When would you like to have lived?

[Jimi Shandrix]

Wouldn't have minded being 17 in San Francisco 1966 but being 17 in 1990 was pretty good too.

 

[vikingTON]

13 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

The Romans are absolutely fascinating but it's worth remembering that they were also supremacists who regularly indulged in genocide, kept and sold slaves and were war mongering fucks. They were pretty much the Nazis of their day.

Well no they weren't, because all of the above practices were standard operating procedure for every other European/Levantine society at the time as well. Your attempt to judge a civilisation by the standards of your own time and not the context in which they lived is an ahistorical, nonsense hot take. 

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Well no they weren't, because all of the above practices were standard operating procedure for every other European/Levantine society at the time as well. Your attempt to judge a civilisation by the standards of your own time and not the context in which they lived is an ahistorical, nonsense hot take. 

Yes but I read once that Athens was a democracy and as I'm only able to conceptualize things through the lens of when my grandad was born to now they were basically the United States of America 

[NotThePars]

Yes but I read once that Athens was a democracy and as I'm only able to conceptualize things through the lens of when my grandad was born to now they were basically the United States of America 

In fairness to transplanting our own values and cultural moment to the past, Zizek writing that Zac Snyder’s Spartans in 300 were the Taliban and the Persians were America was good and very funny.

[velo army]

15 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

The Romans are absolutely fascinating but it's worth remembering that they were also supremacists who regularly indulged in genocide, kept and sold slaves and were war mongering fucks. They were pretty much the Nazis of their day.

I mean, aye, so being a slave or one of the conquered peoples would be shite.

Buuuut, being one of the slave owning classes who regularly attended/hosted bacchanalian orgies would have been, as Cicero would say, teckle.

[DA Baracus]

Just now, velo army said:

I mean, aye, so being a slave or one of the conquered peoples would be shite.

Buuuut, being one of the slave owning classes who regularly attended/hosted bacchanalian orgies would have been, as Cicero would say, teckle.

I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bit of the old genocide and slavery. Not for me!

I suppose if you were one of the patrician families you would think you were pretty much ruler(s) of the world, and I suppose you'd be in some ways right. But the supremacist stuff would put a bit of a dampener on things for me.

Still, if time travel were possible I'd spend absolutely loads of time observing the Roman empire. Like I said, it would be absolutely fascinating.

[Guest TheJTS98]

17 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bit of the old genocide and slavery. Not for me!

I suppose if you were one of the patrician families you would think you were pretty much ruler(s) of the world, and I suppose you'd be in some ways right. But the supremacist stuff would put a bit of a dampener on things for me.

Still, if time travel were possible I'd spend absolutely loads of time observing the Roman empire. Like I said, it would be absolutely fascinating.

If you're looking for a time/culture lacking that, you're going to be looking a long time.

I personally quite enjoyed having adolescence in western Europe in the late 90s and leading up to 9/11. Things were comparatively simple. The future looked ok. Scotland were in the World Cup.

Nobody was likely to turn up and burn my village down. Little chance of being eaten by some wild animal that dominated my local area. I wasn't likely to die of a plague. Nobody I knew had to go hunting for food. I had an education I took for granted. Society was stable. I didn't work down a pit or up a chimney. Teachers weren't allowed to physically assault me. I didn't have to go to war as fodder. I wasn't enslaved and sold. I didn't have to join a merchant ship at 11 years old and grow up surrounded by pirates. No chance of starvation. Running hot and cold water in the house. We got satellite tv.

Pretty much won the human lottery.

World Service used to have the podcast of the BBC news from Sept 10th 2001. Not sure it's there any more. An interesting window into a simple time.

Edited February 1, 2021 by TheJTS98

[Hillonearth]

1 hour ago, NotThePars said:

 

In fairness to transplanting our own values and cultural moment to the past, Zizek writing that Zac Snyder’s Spartans in 300 were the Taliban and the Persians were America was good and very funny.

Extending the analogy, the Assyrians (who get my vote for being the most gleefully psychopathic ancient civilisation) would be ISIS. I suppose atrocities were the norm back in those times, but the likes of King Assurbanipal went out their way to document and boast about what is nightmare fuel even 3000 years later and made even the most cartoonishly violent Daesh execution video look like an episode of Itchy and Scratchy.

[velo army]

27 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bit of the old genocide and slavery. Not for me!

I suppose if you were one of the patrician families you would think you were pretty much ruler(s) of the world, and I suppose you'd be in some ways right. But the supremacist stuff would put a bit of a dampener on things for me.

Still, if time travel were possible I'd spend absolutely loads of time observing the Roman empire. Like I said, it would be absolutely fascinating.

I think the spirit of the OP's post was if you could live in a particular time period, not if you could go on a holiday for a few weeks in your TARDIS. The latter would be cool as f*ck obviously and would play into your frame of reference in which you are an explorer/anthropologist type character and looking at Roman society from the point of view of someone from modern day Fife.

In terms of living there though, without viewing it through the prism of modern morality, it would have been class being one of the masters of the universe (as it would have felt, no doubt). Owning farmland, vineyards and beautiful townhouses etc while enjoying all available pleasures would be exquisite. 

So I guess no matter what time period you're in, be one of the upper classes.

Personally I'd want to take a leaf out of    

@Bairnardo's book and live in northern Europe before agriculture was developed. Pure anarchy. Just hunting, telling stories and shagging. It would have been a land of plenty too. No droughts or fish shortages. Marvellous.

 

[The Moonster]

If I could time travel I'd go back to my youth and properly stick in at football, hopefully playing for Dumbarton, moving onto a top club before finally making my way into the Scotland team and on the 10th of June 2017 I would shove Stuart Armstrong out the way and boot that fucking ball into Rutherglen. 

[BFTD]

Getting in to the spirit of the thread, I've always felt a bit out of place in modern urban life, being big, hairy, and cursed with a desire to kill. I might have been better suited to a time when pummelling people with heavy objects was still acceptable, and on the off-season I could have  hacked trees down to make delightful log cabins. Also, I have caveman feet anyway, so...

I guess I could have moved to Canada, but I'd never get high heels in my size, and I'm not particularly keen on buttered scones.

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I wouldn’t mind have been born in the 1950s or 60s.

Boomers are handed absolutely everything.