turn. I’m not sure what conversation you’re talking about, but I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I am married to a black man. We got married in Vegas, in a small ceremony… Seriously, though, I’m not sure of the relevance of what you’re saying to this thread. You are welcome to bring the dread reveal of my miscegenating nature into the previous conversation, though. ---
**Author:** ![Asimovian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asimovian/32/172_2.png) [@Asimovian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asimovian)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2015, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015/54 "2015-04-09T00:58:53Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Well, congratulations on your recent wedding! > > I assume you just got married last week, because surely you would have mentioned the slightly relevant fact of having a black husband a couple of weeks ago, when you were ripping me a new one for saying that some people possibly may not have the same awareness as you do about racially insensitive terms. That’s true. I had to sit her down and teach her all about racial sensitivity when we met. It’s amazing how little she understood about it before I had the opportunity to enlighten her oh-so-many years ago. Getting back on topic, no, I would not want to live in the past for the exact same reasons cited by **RandMcNally**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-want-to-live-in-the-past/717015.md?page=2)