The old guys were smarter than most give them credit!

[Jim Koepke]

The notion of traveling back a few centuries to live among our forefathers is romanticized by many. When one ponders a bit more, it becomes clear how difficult this could be. It would be as difficult for one from today to live back then as it would be for someone from yesteryear to try living a productive life in our time.

jtk

[george wilson]

Anyone traveling back in time would last about 2 weeks before death. Today we have such weak protective systems in our blood,we'd soon die.

[Frederick Skelly]

The notion of traveling back a few centuries to live among our forefathers is romanticized by many. When one ponders a bit more, it becomes clear how difficult this could be. It would be as difficult for one from today to live back then as it would be for someone from yesteryear to try living a productive life in our time.

jtk

I agree. Life was hard and the work was backbreaking. Going further off topic here, but don't forget some of the social conditions they also had to endure....Imagine being imprisoned or executed for killing a rabbit to feed your hungry children, because you'd taken it on some nobleman's hunting preserve. Imagine working from sunrise to sunset every day and having some fat, spoiled nobleman take a sizeable hunk of your harvest as "taxation". Imagine being put on a cramped, stinking ship and "transported" half way around the world to a penal (slave) colony - for some very minor offense. (Read some of the history of Australia.) No. I wouldn't want to go back in time to live.

[Larry Edgerton]

I agree. Life was hard and the work was backbreaking. Going further off topic here, but don't forget some of the social conditions they also had to endure....Imagine being imprisoned or executed for killing a rabbit to feed your hungry children, because you'd taken it on some nobleman's hunting preserve. Imagine working from sunrise to sunset every day and having some fat, spoiled nobleman take a sizeable hunk of your harvest as "taxation". Imagine being put on a cramped, stinking ship and "transported" half way around the world to a penal (slave) colony - for some very minor offense. (Read some of the history of Australia.) No. I wouldn't want to go back in time to live.

One percent of the population at present has 99% of the money as of the last report. Some things don't change a heck of a lot.

[Frederick Skelly]

One percent of the population at present has 99% of the money as of the last report. Some things don't change a heck of a lot.

Very, very true Larry. That won't ever change, IMO. But FWIW, I'm not under their boot heel on a daily basis and I just got a belly full of lunch. Family legend says that neither one of those was always true for my ancestors. More people live a little better today than a few hundred years ago. Not enough yet, but more of them. I'm glad I live today and not in an earlier century.

[Mike Allen1010]

[rant]

Smarter? More gifted? I guess DNA sequencing, spectacular advances in astrophysics, getting to the cusp of genetically-based medical treatment, GPS, are just more examples of modern mediocrity. And certainly you can think of no examples of inspired, gifted woodworkers and other craftsmen in our time, while every single one of those "old guys" were superior in every way...

It's no surprise that "young people" don't flock to what used to be called "the trades" when our culture values tidy white collar work over any whiff of manual labor, and cheap functionality in household goods that at one time couldn't be had unless it was made by a craftsman? And how the heck are your "young people" supposed to learn how to use a hammer when they barely know what one looks like, to say nothing of having seen one in use?

A young buck in the 19th century needed and had lots of time and opportunity to develop manual skills because nobody could afford a handyman, craftsmen quickly learned to see and feel a variance of a millimeter because precise standardized measuring tools weren't available, and everyone valued quality hand made household goods because a way to make cheap, functional, and widely available ones hadn't been invented yet. Similarly, today's 20 year old's expertise is in modern technology and all the ways we survive and adapt to a high tech global environment, and like it or not, video games and sitting stock still in front of a computer actually contribute to her understanding of his world. If you think his or her experiences and skills are shallow and useless, that's because what's relevant now wasn't imaginable 20 years ago, to say nothing of 100..

Sorry if this is a bit strident. I'm just so tired of hearing how much better everything used to be. With my genes I for one would be dead several times over if I lived in the old days, and I wouldn't trade my access to an amazing depth of knowledge and variety of human experience for all the handmade stuff in the world.

[/rant]

As the old expression goes, opinions are common place. Although when I was is in the Navy, many moons ago the language was certainly more colorful.

IMHO, Lenore's comments above have the logical resonance of truth. No one cares what I think, but generational value judgments strike me as somethingvthatcan only be accurately done through the lenses of time

[Lenore Epstein]

As the old expression goes, opinions are common place...No one cares what I think, but generational value judgments strike me as somethingvthatcan only be accurately done through the lenses of time

Lately I've been reading fiction set in the 15th and 17th centuries, and am up to the late 1400s after 200 pages of "The English And Their History" (which might just be the death of me). Superficially all this human history is familiar, but after a week of getting down and dirty in the details of what daily life was like for most people at various times in the past it starts to feel like I'm time traveling, or maybe just waking up on a distant planet. It gets harder and harder to be nostalgic for another time or place based on one particular factor once you get a taste of the hardships, harsh restrictions, and vulnerabilities that went along with that one pure thing we wish we could have.

Anyway, I realized a long time ago how hard it is for any of us to understand the people we actually know well, to say nothing of people far removed from us in time and space. The best we can do is to try and give each other a break every once in a while for not being exactly like us.

[Frederick Skelly]

...harder to be nostalgic for another time or place based on one particular factor once you get a taste of the hardships, harsh restrictions, and vulnerabilities that went along with that one pure thing we wish we could have.

+1. This is well said.

[Tom McMahon]

What do logic and truth have to do with the internet, we all know it's all about arguing about opinion, after all Abe Lincoln was 7 feet tall and from Venus.

[george wilson]

Lincoln had a disease that caused his bones to grow longer. I can't recall what it was.

I spent 40 years "imitating" life in the 18th. C.. While some aspects of it were fun,I have NO desire to actually go back in time and live. As I said,we have very weakened immune systems these days,with the anti biotics we're always taking,and the general sterilization of things around us,refrigeration,even anti spoiling agents(which everyone seems suspicious while living longer and longer). I'll STAY HERE,thank you!! I'd long be dead without modern surgery and medicines. Had double bypass when I was less than 50 years old!! Had prostate cancer at 57. That's all gone,thanks to modern surgery.

[Larry Edgerton]

Exactly George. Most of us having this conversation would be dead already in the good old days.

[Lenore Epstein]

What do logic and truth have to do with the internet, we all know it's all about arguing about opinion, after all Abe Lincoln was 7 feet tall and from Venus.

Oops, my bad!!